Team Rwanda

Last year I had the opportunity to organize (through my work) a ride and a benefit dinner with the Rwanda Cycling Team. It is an incredible story and I am really glad to be able to be able to help out any way that I can. Check out an entry from their visit here

This past year the owner of my company went to Rwanda to experience things first hand. His experience was amazing and at one point I talked to him on the phone and he said “every 10 minutes I see something that I could have never imagined that I would see or imagined that existed.”

The point of todays entry is a story on CNN. CNN did a video story on Team Rwanda and it is a nice glimpse into the world of the team, where they came from and what their goals are. Take a moment and watch!

Ice Racing 2012

If you know me at all you know that I love playing on the Ice! Last year I raced the season on Georgetown Lake. This year I have missed quite a few days up there but I keep trying to make it up there to race as much as possible. During the last race we had the opportunity to race on the largest track that they have ever put together! This track took up our entire portion of the lake and was simply… FUN. So many corners to figure out and a nice long lap as well.

Of course, if you know me you also know a camera came along on this adventure. Here is a quick edit of one full lap on the lake.

So, what else is there? How about the Steamboat Ice Track? Bridgestone winter driving school is a great place to go play. It isn’t quite as cheap as Ice racing, but you sure do get plenty of track time and it definitely is an amazing track. I headed up there with my old tires and was ready to go play. With a massive lack of confidence I put my car in the snowbanks a couple times. But wow, it is just so fun no matter what!

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We shared the GoPro’s throughout the day and threw together a short little video as well.

By the end of the day Dave pulled out a school car to show off what a Lexus can do on the track as well.

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Oh and yes, I was NOT the only one to get my car stuck in a snowbank!

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What fun a bit of snow can provide! I would 100% recomend heading up and taking a class at Bridgestone Winter Driving School if you have a chance!

RaceKern: PPIHC Full Run

If you looked up the word ‘determined’ in the dictionary, it says “see racekern.com.” The Kerns have had some of the toughest years at Pikes Peak and each year they come out of it wit a smile on their face and a lesson learned. Some of those lessons I don’t think they could have ever avoided so it is amazing how positive and driven they can remain!

This year’s lesson? Dirt may be scary at times, but asphalt has many faces to. The thing about dirt is that you are relying on a surface that has minimal grip, so you are driving in such a way that you are constantly compensating for that lack of grip. On asphalt you are using all the grip that you can get out of the road. So if that grip goes away, you have a much tougher time. This year the Kerns found a part of the course that dust, gravel, something was blown onto the road and braking grip was eliminated! Stephan Verdier found the same place, but his experience was even more catastrophic! So ride along with the Kerns as they take you up the mountain. Keep your eyes peeled for their incidents and for the pieces that decide not to make it all the way to the summit with them!

Take a moment and read the Kern’s recap on the week at Pikes Peak on RaceKern.com

Thunderstorms & Rainbows

We’ve been having some incredible thunder storms in Colorado. Yesterday in fact the rain was so intense that my commute home consisted of a uturn that I had to take to avoid submerging my car! I really enjoy a good thunderstorm and it has been nice to have some interesting ones to watch.

Today after the rain let up I set up a GoPro outside to see what I would get. Fortunately the storm created a nice rainbow and the whole thing was caught on Time Lapse! Take a look!

Pikes Peak: Spencer Steele’s full run

I will be adding each of the drivers full run’s over the next week, but today we have Spencer’s. He was the fastest in the group of drivers that we had cameras on and I figured it would be nice to get his run up first. Ride along with Spencer as he claims the top rung on the podium in Open Wheel devision and also grabs the 4th fastest on the mountain. Keep your eyes peeled, he’s got a few hairy moments too!

If you haven’t seen already, check out my previous entry with video from all the cars we ran cameras on this year. Video Number one link

You can also see this on My Life @ Speed

Georgetown Ice Racing: Season Wrapup

I have known about Ice racing in Georgetown for years but this year was the first that I have participated. I was fortunate to have a good friend, Jon Coln, that was motivating to the point of letting me borrow his wheels/tires to go play on the ice. So lets give a bit of an idea of what Georgetown Ice racing is all about.

The Ice racing at Georgetown is organized through a group called Our Gang Ice Racing. They are a group of Jeep guys/gals primarily that have been racing up there for many years. This is a close knit group of families that all race together. Mothers, daughters, fathers and sons all have turns behind the wheel. Everyone has responsibilities besides their races as well. There are people who set up the track, others who manage registration, some who run the races and others who help keep everything organized. Overall it is a fun group who just want to go out and play with some big kid toys. I have been going to the meetings as well and this is a really fun group of people. I thought I’d feel like an outsider, but they were incredibly welcoming and pretty much excited that I was willing to go to their meetings.

When Jon and I went out there the first time we were met with a bit of disbelief. The suby with the studs was a big hit with the locals. We would pull up in line and the officials would mention that “everyones asking about the ‘subaru with the roof rack on it.'” Every time we stopped the car people would come and check out the studs and ask us where we got them. The next time we headed up both of us had studs and they got a bit pickier about the legality of them by their rules. The studs that Jon had were a little outside of the rules which indicated that in a 7-1/8 inch circle you may have 20 studs or less. Jon’s wheels had 30 studs in a 7-1/8 circle. It seems that at first they were willing to let him race anyway since the tires were only 5 inches wide and all the comp Jeeps have tires that are 12 inches wide. In addition they figured the Comp jeeps are lighter with more horsepower and purpose build braking helps them get around corners faster. Unfortunately one of the other drivers questioned the tires and based on the count he had to switch out. This put him and I on Continental Contact Ice racing tires. These tires have 17mm studs (rather than 20mm studs) and have them at a density of approximately 15 studs in a 7-1/8 inch circle. We are going to propose an amendment to the rule at the preseason meeting however that asks for a count of the number of studs contacting the ice rather than the number within a set circle. (the comp Jeeps have, at my count, 36+ studs on the ground at any given time)

Ok enough of the technical talk. Lets get to the fun stuff!

Friday I went up to the lake for their Practice day aka a fun day. The practice days are just a free for all. You can race anyone and you can run as many laps as you can bring yourself to run. My co-worker Stephen came out. He had raced once before and has gotten the bug as well. This time Dave Kern came up to join us. Dave is an actual professional driver and a very impressive one as well. In addition to those two guys Matt from BikeRadar came up to join us as well. Matt was doing a review on a set of Dugast studded tubular tires and this was a fun way to compare them. We arrived up on the lake and switched out tires. I had a chance to go ride along with Stephen in his pristine 325ix. This thing is so nice inside and out and it is nearly 25 years old! After racing in the bimmer we took my car out for a spin. the studs just tear into the ice and it is quite an eye opener when you experience it for the first time.

Eventually Jon got out on the ice as well and we had a chance to race, then Dave arrived as well. Dave didn’t have a car to drive so I let him drive mine around. He was great with tips and pointers every time I drove. and when he drove it was fun just to watch the lightning fast movements that he was doing to constantly control every aspect of the car. We battled with my ABS and hoped to turn it off, but unfortunately had trouble getting that to happen.

Throughout the day I was playing with my new GoPro HD camera. This is also a fun toy…for me at least. But I had a good time finding angles that would look good on camera. I put together a little video from that footage as well.

I put a quick vid up of Dave driving as well, this one you can hear the engine just screaming!

At the end of the day I had logged over 9.5 miles of driving at full throttle on the ice. This is in 1/4 mile increments since each track is probably 1/4 to 1/3rd of a mile. We maxed out at 35.1 miles an hour as well, which I would say is pretty impressive considering how small the courses are and how tight they are as well.

We even had a couple fans. While I was in the pit I talked to a couple people who pulled off the highway to come check it out and were drawn to the fast subies on the studs!

This was the last weekend for racing this year. There is actually plenty of Ice up there, but this was the championship weekend so the next race will be on New Years day…I CAN’T WAIT!