AHRMA - Gainsville

[firstturn]

Tom,
  Since your front end is rarely on the ground just spin them 180 degress after every race.

Ron Carbaugh

[tlanders]

Tom,

Your new name is "BentForks". Put on the 35mm forks so you can go back to your old name of "BentRims"!!!! Winning races does come second!!!!

Teddy

[bentrims]

Thanks Dan,

The bike is really running good and handles so predictably.

The tangle with the other rider was a bummer. It gets hard to judge which ones will be clean and which ones are close when you are really charging. Unfortunately the other rider went down and that always makes it look worse.

To get penalized for racing gets confusing. There is an old saying from Dr. Robert Schuller (Pastor Schuller) that goes: Anytime you feel you want to swear, It is time to invent something.

I feel it is time for AHRMA to (invent) a class with some clout that puts the "top gunners" gunning together. Why have some rider try to go out and win 16 motos in a weekend as they are now?

I suggest a Grand National Champion class that goes 20-30mn motos and means something. Instead of entering 2-4 classes in search of good racing we would find it every race in that one class. Then the old shoes would have time to enjoy the other races and meet people.
Tom Benolkin

[bentrims]

Teddy,
I may have found a pair.
Thank you
TB

[desmond197]

Does any one know what bike caught fire on the Sunday race. I saw a bike buring and some folks go put the fire out but I had to leave before I had found out what had happened. That is the first time I have seen a fire at an MX race. I hope everone invovled is OK.

Thanks

[Mick Milakovic]

Desmond - I'm not sure, but I think a premier four-stoker backfired and went up in flames.  I was the next class in staging, so I didn't see the incident.  thankfully, no one was hurt.

Tom - I like your idea about pitting the best against the best.  It would give us slow guys a chance [:I] My only concern would be guys getting too serious, getting mad, and losing the real spirit of what's happening.  AHRMA has lost some pretty good people because of ill feelings.  Hang in there, we all love seeing you "smokin" the double jumps, no matter how far out front you are [8D]

[bentrims]

Thanks Mick for the encouragement!

Desmond I felt so sorry for that guy to lose his bike. When I rode by the charred remnants it made me think of how ILL prepared we are as a racing group for a fire[V]

That poor guy probably struggled 5-10 minutes before a track watering truck made the scene and could only contain the area from a forest fire.

Hmmm another set of suggestions for the next AHRMA meeting.
Tom B

[tlanders]

Hopefully we are all carrying fire extinguishers. I try to remember to take mine out at every race and place it on the fender of the bike trailer in easy reach. Sometimes I forget of course, need to be better at remembering to do this.

Teddy

[bentrims]

Good Plan Teddy,

Hopefully that incident served us all notice. The way my racing has been going this year I may race Texas with an extinguisher in a back pack.

Of course it is like locking the barn after the cow got out because that person TOTALLY lost his bike. We all know what kind of time and caring went into it.
Anyone out there know who it was?

[lobo6y]

Tom, Pentonites,
The fire on Sunday at Gatorback was an unfortunate incident that occasionally happens, but we all need to be prepared for that rare instance.

The bike in question was a Yamaha 650 Sportsman Twin that had crahed in its first moto.  Durning staging for the second moto, (well away from the pits and the start line - they do it different at Gatorback    , the bike backfired when restarted and the K&N filter caught fire, and instatntly grew to a raging fire with flames 20 feet in the air!  The owner/rider later told me that he thought he must have had a small leak in the tank that soaked the K&N and it wen t up like a roman candle after the backfire.

In spite of the remote location of the "staging", a fire extinguisher was immediately put to the test (and failed, misreably), followed by the visit of the nearby water truck (directed quickly by the promoter's crew) to finally extinguish the fire.

A point for all of us - we (AHRMA) require a fire extinguisher in your pits - how many know that or have one (at other events) because its a good idea, period?  Although it didn't make a difference in this case, I have seen other  cases where it did.

Lessons learned?

Dave Janiec
AHRMA Tech[:0]