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Norwalk, Ohio
– Summit Motorsports Park
– June 14-15, 2008
Roeder Harley-Davidson
Ohio Bike Week Nationals
Oh, what a
weekend! Rain on Friday evening
cancelled the planned test and tune, and we needed it this time
around. Saturday morning greeted
us with some rain, but it stopped around 8 o’clock and we were on the
track before 9:30.
We had been having
tire troubles and replaced it just before the event…. Well, in order to try to rub the
“newness” off a little faster, we needed to do a burnout – something we
normally never have to do. The
bike dumped right out of the water box in the first round of ET and Chip
had some major wrenching to do in order to get the bike ready for the
first round of SEP. He wrenched
and wrenched some more. He
straightened the handle bars which had gotten bent in the dump (THANK YOU
to Doug Vancil for the suggestion of using our
trailer hitch as a vice!), replaced the clutch lever which had broken off
in the fall, fixed the air shifter bottle brace, and a few other things
and he got back to the line in time for the second round of qualifying in
ET. At the hit of the throttle,
POP went the chain right off the sprocket as the launch stopped dead on
the starting line. THANK YOU to many, most notably Dave Israel without whose help
we would NEVER had made it back to the pits to wrench some more.
And thank you, too,
to the all the fellow racers and fans who stopped by the pit to lend a
hand or offer an encouraging word.
We had a heck of a time getting the bike back to “life” after that
one, and we had to miss that 2nd round of qualifying for both
ET and SEP. So, here we were: 2 full rounds of qualifying without an
actual run. Chip, with his OCD
(Old Chipster Determination), persisted,
persevered, and endured and got the bike onto the track in time for the 3rd
and last round of qualifying, thereby qualifying him into both
fields. When we got back to the
pits, he wrenched some more. His
entire day was spent wrenching!
It all paid off on
race-day Sunday, though, when Chip won his first two rounds in ET! He ran a near-perfect 11.501 in his first
round, with an awesome .006 light!
WAY TO GO CHIP!!
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Above, our friend
Erik Nelson prepares to stage while his wife, Jane, looks on. Erik qualified 9th in the
SEP field.
Below, photo
compliments of Kim Sigmon: Chip and Erik racing.
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