Diary 2009

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Race Diaries - 2009

Route 66 Raceway, Joilet IL (July 31 - August 2)

Visit to Route 66

Friday, July 31, 2009 - by Shelly Boruta

We had a weekend off from our home track and decided to visit our friends at our former home track. It happened to be their “King of the Track” race (race-off for a Wally) on Sunday with a test and tune on Saturday.

We reached Gate 11 at about 6pm CDT. No one else was in line to get into the track yet. Knowing we would have quite a bit of evening left when we reached the track and it was such a perfect summer evening, we took the street bike along and took a short cruise. Having never been south of the track on Hwy 53 (it’s also historic Route 66), we headed that way – toward Elwood. Not more than a couple miles from the track, in Elwood, is the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery. It is the Arlington of the mid-west. The grounds were vast and very serene and nicely landscaped. In the cemetery, we drove by a new area under construction and saw how they are able to fit so many grave sites closely together and in perfect alignment. We left there and headed south through some small towns (houses almost within touching distance from the road type towns). Mostly, there were endless fields of corn. It’s amazing to see so much open land so close to the huge city of Chicago. We crossed over the Kankakee river and went as far as Gardner (where Hwy 53 crosses I-55) and headed back north again. In the hour we were gone, six or seven more rigs had pulled into the drive at Gate 11 to wait for the 8am opening of the gates on Saturday.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Woke to a very humid morning with some very heavy clouds approaching from the SW. We joked that we might be able to get in one test run if the track staff moved things along quickly.

Being the first in line, we had our choice of parking spots inside the gates. So, we chose a nice spot near where the rest of the bikes park and hoped that it was not prone to puddling. We unpacked and got ready for the day. Bob attempted to start the Cub so we could tow the race bike to the staging lanes. The motor turned over very slowly and did not want to start. So, Bob put the battery charger on it until we were ready to use it. The cub started okay upon the next attempt and we went up and made our first pass at about 11:45am. It was a pretty good first pass 9.80 in 1/4 mile at 133 mph. Almost immediately upon returning to the trailer, it started to drizzle. The drizzle then turned into more of a light, steady rain that came and went for the next 5-6 hours with a few very short breaks in between. We were unable to get any WiFi signal in the middle of a corn field so we couldn’t check radar on the laptop. Tried to see it on the 2 ½ inch x 3 inch phone screen but couldn’t really see much at all on that size screen.

Our race data laptop PC had crashed after a Microsoft auto-update snuck in while doing an update to our Crew Chief Pro program from the Internet a few days ago. Shelly used her handy-dandy hard disk adapter to copy all the files from the laptop’s disk onto our home PC. We then just had the laptop do a total reformat back to brand new condition. We were able to restore the race data back to the laptop but are having problems getting the Crew Chief Pro program to “talk to” the weather station this morning. The rain gave us the time to spend an hour or so reading the manual and trying various things. We were able to finally get the program and weather station talking again.

We had brought our Wii along since we had checked the weather forecast many times before leaving home. We passed some of the down-time playing Wii.

G. Darm and a few other old friends were also there for testing so we also passed some of the time with them getting caught on all the happenings in the year and a half we’d been gone. We received some very surprising (and not so surprising) news about some of our fellow Rte 66 racers and track operations in general. The track officials finally gave up and called it a day at about 4pm (about an hour short of when the test session was supposed to stop anyway). At 5pm, the clouds broke and the skies quickly cleared to a pleasant evening. Bill B., track staff, track chaplain, and our buddy, had stopped by earlier in the day and invited us to go out to dinner with him and his wife, Stella. So, after the track staff wrapped up their work for the day, Bill picked us up and we spent a pleasant evening with them. (Bill showed us the quick route to get from the track to Larkin Avenue, where most of the hotels and restaurants are located, without having to get on I-80.) We got a good night’s rest and are ready for Wally day on Sunday.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

(Bob’s birthday)

We woke to sunny skies and the standard steady, Rte 66 “breeze”. It was a tail wind! Yippee! Thinks are looking up!

Getting ready for the day, tried starting the cub again and the battery was totally dead now. (We had all day Saturday to run out and get a battery but had not considered that there would be battery problems with the Cub again today!) We put the charger on it again and tried again a little while later. Still dead. Without the Cub, there was the possibility that Bob would have to push the bike up to the staging lanes (about ¼ mile) every pass. It could get a little tiring, especially in the afternoon heat. (But, I’m sure one of the other bike racers would volunteer to tow our bike up if needed.) Fellow bike racer, Bill Homuth had a couple different types of chargers which he loaned us to try. We found one that kept the battery charged long enough to at least tow Bob up to the staging lanes. We did not dare turn the Cub off so Shelly dropped Bob off at the lanes, drove the Cub back to the trailer and then rode her bicycle back to the staging lanes each pass. That worked out okay but that meant we would have to root for competitor Bill H. today. If he went out before us, he may want his battery charger back so he could go home!

Time Trial #1 (11:45am) was a good, clean run. 9.76 sec in ¼ mile at 132 mph

Time Trial #2 (2:15pm)

This run, the starter cart had low battery issues! It would barely turn over the bike motor. Bob pulled the starter rope on the bike a couple times, then I tried starting with the cart again. Successful this time. (Motor was easier to turn over once Bob “primed” it by pulling the rope.) We crossed our fingers and hoped that this method would work for us the rest of the day!

This pass, the bike ran 9.74 sec in ¼ mile at 132 mph.

To keep from jinxing ourselves, we decided to get an extra bag of ice in case we needed it later. We found out that the track no longer sells ice. (The first we’ve ever heard of any track not selling ice for cooling off drag cars.) So, we’d have to make the couple bags we had last the rest of the day and get ice from fellow racers if we need it later.

Several people stopped by or waved and said as they passed by us. Some newer people had never seen or heard our bike before so we did the usual rundown on the specs with them. The visits filled in the time between runs and made the day go pretty quickly. We also had time to catch up with some of our old friends – the Butesins, the Chase family, Dennis our very own announcer guy, Pam Turner, all the regular bike racers and some new ones. We missed Dan McCarrin but he’s doing well in points so hopefully he’ll make it to Indy and we’ll catch up with him there. We also did not get to talk to Bill Larson but he is now Dennis’s backup announcer so we heard him over the PA (which surprised us since Bill is such a quiet guy!).

Race Round #1.

There is a record number of bikes today (about 19). We had qualified on the top half of the ladder so had lane choice for the race. Always an advantage. We raced against some sort of Suzuki (had Japanese letters like a Hyabusa decaled on it). Our burnout was bad, could not get the tire to spin freely. At first we thought there wasn’t enough water to get the tire wet. Tom F.’s brother was on-hand, helping Tom. He sprayed some more water down but upon a second attempt, burnout was about the same quality. Luckily, opponent red lighted so we got by with a win that round. The bike ran 9.86 at 130mph. Not bad, but quite a bit off from the previous runs. We suspect the waterbox is crowned and the middle had little water on it and was rough. Next round, we’ll shift a little off center.

Race Round #2.

We are up against G. Darm. The burnout went much better so we felt more confident staging. We had a better reaction time than Darm, unfortunately, we ran 9.78 sec (at 131mph) instead of our predicted 9.74 seconds. Darm moved on to the next round.

Since we were done after second round, we got to watch the finals for all the classes. Both Dawn F. and Donnie B. were at the bottom of the bike class points list but ended up meeting in the finals for the class. Dawn was in a position to acquire a second “Queen-of-the-Track” title and a second Wally. However, her bike ran off her dial-in during the final round. (Apparently, Beta’s battery draining power was extending beyond affecting our own equipment this weekend!). Donnie made the best of the opportunity and took the win.

For the King-of-the-Track track run-off, Donnie first went up against our buddy Al (& Patti) Kieffer (Harley Davidson sponsored dragster) and won. He then went on to beat the winner of the other pair, Paul O’Keef in his Sportsman class green Chevelle. We’re not sure how far Donnie will move up in the points with his win but he went home with the Wally.

We left the track at about 10pm our time. We decided to pull into the Michigan Welcome Center / rest area to take a short nap before making the rest of the trip home. The next thing we knew, it was 8am, Monday morning. We got home at about 11am and tried starting the Cub as we were unpacking the trailer and it started right up!!

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