Update:
Al Lamm arrived having stuffed 40’ of sea container into about a 10x6x6 (+/-) air freight plywood box and a similar sized “show” box that held the bike.
Spent some time setting him up and had a MAJOR setback when we couldn’t drive 3/8” lag screws (to hold down his ground tarp) into the salt with an impact wrench. Finally settled on the “screws into hardwood” technique of pre-drilling the holes and then using the impact wrench. Did I mention the salt is REALLY hard?
He finally got all the decals onto the bike (You’re not REALLY racing if the paint is dry when you load your car/bike into the trailer!) and made an exploratory pass setting the Top Speed of the meet so far of 199.
Ralph Hudson swears his bike ran just fine before he pulled the motor prior to this event. Now he spent the day chasing a trashy crank trigger signal. Fingers crossed for Ralph.
Ack Attack claimed they’d be ready by 10:00. (BTW it’s so cold we gave up the 7:00AM shtick and now shoot for a 9:00 to 9:30 arrival onto the salt.) Then they first spent no small amount of time looking for why the rear wheel was sitting in a puddle of oil in its cup shaped wheel holder in its transport trailer. I don’t know if they ever discovered why, but were side tracked later in the day with a funky master cylinder that took three+ (4?) hours to fix and then bleed. Point being they but the bike back into the container in the dark, i.e., 6:00 – 6:30PM.
Nick and Mike and, I think, John ran their bone stock 1000 Aprilla up and down the course claiming, “That was the fastest I’ve ever gone! (183)”, and, “That course is like riding a freeway!” Made 5 or 6 passes.
Tomorrow seems like it will be the start of THE day if not the ACTUAL day. Lamm is ready. Akatiff and Robinson are ready. And God knows, the salt is ready.
Oh and there were about 2435 fewer people on the salt today.
Stay tuned.
