I echo what Dan said and was happy to get in the 5 runs that I did. Running the Speed Trials this year was a challenge that was not without it's issues. The organizers did as well as they could, and everyone should have had time to get at least 4 runs on the 2-3 days that were good. I talked to Rick at the fuel truck on Saturday and since he had just got his big rig and trailer in, he said it would be late before he could start dispensing gasoline on Sunday. I heard that he almost got stuck on a previous attempt, and a tractor trailer is not something you want stuck on the salt. If we had known how late, we could have left old gas in the tank and gone out and made some test and tune runs, as pre-stage was almost empty. In any case, I got there early and got fueled before noon. I'm guessing some people waited nearly all day.
The lines at the Mountain Course, where all bikes running less than 125 mph had to run, caused a back-up that caused a lot of folks to complain. I received the following message from one of the course workers, which sheds some light on the problem.
"Tom,
The single biggest holdup on mountain one is riders not clearing the course. Now being my first year of volunteering I am have limited perspective on how it worked in the past, but it was pretty unbelievable to me the amount of people who powered to the end of the course(two miles past the final timing lights), pulled off next to the course and stopped, or we had at least four (that I remember) that turned around and came back down the course. Some of them that had been racing for years. Maybe that is a flag issue that could be addressed, or maybe we need a more intensive riders meeting. Rex was going to have a video made that showed how to run the course and host it on youtube so everyone could watch it repeatedly before the actual event. I think it is a good idea.
I think fundamentally the biggest issue is trying to move the slowest, least experienced riders through one place. They talked about doing a third course a few years ago for this exact thing. This year there may not have been enough salt to accommodate that, so we did the best we could.
On the note of doing with what we had, I think putting new riders on the international course this year would have resulted in more accidents because of the loose salt conditions. Scaring new racers is not going to help them come back, and that should be the goal for all of us to make sure they want to come back or there wont be a motorcycle only event.
The wait time sucked, but it has always been a long wait. Last year I waited four hours and then right before my run "lucky Keiser", or whatever his name is, went down hard. It was another two hours and that was at mountain zero, not mountain one.
The one thing that I want to make very clear is there is almost no down time caused by the staff. I am not being defensive here. Before this year I thought there was a lot that the staff could do to speed things up. I now know there is not much that the staff has control over. The guys in the booth never took a break as far as I could tell, and are as competent at over-seeing the goings on as anyone could be. I mean we are talking Tom Burkland. I am not as clear on how staging works, but for the most part they can only send as many riders out that we, the starters, request from them.
I have a few ideas and I should see Tom and Rex this weekend. They asked me for my ideas on how we can do better. I don't have the answers, but for my own, and everyone else sake would truly like to see it flow better. It is awful hard to set records when you have a run a day to do it in. I want this event to continue, that means making people happy.
I will be racing with the USFRA this weekend. I will watch how they do things, maybe I can learn something and pass it on."
I hope the above will help explain the problems that caused the long lines. I have a few ideas and they will be passed on.
Tom