| Author | Message | ||
     Blastin |
Mike, The better half is working tonight, so I'm free after about 6:00. What do ya feel like for dinner? Hell I could even whip up some dinner at home, or at least order a pizza. There's some pretty good places around the new place, depends on what your in the mood for. Or I can meet you anywhere else. I may even have a 2-for-1 coupon depending on where we go,so we both can eat cheap. I'm busy tomorrow night but free on Thursday. Hey I've also been in lurk mode for quite a while as well as not being able to post much. What's this about graduation? I thought you had a bit more to go, or did you bite the bullet..suck-it-up..take the hit..etc. I know how that feels. GRE are you nuts??   "Joe Boomer", The car is an Olds Intrigue and it can hold a lot more than one would think. It has the fold down back seats so it can handle things of length as well. 8' 2"x4" lumber is not match,(at least not more than 5 of them) For reference, it will also fit a 55-gallon fish tank in the back seat, (4' across) and the stand for the tank will almost fit in the trunk, but with the assitance of some bungee cords it does fine for short distances. I will be headed northbound from my southerly location on Sunday late afternoon to early evening, if you guys want to give it a go. Jerry | ||
| Bomber |
jerry . . . your stealth car (gotta love the name, doncha?) will take Mike's Big Johnson without a problem . . . . . I'm about 1 mile west of the tollway exit at deerfield road (don't know how far south your goin) or 10 minutes west of the Highland House, for reference | ||
| Court |
>>>>or at least order a pizza. If you guys order pizza, while Henrik and I are filling Road Thing with Italian food in Little Italy, I am going to sue you and petition for your charter to be revoked. That's akin to us going to the Bronz to order Kringle...... You are dangerously close to being fined...teh who darn group of you! Court | ||
| Bomber |
funny thing is, many who post here (including those who are putting the Uke's Charter in danger), aren't from these part (grin) | ||
| Mikej |
Jerry, I'll have to send off an email and see what response I get. The Ground Round or Heinemans on hwy-100 might work, or even the Panera's in Mayfair if you want to visit the zoo (a week before Christmas in a shopping mall is my definition of a zoo ). Are you at the 9353 tel number later? There's also some little places I've seen down on Watertown Plank road where it crosses the railroad tracks that look interesting. No graduation yet, but grad school wants their application by Jan-1 for fall admissions, but I may defer until Jan-2004 to start since I've still got a few req's to complete outside of the major stuff. | ||
| Mikej |
(including those who are putting the Uke's Charter in danger) This sounds interesting, like there may be a background story or two????? | ||
| Mikej |
We or someone could start a sub-thread heading called Uke's Club Freeloaders, or something like that where one (or non-club-registered peeps) could post and gather and talk about non-club stuff. But remember, this is the off-topic migration highway and residual side lateral diagonal discussional obtusely difused dialog center of the virtual universe. Said so on a sign I read somewhere once upon a time in a far far away land or stall. | ||
| Blastin |
Okay Brats, Cheese, and Beer it is. | ||
| Mikej |
Jerry, Just got a response. Have a few things to take care of tonight so will have to reschedule with you on the dinner. | ||
| Lake_Bueller |
Jerry...You've got mail x2! If you're not getting them, give me a buzz at work (800-558-2405) Mennis | ||
| Racerx1 |
Hey Troops, a little tough to sell since we are currently experincing tropical conditions in sunny southern Wisconsin (it snowed in SanDiego today by the way....), but we have formed a 3 man team of Buell/H-D engineers to race in the the 8th Annual Steel Shoe Fund 3 hr ice endurance race held Sunday, January 19, 2003 at Gimmer's Sunset Marina on Lake Koshkonong in Ft. Atkinson, Wisconsin. This AMA snactioned event is held each year as a benefit for seriously injured motorcycle flat track racers. The initial event in 1996 was held as a one-time deal for Steve Champine of Wisconsin who was paralyzed in a fall from a deer hunting stand. Since then the Steel Shoe Fund was formed as a branch of the Wegman Benefit Fund for injured road racers and all collections are used to assist flat trackers who have been injured during competition. We are looking for 'sponsors'. All money collected will be donated to the Wegmen Benefit fund in the name of Team Ukes (We are currently trying to talk Keith Ulike's brother Frank into riding with us....). The collection would be in addition to the $100/team entry fee, and not used for our entry fee. We will be riding a KTM 450MX set up for ice. Unfortunately due to the sketchy weather, we are holding off making the call to race until two weeks prior to the event. A donation will still be made even if we don't race. Checks can be made payable to the Wegmen Benefit. If anyones interested in donating, please contact me off line. Regards, Wes | ||
| Whatever |
Wes, I will be in Madison that weekend... can you post race times and directions when it is all final ? Would love to come out there and cheer you guys on. Thanks, Charlotte PS Can bring Hot Mocha for fuel....  | ||
| Racerx1 |
Charlotte, No problem, will be happy to send you directions! the more spectators, the better.....plus the home base is a bar, so you can't go wrong. to get you primed, heres a story I wrote about my rookie year experience a couple of years ago....most of it is true. WFO Ice, Ice, Baby...... So there I was, laying prone in the front seat of a Ford van, heater blasting and me nauseated to the point of almost losing my cookies. That nutritious breakfast of tortilla chips and salsa suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea. My head and torso were sweating profusely as I struggled to remove my helmet and snowmobile jacket. This task was made nearly impossible due to the fact that my hands and feet were frozen to the point of being numb. The stinging pain of my extremities achieving blood flow again only made me more nauseated....only the fear of throwing up in front of my Co-worker Erick Gruber and the rash of cold, heartless kidding that would ensue at work gave me the strength to keep my stomach contents where it belonged. Despite my macabre thoughts, my body did soon returned to a more normal temperature equilibrium. As my brain slowly returned to rational thinking from self preservation mode, it occurred to me what a strange set of contradictions ice racing motorcycles is. Not that I had actually raced yet.....I had only just returned from practice. As these things usually do, the predicament I had gotten myself into started out innocently enough. It seems that the moto-heads in our frozen little section of the world keep their sanity (relative term) through the long cold Wisconsin winter by ice racing on any convenient frozen pond or lake. Now originally being from a more southerly climate, one normally didn’t associate motorcycles with ice, or water for that matter. the concept of driving your van out onto a lake, unloading your dirtbike and racing on a road race course plowed by a truck with corner apex’s marked by Christmas trees was a little tough to comprehend. Ice racing is actually a weekly occurrence around here during the winter months (although usually confined to dirt track style oval events). This weekend’s event was special. It was a 3 hour endurance event on a 1 mile ‘road’ course all to benefit the steel shoe fund for injured dirt trackers. My fellow co-worker Erick Gruber and his brother Mark were headed to the event, and I decided to tag along and lend a hand in the pits if needed. Both Eric and Mark are experienced expert lever dirt trackers and ice racers, and have won this very event in the past. The opportunity to help them out and check out the scene first hand was too good to turn down. I threw in my helmet just for kicks thinking I might get a chance to ride around the pits during a free moment. Erick and Mark picked me up and we headed out to Ft. Atkinson Wisconsin, about an hour northwest of my house. the weather was beautiful, if not a bit chilly....maybe 15 deg by the time we arrived on the lake. I had the foresight to bundle up pretty well, wearing a snowmobile jacket and snow pants in addition to heavy boots and snowmobile gloves. I was fairly comfortable just standing around, although the cold was creeping through my boots. Upon arrival and check in at a nearby bar, we headed out onto the lake to a plowed oval course and parked. The lake was immense and reminded me of Bonneville Salt Flats a little. Basically vast expanses of smooth block ice covered by a couple of inches of snow. Besides the plowed oval course we had parked on, there was a plowed road course of about a mile made up of an equal number of lefts and rights, with some sweepers, switchbacks, and decreasing radius stuff thrown in as well. I was still having a tough time imagining a motorcycle race here. Which brings us to the bikes. Eric and Mark brought a pair of CR250 Hondas as weapons of choice in the middleweight class. The primary bike was Marks CRE250, actually an enduro version of the CR250 MX bike equipped with different suspension calibration and heavier flywheel and lighting coil. Our teams ‘B’ bike was Eric’s CR250 MX bike. They visually didn’t appear to stray too far from their dirt roots, with the only obvious modifications being the addition of low slung front and rear fenders which covered 50 % of the tire, and the reason for the extra fender protection: what seemed to be thousands of sharpened screw heads imbedded in the knobbies. There is a black art to the orientation and placement of the screw heads in order to have an effective tire....and they aren’t cheap either. A pretty spooky looking weapon....couldn’t help but think what it would feel like to get run over by one. As it turns out, I would soon find out..... As impressive as the tires looked, I still had a hard time believing a bike would have any traction at all on ice with them. It was fascinating to watch the practice session, as the bikes were pulling wheelies and reaching impressive lean angles on the corners.....amazing. Erick and Mark were very impressive to watch, as their dirt track background was evident on the ice, backing the bike in sideways at almost every corner. they came in and pronounced the bikes good to race. Then Erick asked me if I wanted to run the course in practice on the CRE...... Better judgment would have dictated a stern ‘No’ to Erick’s inquiry......my dirtbike seat time was limited to say the least, and that was on a relatively tame KDX220. Dirt track and Ice racing experience was a big zero....but then again, there’s no better time to learn than now! I changed my now thoroughly frozen feet into my old road race boots and threw on my helmet and light summer dirtbike gloves. I was nervous to say the least, as these race prepped CR’s were rockets, and I was on ice no less.....sounded like a recipe for disaster. I stuck my hands in the all covering hand mitts attached to the handlebars and kicked the CR over. It barked to life after the second kick .....I let out the clutch gingerly and we were on our way.... Making my way around the ice oval in first gear, I was amazed to find out that the bike actually did have some semblance of traction, as cracking the throttle brought the front wheel up immediately. As I rounded the first corner of the oval, I was again amazed at the controllability of the bike....it felt almost like you were on dirt. My biggest surprise came when I squeezed the front brake hard, expecting the front to wash.....instead it just hauled the bike down to a stop....interesting.....but I still hadn’t even entered the road race track. I stopped at the entrance to the track and got waived on for my first tentative lap. the first couple of laps, I creeped around the corners and hammered it on the straights, preferring to test traction while the bike was more or less vertical. I found the bike handled pretty much just like it was on dirt at the speeds I was going. Power was awesome....not too peaky but extremely strong....enough to pull 3rd gear wheelies down the longest straight. I found you could bog the engine pretty good without stalling thanks to the heavy flywheel weights of the enduro model. The bikes balance was very good and predictable, although due to the pounds of ice screws in the tire, it steered a little heavier than I would have expected. As I got more comfortable with the traction, I started experimenting a bit more in the corners. I was using a pathetic imitation of classic dirt track style steel shoe turn method. I was absolutely amazed at the corner speed and lean angles you could achieve...the bike moved around a lot, but I never got the impression it was just going to go off. On some of the longer corners, I was nearly touching my knee and elbow together! after botching a couple of corners, I unintentionally found the coefficient of traction was drastically different between the smooth ‘ice’ line and the powdery snow to the outside, as the bike got real loosey-goosey if I drifted too far off the chosen path. By this time, I was going fast enough to keep experienced riders in site for at least a corner or two, and was trying to pick up some ideas for going faster....I noticed my mid turn corner speed and straight away acceleration were about even, but they were smoking me both on the way into and out of the corner. the preferred method of entering the corner seemed to be the classic back it in style. I sucked up all my courage on my favorite corner and stabbed the rear brake on the entrance while leaning to the inside....to my amazement, the rear end drifted out, wagged pretty hard a couple times, but scrubbed off the speed and set me up for a nice apex! I started practicing the method on all the corners on the track, and my lap times began to drop. Soon I’d advance to the point that I didn’t even need the rear brake on the faster turns, and could hang it out by just chopping the throttle and flicking the bike down hard, sliding sideways scrubbing speed off! what a frickin’ blast! This was getting addictive..... Next I worked on my corner exits. I found throttle control was critical on the ice. After pitching the bike in on the entrance, you had to apply throttle to hook the tires up and apex the corner. applying a little more throttle broke loose the rear end and helped turn the bike on the exit. it was a big balancing game of too little or too much throttle that seemed to change in ratio for each corner. The last few laps, I was trying to put all these lessons together, but was just having a blast exercising the new found method of backing the bike in hot into corners. My favorite corner appeared to have a female cornerworker (hard to tell in the Wisconsin winter apparel). I decided I was really going to go in hot and sideways to impress this goddess of the north. I charged into the corner and laid the bike over and went into a full lock slide. Unfortunately, I drifted off the ice line and into the powder on the outside of the turn. I was at already at full lock, but the bike continued to rotate around... Soon I found myself and the bike pointed 90degrees perpendicular to our velocity vector, but this wasn’t nearly as bad as a few milliseconds later when the tires gripped and I was ejected from the saddle in a classic high side. After reaching an altitude of approximately 5 feet, I plunged to earth onto the rock hard icy surface of the lake, taking a Mike-Tyson like blow to the left side of my rib cage. I ended up landing at the feet of my sultry cornerworker....although I became suspect as I noticed she had size 12 boots. I later found out her name was Al..... The impact had totally knocked the wind out of me, but the thought of being run over by any pursuing bikes and their spiked tires was enough to send me running from Al’s loving grasp and back onto the track to the site of my fallen steed. I was at first shocked to see the bike covered in a cloud of steam, as the hot expansion chamber was slowly melting its way through the ice! I stood the bike up and pushed it off to the side, still wheezing trying to regain my breath. It was about this time that I noticed my hands and feet were completely numb with cold, as I was having a hell of a time trying to kickstart the bike with no feeling from my feet. I managed to get the bike to fire and run, and headed back for the pits....at this point, I was only able to take tiny gasps of air, as the world began to shrink away from me. I managed to get back to the pits and dismount the bike, almost in a state of total black out....totally drained of all energy. I muttered something to Eric about how fun my experience was and immediately stumbled to the van to try and recuperate a little (see first paragraph). After 15 minutes in the van with the heater on full blast, I began to feel a bit more human and headed back out to witness the actual race. Eric and Mark and are seriously fast and were definitely in contention to win, my duty was to assist in pit stops and keep a clock on them. the plan was to stay out for 45 minutes at a time (made possible by the CR’s large enduro fuel tank) and come in for rider changes there was some serious competition in the form of multi ISDT gold medal winner and ice race champion Kawasaki KDX mounted Jeff Fredette. J.R. Schnable, a rising star AMA/Pace Dirt tracker who finished 3rd in the wrench head.com series this year was also there....this was going to be exciting! the race was broken down into three class, lightweight, middleweight, and open. Mark took first shift and made a great start, and ran with the front runners for his entire shift. Mark came into the pits in 4th or 5th spot overall, complaining a little of a lack of confidence in the tires.....Erick shot out onto the track and was doing well for about 3 laps when Murphy’s law struck and we noticed his front fender flapping in the breeze....we brought him back into the pits and did a quick fix job on the fender using zip ties. Erick headed back out only to crash hard when the fender failed again and rolled over into the front wheel. This time, the damage was pretty severe, ripping the brake line out of the brake caliper. we pushed the bike back into the pits, and quickly threw numbers onto the back up CR250 MX bike. By now we were out of contention for a win, but were determined to make the best of it. Eric went back out on the CR only to return two laps later, as the stiff MX suspension was just not compliant enough for the now heavily rutted track. We then pulled the brake assembly off the MX bike and bolted it to the primary Enduro bike and sent Eric off again. Mr. Murphy had definitely spent his fair share of time in our pit, but on the bright side (at least for me anyhow) was the fact that now that we were out of contention for a win, Eric and Mark had kindly offered to let me ride for 1/3rd of the last hour in the race! 15 minutes later. Eric signaled to come in and I jumped back on the bike. The front brake was a bit mushier than before, but the bike felt pretty good overall. the track however was a whole ‘nother story.....the pristine smooth corners of my practice session were now heavily rutted and required an entirely different technique. I also had a surprise in the form of a large puddle in the middle of one of the fastest corners! My road race background caused me to go into clenched mode as I rounded the apex at speed.....to my surprise, the bike didn’t even flinch as it shot through the puddle leaned over...in time, I found there was actually more traction through the puddle than on the ice line. Weird sport, ice racing. Another first for me occurred when a snowplow pulled out on the course during the race and started to plow the course! I was quite proud of myself that I was able to lap faster than the plow (although not by much) and actually passed it....twice! the race was very exciting to ride, and I was amazed at the speed of the fast guys. I had a fairly tame race, as I was either getting passed quickly or passing other slower riders quickly.....not really anyone riding at my pace to race with. The highlight of my race was getting my foot run over mid corner by Fredette on his Kawasaki. Thank god for leather boots! I think I was probably lapping in the lower 20% of the riders....but I was having a blast! I couldn’t stop smiling by the time I was signaled to come in for a rider exchange. Mark went out next, and was absolutely flying, running faster lap times than the leaders. He obviously had found some confidence in the tires....it was thrilling watching him run wheel to wheel with Fredette and Schnable, although I was a little depressed to see the bike was so fast. It was painfully obvious it wasn’t the bikes fault for my slow lap times! Mr. Murphy ended up visiting Mark as well, as he drifted wide in the last turn and made a spectacular get off right in front of the crowd, sliding to a stop inside the officials canopy tent. Mark was OK and handed off to Eric who put in some excellent hot laps to finish off the event. We believe Schnable won the event....his riding talent was just on another level I couldn’t even comprehend. On the last lap he backed it into a 90 deg corner completely sideways, then pinned the throttle and left in a roostertail of snow, completely sideways....all without ever taking his feet off the pegs. Quite a show of talent. I can’t thank Erick and Mark Gruber enough....they were very generous with their time and equipment. I think you guys have actually given me a reason to look forward to winter now! Ice racing seems to have its advantages over road racing, especially the durability of the bike after crashing and the costs.....not sure if the 15 deg weather makes up for it though. You can be sure I’ll be at this event next year in some form or another. I wonder if anyone’s ever tried to race a Blast on ice screws........ WFO | ||
| Bomber |
Wes . . . . . if that gig w/HD don't work out, you clearly have a future in wrriting . . .. what a great tale . . . . . it almost tempts me into getting an old enduro scoot and . . . .. . .uh oh better not . . .. I am sooo easily hooked (grin) | ||
| Donsieg |
Great piece. From now on, you shall be known as Wes "her name was Al" Orloff. LOL!! | ||
| Nevco1 |
Wes...Thanks for the great read!!! | ||
| Bads1 |
Awesome story Wes as I know how you felt out there in the cold. I used to drag race snowmobiles in the limited 800cc class.Sitting in the truck freezing waiting for your turn to go stage sucks but it always seemed to go away when the green light went on.Man do I miss it but work and marriage changed that so the journey's to the great white north got put on hold for awhile but not forever. | ||
| Bads1 |
I also forgot I just sent my wheels off to get chromed and I'm excited to get them back to see how my bike is going to look. | ||
| Grapejuice |
Wes, Great story! Good entertainment for this busy Friday. Grape | ||
| Racerx1 |
Thanks guys! I've had a lot of people tell me i should write instead of engineer.....not quite sure how to take that.... Well, Stacey and I are off on our annual Christmas tour of the midwest. 6 states and 3 x-mases in 7 days. I hope everyone has a great x-mas/Newyear and we look forward to seeing everyone again next year! regards, Wes |
