And play we did! Riding back and forth for our cameras, doing all sorts of silly stuff and just enjoying ourselves. I found the whole thing very interesting. The surface is not slick like I thought it would be. It has a very thin layer of salt which is sort of tacky really, and then hard underneath that. So hard in fact that when you try to spin out, it doesn't allow you to spin very easily and leaves a black mark where your tire spins.
We must have gone back and forth more than a dozen times. It was getting to be later in the morning (10:45am) and we needed to get moving, so we headed over to the staging area to see if it was okay to be there. Apparently it was because no one stopped us.
We got off the bikes and were just getting our warm clothes off to walk around when a guy in racing leathers came up to chat with us. He saw our bikes and luggage and knew we were probably BDR guys.
His name was Trev Richter and he knows Pete and Ashley from Mosko Moto, which my brother and I use for luggage (Reckless 80, v2). Turns out he's an ADV riding instructor and we had a great time talking about our trip and he shared stuff about his experiences. Would loved to have had him teaching us before we started all this BDR stuff. He was there to race and we'd catch back up to him later.
We walked up to the start and watched a huge muscled up Corvette get ready. I knew nothing of how this works, but most of these cars are so high geared that they need to be pushed up to speed. This vette just idled away while the truck pushed it pretty dang fast. I don't know how fast, but eventually we could hear it rev up and go on it's own power. We walked on down the line up taking pictures until we caught up with Trev and his "girlfriend" Erin Sills. Trev was quick to point out that it's Erin that's the racing legend - he's just catching up. And he is right! I found an article about their 2019 record-breaking run and it was fascinating. Erin is the team owner and rider, but she wasn't riding this week. It was so interesting to hear what they do and how they do it. It was a pleasure to meet them and I was hoping they'd get more records set. I checked with Trev when I got home and they had some good runs, but not enough for a record.
Tom Clark
I'm a Senior Software Engineer at Intellitect, living in Spokane, Washington. I also do a little development work on the side. And I love riding motorcycles all over the country with my friends.
