I never met Cliff, but I know Jack. We spoke for quite a while the other day and as you can imagine he is in the middle of some serious "back and forth" about his design ("square edged cars"), his cars ("there's still a few of them running") and what he will do next, or if in fact he will do anything different or even possibly if he will do anything at all. As they left the salt I believe Cliff's wife encouraged Jack to not let Cliff's death affect what Jack did.
Please know that my report about Jack is only from a moment in time and that in these sorts of times one's thoughts for the future can wander with abandon.
This morning I had a rather spooky thought. A year or so ago Kent Riches and I were chatting and the subject of Burt Munro came up. Kent jokingly referred to Burt's VERY soft 1000CC S-F record (Aug 1967 183.586mph) as the Haunted Record, recounting the difficulties, crashes, engine failures, etc., that had befallen him (and I think a couple of others) as they tried to go past this "simple" number.
Well, while speaking with Jack before speedweek he mentioned, "Yeah, we're even going to go after Burt Munro's record." I'm pretty sure he was talking about Cliff's liner and given the numbers he was doing with that two stoke, putting in a 1000cc motor and going 183.587 should have been a cinch.
Hmmmm.....
God Speed, Cliff
Y'all keep the shiny side up so when Cliff looks down he'll know everything is cool.
Jim