Norwalk Fall Nationals AMA Dragbike Race #7
Loganville, GA I apologize to those of you who actually take the time to read my articles for not writing in a timely fashion. I have been quite busy recruiting students for next year’s Heidelberg apprentice program and have finally got a chance to write.
As those of you who read my articles know, my engine was melted and is now back together. Prior to the Ohio race I went to Maryland International Raceway to do some shakedown runs and possibly get a spot on Rich Christensen’s new endeavor “Arm Drop Racing”. It is kind of a mix of “PINKS” and “PINKS All Out”.
I did not get on that, but I did have a good weekend testing the bike. It ran fine and I was awesome on the tree. My worst light was a .047.
On the way to Norwalk we had to stop at 2 Technical Colleges. Also, we had our new Jack Russell Terrier “Bella” with us for her first extended road trip.
When we got to Ohio for a meeting at Owens Tech in Toledo, we decided to stay in an RV park just over the border of Michigan in Monroe. It was a KOA that apparently doubled as a park for the locals. It had a catch release pond and next to that a pond for swimming with a beach type area along with a bunch of structures for kids to play on. You can tell this place had been here awhile because it had not come to terms with rest of the world concerning lawsuits and playground equipment.
It had the old fashioned kind of equipment that we look at nowadays as Spanish Inquisition torture devices. You remember the 10 x 10 X 10 foot tall cube made of 2” pipe as a kid? We used to play “King of the mountain” on one like it. When you knocked someone down through it, they looked like they were falling through a Pachinko machine. I never knew a body could contort in so many ways. This may be the only one still in existence, other than the one in Wisconsin at the Museum of Historic Torture Devices.
The catch and release pond was supposedly filled with Bass, Bream and Catfish. I am guessing the later was the only fish in there. I fished it in the evenings and did not see a thing along the edges let alone get a bite. It may have had something to do with the artificial looking teal green water.
While there we had to do laundry, so I went to the office to get quarters for the machines. There was a guy in the store who seemed to run the place. When he handed me my quarters he completely missed my hand and they fell back down on the lower part of the counter by him. He picked them up and went to put them in my hand, only to miss again by a few inches. After the third time he lays his hand flat on the counter top and says, “Notice anything”. I wanted to say, “Other than your lack of coordination, no”. Fortunately, before that came out of my mouth, I noticed he was missing his pointer finger. He told me he still thinks the finger is there and always misses when trying to put change in someone’s hand. I was going to suggest the fact he has a perfectly good left hand, but decided to let it go.
What does all of this have to do with racing you may ask?
Nothing.
Friday night they offered test and tune for 25.00, so I took advantage of it, as well as 300 other people. So I got 2 passes. Both were 9.53 and some change. Two things became apparent in these passes, one, my shift light developed a mind of its own and two, my lights suck, both were over .119.
The shift light continued to have issues throughout the whole weekend. It would start blinking whenever, sometimes it would stay on. Needless to say I had to use the tach.
My lights also continued to have issues, I looked like I had never raced before. My best light for the whole race was the -.006 I cut in Street Fighter.
The other thing that was amazing was my times. I ran 9.53 all weekend except for one 9.48 pass , a 9.51 and two 9.7’s. The problem with the 9.7’s was that I ran it in a 9.50 index class. Go figure.
Yet another problem was our dog was acting like a female dog in heat. Because she was. Stephanie had sheets all over everything to keep the place from looking like a scene from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".
In my first Street ET race I won because the other guy went red. In my 2nd Street ET race I went red. This seriously sucked because the guy I was racing had a pin fall out of his air shifter and could not change gears. The ease of winning this race for me would have been the equivalent of walking up behind Helen Keller, tapping her on the shoulder and saying, “Your it”. (Obviously this was the Helen Keller prior to regaining all of her senses. Something I still find incredulous...)
In Street Fighter I red lit. No surprise there.
Incredibly, I am in 9th place in both Street ET and Street Fighter with a shot at getting in the top 5 with the last race in Valdosta, GA.
Hopefully by then I will be able to cut a light again…