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Pike's Peak: August 2001
By Dale Whelan

Leaving Home

Aug 21, 2001
10:30am: Arizona Time, USA: Go to bank and get money for trip. Find a second check for $500 in wallet!
11:30am: Left home headed for shop to get some tools.
11:37am: I miss my wife.

Dave wishes me luck and tells me to be careful.

12:00pm: While turning onto the freeway a toolbox shifts and crashes into the right hand side of the van.
12:01pm: I smell burning oil, I don't think it is the van. It seems to be a car ahead of me. The van and I both need fuel.
12:30pm: Leaving Speedway Automotive with 10 gallons of race fuel, $50 worth. Now to fuel me and the van.

Passing Manzanita Speedway, it's very empty. Found a Burger King and am tempted... wrong side of the road to warrant a stop. $33 dollars in fuel 18.6 gallons in the van, 5 in a gas can.

1:00pm: I'm still only 20 minutes from home, wow, that kinda sucks.

For the first time in a long time I'm headed north of DeerValley Rd. out of Phoenix. At Black Canyon City I do an inventory of the shit I need for the race and can't account for my helmet! I had gone to the bank on the streetbike earlier, did I put the helmet back in the van? (I once went to Willow Springs without a helmet.) Luckily the helmet is in the van, so I'm on the road again.

Road Trip

Aug 21, 2001
There's a truck ahead of me pulling a trailer, wonder if a race bike lives in there? Maybe I'll find out later. I catch up to the trailer and don't see any decals on it. It's from Utah. The guy looks like he could be a racer, has that geeky look I have.
Air Conditioning works really good downhill, not so good uphill. Cordes Junction, time for lunch.

2:25pm: Just ate, have snacks drinks and ice in the cooler!.

Just south of Flagstaff I reach cruising altitude of 7000 feet. East bound on I-40: Winslow 57 miles, Holbrook 89, Albuquerque 320. Just passed Twin Arrows trading post. Deserted except for truck parking.
The van is acting like it is running out of fuel, mile marker 222 on I-40, suspecting fuel filter. I have one with me. Getting pretty bad, I'lll see if I can fix it.Weather is nice out, that's a good thing.

4:13pm: Fixing the van.
4:41pm: On the road again.

The van seems to be working as I pass Two Guns, but I stop to take a picture and the van won't idle. I'll drive and see what happens.

5:00pm: Van is running down the highway ok, I just hope it's not too big of a problem in towns.

Trailer on it's side between the highways, hope it's not bad... It's bad. Looks like a pickup got squished under it's trailer. Holy shit! The truck was towing a large enclosed trailer big enough to haul a couple racecars and gear. It's about the size of the PJ1 team... if I don't see them in Colorado I'll know what happened. Wasn't them, no decals. The van has now decided to idle. Gas up in Winslow Arizona. 5:30pm: The weather's really nice out. 7:02pm: I'm in New Mexico. 8:00pm: Between Gallup and Albuquerque I'm treated to a lightning show.

10:00pm: I-40 is closed in Albuquerque so I'm following a detour. Hopefully I'll find the KOA I'm looking for just east of I-25.

(1 hour time difference between Arizona and New Mexico.)

11:00pm: 63 degrees F. outside. A little different than Phoenix.

I pull into a KOA in what seems to be downtown Albuquerque. Paid $25 to park 25 feet from the street, (across from an apartment complex) to take a shower in the morning, the daily expense of this is greater than the cost of my mortgage. I may want to re-think the whole KOA thing.

August 22, 2001
I'm off to find gas and food.

12:00noon: Well that's great... the van is acting like the filter is clogged again.

I don't have another one with me. I'm 20 miles outside Las Vegas, NM. We'll see how it works. Las Vegas, looks way too small to have what I need for the van. So I'm headed north up the road. Hoping the van will keep running. Got a few filters from Autozone.
Wow! there's some killer rain where I'm headed. Really dark in a really small area. Found a room in Las Vegas for the same price as the KOA.

Rain is cold and lightning is very bright.

1:00pm: I havn't turned on the AC today, it is nice out.

New Mexico looks like a great place to fly ultralights. Big wide open spaces, lots of neat little places to land, think I'd have lots of fun doing that. Lots of happy meals grazing every where. Passing the town of Watruss, reminds me of Mike Watruss, a guy I raced with in '94 at PIR, I qualified, he didn't. He's no longer with us. Sucks to loose people, enjoy them while you can.

Just saw what looked like a bald eagle, pretty cool.

2:00pm: 251 miles to Denver.

I think I'm less than 3 hours from the track, which is cool, so I should be at the track at 5:00pm or so. Gas up in Raton New Mexico.
Ran into a really tall guy from Yoshimura, talked about the possibility of racing in the rain at Pikes Peak. I said I hope not, but the AMA does some things kinda funny sometimes. He said well, Dunlop didn't bring any rain tires, and neither did they, so I guess that's good.

3:00pm: I'm in Colorado at 7200 feet. What a view!!

Bug guts make a horrible mess on the windshield when you turn on the wipers. Thunder and Lightning outside.
The van is acting really bad again, but I'm only 34 miles from the track. It's still very cloudy outside. I sure hope I get to race.

4:50pm: One mile to the track, I see it, and the van is still running!

Looks like I'm a day early, the pits are empty for the most part and I've been told there is no promoter practice by the folks that are here. Ran into Ed Sorbo, looks like I'll be pitting next to him.

Arrival Chores

Aug 23, 2001

Started Thursday morning by: -Changing all the ratios in the transmission, -Finding an air leak that could have killed me, -Pulling out the crankshaft to fix the airleak, -Changing my compression ratio, -Changing my ignition timing, -Changing carb needles from leaded to unleaded, -Changing main jet, -Changing final drive ratios, -Seeing if I can get some different fork spring and re-valve my forks. Piston protrusion was .2mm, squish was .62mm top / .64mm lower. I have a whole lot of compression which is good because there is no air up here.

I wanted to use my stock cylinder but they were damaged so I used my other cylinders. Dave Pressler came over and we talked about the school. He's a tuner at the top level of racing in the US. I said our students could use his knowledge, he wants to talk more about it. Dave looked at my cylinders and said they looked like a copy of the YEC kit cylinders. Low end power will likely suffer so it'll be a bit sluggish off the turns. They're top end cylinders and there's not room at this track to use what these cylinders have.

Spent some time talking to Bridgestone about their new tires. They've changed the profile to speed up the steering, that won't bother me. Several people asked if I was going to Virginia to race, it's supposed to be a nice place. I said no. They all asked why. I said money and job. They asked about Willow Springs and I said yes.

The bike sounds so weak at this altitude (5300 ft). I got some of the kit gaskets for the cylinders. Didn't get to Lindemann to get the fork work done. Ran on one cylinder, so I fixed the carb synch, but it is weak up here. Spent a lot of time cleaning the bike but it still needs work.

Got done with the bike at 8:30pm by bug light. Where does the time go? Don't think I'll get everything done in the morning that I would like to.

I haven't registered yet so I need to do that. I'll do a leakdown test on the motor in the morning and see if all is cool. I don't know if I can get the forks done in between practices, so maybe I'll have them done at the end of the day.

A guy from VP Racing Fuels came buy an gave me $50 worth of gas. That's 5 gallons of oxygenated MR#8 race fuel. That was nice. I told him I'd do some testing and let him know what I found. As I was setting up my pit shade Ed asked if I wanted a Silkolene banner. Then he asked if I was sponsored by somebody else. I sad no. He gave me a banner and some Silkolene product and said, "you're sponsored by Silkolene now."  I thought that was nice of him also. Ed asked me what I thought of leasing Bruce Lind's bike and having him tune it for me at Willow Springs? I told him I couldn't afford to replace a $30,000 racebike if I destroyed it. Ty Piz showed up and pitted next to us.

The Night

August 23, 2001
9:00pm: Dinner, canned fruit, bagels and some other stuff.

It felt great to relax with friends and have dinner. We sat and talked about everything; Relatives, life, death, the sorrow of loss and the relief of no unfinished business. I think it's a guarantee that we're all going to die, nobody knows when and there doesn't have to be a reason for it. If there was a reason for it that'd make us destined beings. I don't know that it works that way, I think we have some control over the path we take. We were in agreement that it's real important to enjoy life, because it is temporary. I guess some people must think we're kinda crazy, but it seems kinda crazy to us to be given a gift like life and not enjoy it. There is no way any of us will get done all the things we want to get done in life, so you better get busy!

It was kinda funny, Ty hurt his back moving and I asked him if he had any pain killers. He said they don't help much, but maybe they would help if he took them out of the bottle.We laughed. We also talked about divorce, as he got divorced a while back. I recalled that my father told me it was the hardest thing in his life, harder that his brother dying. I asked Ty if that was the case with him. He agreed. He had just been in a really bad crash which resulted in the divorce. Wife and kids... 4 people that he'd spent the last 17 years with left and he was in a hospital bed. I thought back to when I felt my own wife might leave me, it wasn't like she was leaving, it was like part of me was leaving, the better part. So I guess I could kinda relate, but not quite to the same degree.

Talked to Dave Hull tonight about retirement, he said he likes to go outside but it's too hot for him to go outside and do much right now in Phoenix, so he doesn't like that part of retirement. He's been playing with tractors and digging holes. He makes a little money with the tractors so I guess they'll pay for themselves soon enough. He plans on going to Italy to see some races and seems to be staying busy. He said he has no time for a job and would like to go to school if he can work it into his schedule. Years ago I worked for Dave and his wife Kathy at their motorcycle shop, they're good people and I learned quite a bit from them, but I can't help but feel I only scratched the surface. I think they were the first people I ever worked for that I respected for who they were. Dave's son Bart is building an airplane and Dave sounds pretty proud of his son.

11:00pm: All is quiet.

The stars are bright and it's real peaceful out. I stretch out in the van and go to sleep, it's been a good day. I do wish this moth in the van with me would go to sleep too.

Ed's over in his motor home, Ty's in his truck and I think we're all pretty comfortable. A freight train interrupts the noise of the moth...

Test and Tune