Day Eighteen

  

I didn't sleep well on Cavan and Angie's couch but none of that mattered because today was race day. Cavan woke me just after 5:00 am and we all kicked into gear for the day ahead. Angie cooked us up some bacon and eggs while Cavan and I got the truck loaded. Angie was going to meet us later at the "hill" so we headed over to Kyle Delfosse and Brandi's apartment to pick up the Rage Coach. Here's a shot of the sun coming up as we drove to the race. I couldn't remember the last time I actually saw a sunrise not being an early riser.

This was our official parking pass during the race.

Here is our entry. For the past five years, Cavan and Angie had only been spectators at this event so this was their first venture into the death-defying world of downhill derby racing. 

Kyle and Brandi, after their coach had been vandalized, got right to work and completely rebuilt their entry. This thing even had disc brakes on the rear wheels. Totally amazing work. They also decided to play the part so they both dressed in their best western wear. Their ammo belt "bullets" were filled with beer and rose wine. Unfortunately, the beer kept leaking due to the carbonation and Kyle was forced to drink all his "bullets".

Each team had three runs allocated to them in order for the judges to select the top cars for the finals. This gave me the opportunity to go around and photograph some of the other entries. It's incredible the imagination that created these crazy vehicles.

This next team had been winning this race for the past couple of years. They apparently have some large sponsors and their three cars were built for speed instead of a theme like most of the other entries.

Unless you placed well in your three runs you were out of the running. Kyle had piloted his car for the three qualifying runs which gave our team one last chance to show our stuff in a fourth run. Each run was timed and Kyle's best time was 108.55 seconds. Between runs he would fine tune the car as nuts and bolts tended to loosen up. The steering was extremely sensitive and the brakes barely worked but we were confident in our fine engineering. Before the final run Kyle had asked Cavan if he'd like to give it a try as pilot. For some reason Cavan had suggested I drive the car. I had never even sat in the car so I was a bit apprehensive but they say you only live once so I decided to give it a try.

On the front of the Rage Coach, they had mounted two rainbow-colored Bluetooth speakers so we could blast the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly while hurtling down the hill. The crowd all loved this.
Here I am at the starting line as we wait for the officials to clear people from the track. I am getting very nervous at this point. I didn't want to crash or embarrass my team members.

This was not my run but here's a video that shows Kyle at the wheel and Cavan behind as the "pusher man" in one of the three earlier heat races.

All the way down the music blared, the wheels shook and the crowd cheered but alas I was passed up by a giant "Banana" car and came in a solid third out of three. This meant that we were done with racing for this event. 

The exciting news for me was that I beat Kyle's best time by half a second and I didn't crash his amazing creation.

It had been a long day with a little too much alcohol for a couple of my teammates. I had only one beer all day not being much of a beer drinker so I was fine to do all the driving as we packed up and headed to the racers after party at Chopsticks. Angie wasn't feeling great and drove home instead. Cavan, Kyle, Brandi and myself drove to this huge Chinese sports bar and enjoyed the free sandwiches and beer and waited for the officials to announce the winners. We knew that we didn't win on speed but all race teams voted on the best "Art Cars" as well and we figured we had this category nailed. We were all pretty tired and just couldn't hang any longer so we left before they announced the final standings. As of this writing, I still don't know if we earned a trophy or not but I will pass it along once I find out. 

This had to be one of my best days on the road.