Ice riding at the Sandbar, Helmet Cam

Well, I borrowed a helmet cam from Fred Bross, went back to the Sandbar and ran some footage. Didn't occur to me that I could've edited this as I was shooting, so the vid ran for 28 minutes. I've been trying to edit it down. Here's some oval time. I'll apologize now for the video quality, it really got hammered in the compressed mode for web.

This is Seamus on his KX500, Mike on his CR250 and Rees on Matt's 450EXC. I'm riding my 300EXC.







This is Cameron on Rees's 250. Once again, this kid is in 8th grade!




In this clip you hear Matt on his 450 before you see him. He takes several strafing runs at me, I had the inside line though. Then Mike joined and Matt waived off.


I was riding with my Garmin in my jacket pocket, recorded a max speed of 63.6 on the oval. I didn't think to reset the miles to determine the size of the oval, but I'd guess it was a good 1/4 mile.

Copy and paste these for uncompressed video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjxDISqpZUQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hnTeCnKbVw

Sandbar State Park

We got out on some clean ice at the sandbar today. Matt Cyr was out yesterday and established a pretty big oval for us, but couldn't join us today. Too bad, 'cause the day was perfect, hard black ice with almost no snow cover. Seamus, Rees and his son Cameron were out, as well as Denver Wilson on his Suzuki with Trelleborgs. Rees and Cameron were taking turns on whichever bike I wasn't riding. Good times.

I went out on the YZ, overcooked it on the first lap at the top of the straight, slid forever. But I got a few more laps in. Denver, Seamus and Cameron are doing laps as well.



This time I'm on the KTM, Seamus is on the KX and Cameron is on the YZ. He rode that bike really well, especially considering it's his first time on a big bike on the ice. He's in 8th grade.



These vids have been intermittant, hopefully google has solved the "availablity" problem.
Still intermittant as of Jan 30...,Feb 1...

Flat track/Ice bike specs

I discovered this gem on the interweb several years ago. Forgot about it till the subject came up in conversation. It's mighty handy for gettin' you in the right ballpark.
Full credit and respect to Cycle Craft Racing, Woodstock IL. for the blueprint quality rendering.
If this doesn't make you want to go out to the shop, I don't know what will...

Ice time

I finally got out on some ice today. Had to drive down to Stone Pond in New Hampshire, but I'd say it was worth the drive. The local riders down there are pretty well organized, they started plowing an oval as soon as the ice would hold a plow-truck, and they started with a big oval, probably a little more than a quarter mile.
I got to run the YZ for the first time, I did two sessions on it with a plug check in between. It did pretty well I think. I need to soften up the rear shock a little bit, but everything else seems pretty well set.



Then I ran the rest of the day with the EXC and that was fun. Couldn't keep up with the big bore ice bikes, but it was fun trying.



Here are a few of the big ice bikes, The YZ490 was ridden by Cliff, the guy that also ran the plow today. The #5 CR500 belongs to Bruce Ward. There were some KX500s too, as well as a few modern 4 strokes.

More pics of the Derbi...

Here are some more shots of the Derbi 50cc GP bike...














His boot print outside the museum. There were a few other prints of other athletes that I failed to capture.

Snow...

This is the first big storm of the season. I went out on the tractor at 12:00 last night and the snow was just at the top of the snow-blower, probably about 14 inches. This morning there was another 6-8 inches. Light and fluffy, but lots of it to move.






The mighty John Deere, one of my favorite machines. It's a '72 120.



A little while later, it's like it never happened...

Small, Red, Fast...

I haven't had much time to go through the Europe photos, but I had to get something on here from the trip.

We saw this R5 parked near the beach in Barcelona.



This is one of Angel Nieto's 50cc Derbi GP bikes. It resides in the Olympic and Sports Museum, Montjuic.