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Friday morning dawned wet, so we didn't start
the HPRA races until noon to give the things a chance to dry out. The abbreviated schedule
called for just drag races on the airport access road. In this picture, Fast Freddy Markham in the Gold Rush Colorado, out-accelerates
Steve Delair in his Lycra and Coroplast commuter streamliner. |
| Rob English races his Bike Friday folding bike to
take the overall win by over a bike length. A couple
other people showed up for the HPRA races including Joe Kochinowski and a college team,
both with streamliners.
After the drag races, some of went to rodeo demo that Jim
and Shar Peterson organized just for the bike racers. We saw some roping, bucking horse
riding, and saw a cowboy get bucked off a bull and land on his head. Yeow! |
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Streamliners line up for the sprints on SR
305. Six streamliners went in this group, then 5 more went in the second group after
letting some cars through. Andrea Blasecki was first to launch in the Varna Mephisto at
5:30pm. Winds did not calm down at dusk as they had
on previous days, but were low enough to race safely. Temps were in the lower 60s. Garrie
Hill made sure to have an ambulance on site after yesterday's excitement with the Mango.
Fortunately everybody got in good runs, including Matt Weaver who made a 73. 419MPH run
(sorry no pictures yet!). |
| Andrea takes off to back up yesterday's
64.74 MPH women's record run. Today she went 62.27MPH which is close enough for a backup
run. This should be a new women's world record! Everybody went slower today because the
winds were head winds. |
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Ellen Van Der Horst gets launched in the White
Hawk for her 200 meter sprint. Ellen went through the traps at 56.03 MPH. Jan Van Eijden in the Blue White Hawk also turned in a slower than
usual speed, at 64.519 MPH. |
| Tanya Markham, and Mackie Martin take
Tanya's spot in the lineup to attempt a new junior Tandem record. They pull it off by
going 53.483 MPH! Gardner Martin brought 4
streamliners to this event, plus a couple Tour Easy's. That was one packed trailer... |
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Steve Delair takes the Big Gun out for a run,
and goes through the traps at 57.99MPH. Steve has this brand new streamliner working
nicely now, and he's turning very consistent times. |
| Sean Costin has a mis-start, and
crashes into the gravel in his camera navigated Coslinger Special. These higher complexity camera bikes are sort of like home run
hitters in baseball. They strike out a lot, but when they connect, they go like stink.
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Sean's crew dumps the gravel out, puts the chain back on, and Sean gets a good
launch.Sean has spent the whole week getting
this bike to a point where it's race-able, and it was really good to see him make a run.
His speed was only 60.097MPH, but that's not bad at all for a first run of the week.
The Dust Devil finally got a run in too, and went
through the traps at a respectable 51.33 MPH. |
| Warren Beauchamp in the
Barracuda streamliner runs through the traps at 56.24 MPH, while
spinning in top gear at about 130 RPM.
Here's a video by Bill Cook of Warren making a pass through the
traps (745KB).
Note the wobble
caused by the high RPMs. To keep a streamliner running smooth,
it's best to keep the RPMs down to about 90.
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Picture by Charlie Webster |
| The Friday races went like clockwork,
with slower times, but no mishaps. Matt Weaver,
who has been holed up in the Peterson's garage all week says he was not pushing too hard
and should be able to go faster tomorrow. Saturday may be the fastest day for everyone, as
temps are expected to be warmer tomorrow. I need to do a bunch of work on the 'Cuda
tomorrow, including locking out the front suspension, which is pogoing like crazy when I
am spinning at way over 100 RPM to try to get to 60MPH, truing my back wheel, in which
many of the spokes were so loose you could see all the threads, and some other stuff. After the races and the post race meeting, Bill Gaines of the HPVA narrated
an interesting slide show of many vehicles from the 1980's IHPVA race events. I
didn't see it though, as I had to go back to the hotel and slave away in front of the
computer...
-Warren. |
