Wednesday, October 9th, 2002
The Slow Race is supposed to be one of the safest things you can do at a motorcycle rally. I was in the heat for third place Saturday at the Bikes, Blues, and BBQ rally here in town, when I discovered otherwise.
I was in the middle lane, doing reasonably well (rules: last one to cross the finish line is the winner; put your foot down or go out of your lane, you lose), when the guy on the decrepit Sportster beside me began to wobble. Instead of just putting his foot down, he decided to gut it out and have the bike fall over on its left side, pinning him under it. Of course, he wouldn’t let go of his ape-hanger handlebars, so he wrenched the throttle on full, causing the bike to do sideways doughnuts on the ground. On his last “spin,” his rear tire collided with me. No damage to me, though, and you couldn’t tell from his.
People seemed very concerned, probably thought I was a lawyer on the k-bike.
On a side note, I saw a guy on a Japanese rocket bike do an 8.4 second quarter mile @ 177 mph on the drag dyno. It’s amazing the volume of air that is blown out of an exhaust at that output. They had other diagnostic dynos there that were very popular. I thought about spending the $50 for the analysis, but there’s not much they could do for me to improve over stock. The HD guys spend a fortune to get their stodgy v-twins to get 100 hp. Sort of like getting a pig to sing.