We had a great time, but as Lou pointed out, it was BRUTAL!
I've only raced with Lou a couple times, and racing is NOT like wheeling!
Last year I ran another race with him at Line Mountain (the Coal Bucket) which was a shorter, smoother, faster course and I thought it was rough. This weekend was the infamous Line Mountain 7 Miler which was four 7.5 mile laps this year.
About a half mile in all I could think was "Holly $h!t, 29.5 more miles of this! I'm gonna puke or crap myself before that!"
:-X:-[ A few miles in the food in my stomach settled in from my throat and things got "comfortable", and I use that term VERY loosely!
There is not really too much to do as an inexperienced co-driver, but I will say that the few basic tasks are made INCREDIBLY hard by the never ending bouncing! Since I did not know the course like the back of my hand as some locals with years of experience do, I could not really call out upcoming turns or hazards, so my basic duties were to try to keep an eye on the gauges, hand a rag to Lou to wipe his visor after we got splashed, hold up a sign at check points with our entry number.
Reading the gauges was very difficult. There was some mud splashed on them and being strapped in tight, we could not reach them to wipe them off. They are also located a bit far for me to easily read, but luckily we did not have any heating issues like we did last year.
Handing the rag is not a big deal, but believe it or not, trying to fold it over and into quarters for a new clean area for the next wipe is amazingly hard at speed in the rough stuff! I felt like one of the military pilot test subjects when they deprive them of oxygen and ask them to to simple little tasks. It took all my focus at times to do that simple thing!
Holding up the card, no big deal, but trying to tuck it back up between the cage and aluminum roof panel became nearly as maddening when the paperboard started to get wet and limp, so I gripped it around my grab bar for the last two laps.
My hands got numb several times from my white knuckle grasp on the bar! While we were racing, I asked Lou if his were getting numb. He said it wasn't, so I guess all the constant movement on the wheel must keep the blood flowing for him a bit better!
What made it even rougher than usual was record setting rain and flooding that covered central PA for the previous 2 weeks. This totally changed parts of the course and exposed lots more rocks and created much more and deeper washes and ruts.
Lou has been hard at various forms of competition in his Bronco for most of the 14 years we have known each other. I was really glad to be there with him for his first 1st place finish since he switched over from competitive rock crawling to rock racing. To make it even better, his consistency for top 10 finishes paid off with the 4th place in overall points for the series.
Great work Lou! And thanks for asking me to co-pilot for you, it was a great race and I was really glad to be a part of it!
;D
We were also supported in the pits by fellow MEB members "Bronco Dave" and his stepson Jerry who provide regular pit support for Lou and Dave is also an occasional co-driver as well. Dave it always a hoot!
Here's a couple pics after the race....
