Revelate and the USPS messed up his custom bag order and he is riding with the infamous seat rack and likely carrying 7-10 lbs of rack system.

Gack!  When I first started mountain biking I tried exactly one ride with one of those wretched racks.  I couldn't wait for the ride to be over to get it off the bike.   I'd like to add that with record numbers of divide racers, Eric at Revelate has probably been doing a mini-divide of his own at the sewing machine to get everyone's bags out.  He's always been up-front about how long bag orders can take, provided excellent customer service, and produced a superior quality product.  '12 divide racers might want to consider their orders sooner than later!  I hope your guy gets to the PO in time to get his bags.  The divide will seem a few hundred miles shorter with the reworked bike!

Looks like some heavy weather coming across for the SoBo riders to contend with... Anyone comment on whether it's rain or snow and how much?

Wundermap is your friend.  For many areas along the divide you can discover precipitation location, intensity and
whether it is frozen or not.
http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/

Nice, thanks for that! 

You don't mention what tires you are trying.  The bead of the tire can make all of the difference in the world.  On some DT swiss
rims I have, WTB nanoraptor, maxxis ardent and any specialized 2bliss branded tire inflate with a hand pump and seat well in a yellow tape,
no rim strip, stans sealant setup.

With continental mountain king tires, I could not achieve inflation even with a compressor and taking out the valve core.  Stans gurgling
out everywhere - a complete fiasco.   Lots of people have good luck with those tires, so it was probably the combination of the bead plus the
nuances of my particular rims. 

My experience with tubeless is that it requires a lot of experimentation to find what works, but then is worth it and not a lot of overhead unless
you want to mount different tires every week.   Keep at it,  you'll find the sweet spot.

Do you have a picture of how your bladder-in-frame-bag system turned out?  Nice trip report and excellent adventure by the way.

Make a pattern, hold it up to the bike and stare at it for a while to see if you think you could make use
of a bag in that small space. I have an '05 FSR and I could see putting tubes, tools
and parts in such a bag.  I'm doing the same thing with an '11 29er FSR; for this
bike the space is bigger, yet still pretty weird.  I'm going to send Eric a pattern
and some pictures to see what he thinks (I'm very happy with the custom bag
he made for my 29er HT).   On my FSR bikes a "gas tank" turned around and mounted
above the shock (affixed to the seatpost) has worked out for times when I've needed a bit
more storage off the back. 

Hi Nathan,

With the way this winter is taking shape, I would be a little concerned about snow/ice conditions
through at least mid-February.  The US97 corridor is a dog's breakfast on a day like today,
and there can be days like today well through January.  You can avoid some of the passes,
but we still have ice fog and snow throughout which would make for a pretty dicey trip
when you are contending with traffic on two-lane roads.  I'm in Ellensburg and I've been
to the Stonehenge a few times.  It was constructed as a monument to soldiers from the
area who perished in WWI.  Surreal.

So what does that mean for 2011? Would a UK racer with years of mud / foul weather (ie "summer") riding have the edge?

SSP

If parts of the route get above average snowfall during La Nina years, then it might not be a great year to try and set new course records.  On the other hand, racers who are fast pushing their bikes up, over and down snow covered mountain passes might have a competitive edge   Early on in this thread, Matt pointed out the weather resources at TourDivide.Org which include links to places where relevant historical data are kept for snowfall, snow  cover, etc. 

[...]
How about more talk about next year?
[...]

One factor already developing for next year's race is a La Nina:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html

I hope Blaine is interested and able to follow-up with a 3rd consecutive appearance for TD '11. 
As others have commented on, route knowledge and previous experience in the daily rhythms
of divide racing are particularly important for this event.  A strong rider's competitiveness can
actually increase over the years because far more is being tested than raw V02max.

...but a friend sent me this and it made me smile. It was just too good not to share.

British fans might mistake the second photo for a production still of an as-yet-to-be-released spinoff of the BBC TV series Torchwood (who's main character is an immortal, indestructible time traveler).  Perhaps Matt was riding the divide before there even _was_ a divide?  That's why he's so good...

Here are some articles about this year's tour.  The Cannondale press release mentions Blaine as 3rd place rather than a shared 2nd place with Erik.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/tour-divide-experiences-first-fatality
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/lee-wins-tour-divide
http://www.cannondale.com/usa/usaeng/News/Details/4241-CFRs-Lee-Wins-Tour-Divide:-Lefty-Goes-1-2-3

He was 90 minutes ahead of record pace according to the split at Abiquiu.  That's where the detour took off from the GDR, so the detour was roughly 8 hours faster.  That's not at all surprising given how much climbing and rocky 2-track was avoided.

Were there mud issues last year in the (detoured) area that is on fire this year?  I remember last year the Rainbow Gathering people asking Matt to slow down but can't quite recall if the worst of the mud was in NM or further north.

I'm afraid I have bad news to share. Dave Blumenthal was in a serious accident with a car this morning in Routt County. He is in the hospital now and I believe his family has been notified.

I know from following Dave's blog, his posts here and his TD effort what a greatly spirited adventurer he is.  May that energy carry him through this tragedy.  We're definitely thinking of him and his loved ones here tonight.   Not many details about the accident are available yet, but there is now this:

http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2010/jun/23/man-seriously-injured-bike-vs-pickup-accident/

Ya, was watching that, seems like yesterday they were all at various states of about 30 miles apart was surpsrised to see Erik pulling ahead of Blaine.

I think what we see in the split chart for Erik and Blaine at Steamboat is due to the location of the split point.  Blaine's spot was in the Steamboat vicinity and parked for a couple of hours while Erik was still inbound last night.  This morning, if current spot locations are to believed, the spread between the two is about what it has been with Blaine again in front.  Erik might also be holding back to get his bike into the shop to forestall the dreaded unicycle "fix" - when so many parts have fallen off or been destroyed along the route that only one wheel is left viable.

When Erik reported the destruction of his rear tire's sidewall due to mud abrasion, I recalled krefs comment earlier in the year about his experience with the new, lightweight nanos - and in particular their fragile sidewall (which didn't fare well with his pounding on the AZT).  I'm assuming Erik is running nanos; it will be interesting to see if mud ate the classic or the "neo" nano.

... Thick clay mud is amazingly effective at pulling derailleurs into the spokes.  The single-speed fix doesn't always work, especially with a mud-filled chain...often the chain tries to shift up the cassette and then snaps.

If one had vast amounts of lube and could get the chain oozing till it glistens, would it make any difference at all under those conditions?  Probably not but I'm sure someone has tried.  

Do you know who the SS riders are this year?

Kent Peterson from Issaquah Washington is running SS 32/18.  He actually rode his bike up to Banff from home to start the race.  You can read all about it here: http://kentsbike.blogspot.com

I wonder if he'll ride home from Antelope Wells?

I'd guess that there would be some SNOTEL sites in the vicinity of the route in various places.  Anyone have any idea how this year's snowpack compares to other divide racing years?  Here in the Washington Cascades we've seen a cool, wet spring which has left a good amount of snow intact which normally would be runoff by now.

I recently picked up a Panasonic Lumix ZS3.  It is very compact, which makes it easy to stow in a small carrying case which rides nicely on the cross-strap of a pack.  If you like making short videos, they have a button dedicated to that function, so you don't have to change mode settings or make other adjustments.  This camera does not have a viewfinder, which I have missed on bright sunny days (snowshoeing, for example).  Even in the worst conditions for seeing the display, I've gotten reasonable pictures.  (Doing a panorama assist in bright conditions could be difficult).  The image stabilizer on this camera is quite good; to get naturally lit shots I've declined the flash and gotten crisp images of still scenes with shutter speeds of 1/30th or slower while holding the camera.  You don't have manual control beyond exposure correction, but they give you quite a few "scene" modes to choose from, and you can preset two scenes on the mode dial for handy access.  The camera has a reasonably wide-angle view which zooms to 12x.  This is a 10.1MP camera.  Pictures in good natural light (or close up with the flash) have great clarity.  As light quality declines, the image quality degrades incrementally with grain becoming increasingly visible.  Of course, all cameras suffer from this.  The Lumix might not be as good of a low light camera as slightly more expensive, heavier, 12MP Canon PowerShot that I also own, but the difference hardly matters to me.  I've gotten more cool shots with this camera in a few months than in years owning the bigger camera - precisely because it is accessible right away.  Hope this helps!