I might have found my fight club. Riding 'The Twins" down Mt Tabor was like shoving a whale into a VW and was easily the most terrifying 5 mph I have ever gone. I laugh so hard when I see a video my friend made of us rolling by. My body is as tense as a log jam and my head looks like it is in a vise. I remember knowing where my family and friends were but fearing distraction too much to even move my thumb the 1/2" to acknowledge them with a scream from our siren. My personal goal was to reach my health insurance deductible but like many other goals I have set, that one eluded me. If you knew my deductible, you would have said it was ambitious.
We are a six person team and we were in three heats so it worked out that everyone got to take a ride. We were the slowest car on the track that day but I think our intensity and our struggle vindicated our efforts. I think I can speak for the whole team when I say that we certainly did not intend to be the slowest but we pulled it off. In the second heat, Eric and Derrick caused a little drama when they engaged in a 2 mph fender bender with a Water Department Security Jeep that was parked 100 yards in front of the finish line.
Twins-1 Security Jeep-0.
At the beginning of the third heat we had a troubled start and the Twins were in the gutter 30 feet off the line. We wrestled it back onto the road and aimed downhill again. It slowly began to descend and as it did, the crowd closed in behind and walked down with them cheering and clapping. It was like a demented Coke commercial, David and Trevor gritting their teeth and having the full 3 mph Twin Barrels Battle while kids are passing them on scooters cheering. It was very funny.
We ended up winning a trophy for best Engineering! My friend Julius congratulated us for getting the smartest prize for the dumbest car. For a while I didn't think we really deserved that particular prize until Derrick reminded me that we put disc brakes on wine barrels with a '57 Ford F100 drop axle for a frame and rode them down a mountain. I saw several cars there that I thought should have our trophy, though. I was secretly hoping that we would get crowd favorite but we lost out to a giant Lego car. I was feeling the love in the pit and from the crowd but I guess the numbers didn't add up in our favor. We should have gone with a more identifiable brand.
We have plans to do it again next year. I can't wait. We will make the Twins faster. That is all I can say at this point. Below is the rig as it looked race day. We installed the siren that is powered by a motorcycle battery. We also put in some machine guns in the yokes but the yolk was on us when we found out water was all we were allowed to shoot. This photo was taken by Squid Vicious.
That's fantastic.
ReplyDelete