This Blog is Just-Us Racing's path to building a Supertwin race bike for Adam Bauer to race everywhere from the MRA and the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb to the Mountain Course on the Isle of Man!
Wow, what an event, a few weeks on and I am still finding pictures popping up and am amazed at where they are coming from! Just found a couple from a person in Japan, Shinji Miyakubo:
Then we found a site linked to the Hill Climb site that had these photos of Adam, some truly Awesome shots here by Rob Miskowitch:
Another one from the linked site by Scott Paine:
This spread of photos is probably my favorite, the first one shows just how small we are on the mountain by Travis Tollett Designs:
These few are from the red flag on Sundays race with us waiting to get sent back down from eGarage:
One last one, this one is pretty special, Adam was the first one back on track after Bobby's off and Andrew Bohan of Life Blasters caught this pic of Adam starting his run under the Start banner with Pikes Peak in the background. Great shot! See the article here on My Life At Speed: Pikes Peak Through a Newbies Lens
Adam will be offline for a few weeks here, planning on racing with the MRA the end of August and the beginning of September here. We will post up some updates between now and then but the bike is ready and Adam is ready so not much going on!
In the meantime Adam uploaded a video from riding a dirty bike yesterday, was nice to go play in the dirt for a day!
The day is finally here, a week of waking up at 2:30am and riding my racebike in temps that were so cold and on roads that were below 30 degrees F was done and I have an idea of where the road goes. Project Supertwin has performed flawlessly and made learning the course relatively easy with myself not having to worry about the bike and just riding it!
At this point I need to throw out a HUGE THANK YOU to my team that flew in from around the country to help with this whole race process:
Craig, you sir kick ass, thank you so much for being there every step of the way!
Erica, lady, you ROCK! Was fun to have you around even though not your type of event!
Joey, my brother from another mother! Glad you were able to make it out!
Sue, the best wife a racer could ever have for letting me do these crazy events! Love Ya!
And of course to my dad for helping make all this happen and for sticking behind me even when I shouldn't have been doing what I was doing!
After all the prep and getting the bike up to the pit area we had everything pretty much setup so I went and took a nap for a couple of hours! We then had the riders meeting @ 7am and went over the way the day was going to run and who was where in the start list.
So back to the pits and wait for them to say they want the middleweight bikes to start gridding. The grid area is interesting for this race, we have to keep the bikes mobile with the tire warmers on the bike so we have to roll the bike on the stands and have the generator on wheels to pull along with the bike. Adds a new complication to the race for sure! Some people come up with some crazy ways of getting their bikes to the start line!
Then we were ready, time to get the warmers off and give this whole course a go for the first time!
And we were off... Unfortunately about 10 minutes later about a mile from the top I was red flagged due to an incident at the finish line... After about a 20 minute wait we were released to go back down the mountain to the start line again...
After some time figuring out when they were going to let us start again we got moved back to in front of the Open class and I was the first to go once the helicopter got back into position. Having to re-do the course was good and bad, we were on pace for a sub 12 minute run the first time up but the wind had kicked up for the second run and we ended up with a 12:16 run that put me into 7th place in the Middleweight Division. Not too shabby for my first go at the hill and on a bike with half the HP of almost every other bike in my class!
Here is a video of my run:
Once on top it was an amazing feeling to get up there, lots of hugs and high fives from everyone!
Then the news came in a bit later while we were waiting up top, the red flag incident was fellow racer and friend Bobby Goodin on bike # 86 who started 2 bikes ahead of me. He went off after the finish line and we were notified that he didn't make it...
That morning
I was getting ready to race in the middleweight race at Pikes Peak and
made the rounds saying hi to everyone, giving handshakes and hugs and
high fives... I will never forget saying to Bobby "Let's have some fun, have a
safe one, and I will see you at the top"... Godspeed Sir, Race In Paradise Forever Buddy. Keep her LIT!
Bobby's Last Ride:
That is it, the race is done, I made it to the top and am making preparations for next years event on the mountain. Real Road Racing is something really pure, really fun, & really challenging. Off camber, paint lines, bumps, guardrails, trees, cliffs, and boulders are all things that you buzz by at speeds that you don't think are possible... Was a really good event to give me a taste of what I am gonna come up against on the Isle of Man at the Manx GP. I am looking forward to it to say the least!
Keep her LIT my Friends, Live for Today, and Have No Regrets!
Thursday morning was up above Devils Playground again, was nice to get a second day up top and learn where we can keep the throttle lit and where lit is a bad idea! Very little room for error up there, at my speeds not too big of a deal, add in 15% and that is a big problem.
Not too much to report for up there as we had been there before, got some good runs in and felt a lot more comfortable with the bumpy sections!
After practice we headed back to camp and got the bike torn down for new rubber and some new graphics for qualifying in and race day:
So we got the bike torn down and then we headed off to Mad-Moto to swap out some rubber and to meet up with Hammer and Hollywood to get the new graphics stuck!
Another Big Thanks to Hammer and Hollywood for getting my graphics up to tech standards too!
On to Friday morning... Qualifying! This took place on the lower section of the course and man was it fun, a lot smoother and flowing than the middle section and it is like hauling ass through the woods up at my cabin at machaloony speeds! So much FUN!
The bad part was we only got a few runs, the good part was I qualified 8th and was ready to go. Here's a couple of pics of the craziness that started to set in by Friday:
Will do another update on race day shortly, working on doing a photo album with all the pics I have of the event as well... Stay Tuned!
Wowza... Tired, Happy, Depressed, Stoked, Sad, Confused, and a few others that just don't always make sense these days!
These are some of the feelings I have after successfully completing my first attempt at the Pike Peak International Hill Climb. It was a Very difficult week with a ton of mental hurdles to get over!
So lets start from the beginning! Saturday the 21st I worked at Audi Denver till 5 and got home to meet up with my brother in law Craig and racer buddy Alan and start to get things setup for leaving Sunday morning.
Sunday morning we got the bikes loaded up and hit the road so we could get into tech as early as we could and possibly make a run up the mountain.
Tech went smooth other than they wanted more numbers on the bike so we were pleased with that.
Next up lets go up the mountain for a visit and to see what all this hill climb stuff is about!
One minute it is all good, the next we are getting rained, snowed, and hailed on... And I am gonna race a motorcycle up this with Michelin Pilot Cups on it... OK, sounds like a Brilliant idea!
Back down we had to go to our rookie meeting and riders meetings and look who I ran into:
Super cool to run into Guy Martin and it gets even better!
So we head to the campground and get setup and hit the hay, 2:30am comes around waaaayyyyyyy too damn early if you ask me...
Tuesday morning practice we were up at Devils Playground running to the top, I couldn't beleive the energy this place has with all of us racers getting up the mountain in the morning to go ride our motorcycles up it! Kind of an eye opener running on a mountain road at speed too, not for the faint of heart to say the least! Riders meeting comes and goes and then they blow the air horn to get us up for our sighting lap... I am nervous as hell, can't see more than 30 feet in front of me because it is still DARK and I am gonna get on the racebike with no lights, no tire warmers, and street take offs on it...
What can go wrong right? Luckily everything went well and the bike performed flawlessly, very pleased with the bike and all the prep work I had done started to pay off!
On the Guy Martin front his bike didn't make it to the top in his first run and they loaded the bike up and Guy had went to the front of the Uhaul and was not in good spirits. I asked one of his mechanics what was happening and he said the bike won't run, I started asking some specifics and he said to go chat Guy up and see what he says so I run up and knock on the window to Guy telling me not a good time mate and I started rambling off questions about the bike and the map and we started to get some ideas together! Shortly after I made a run up and told him to look at the mapping of the ecm and see about making some maps with less fuel by percentages before boost and see what this does.
My run was good and I come back down, park the bike, and go see what Guy has figured out. He is working on the mapping and then mentioned the bike ran ok in town and we started to figure out what changes they made to the bike... Pump fuel in town and race fuel up here... So we siphon his race fuel out and I run over some Shell 91 pump fuel over and boom... The bike runs better... Not perfect by any means but he makes his runs and it turns out to be a great day up on the mountain!
In the end the ECM was what seemed to be the problem but the bike ran and Guy won his class and I got to chat him and his mechanics up all week! Getting to hang out and get to know one of my heros of real road racing was a treat!
Back on topic, Tuesday went great with no issues other than the freezing temps and too damn early mornings! Wednesday we got to practice the middle 3rd of the mountain, I can say that this section is probably the scariest and toughest sections to ride with the least room for error... Part way through the day we had my buddy Glenn crash into a guardrail and stopped practice while we were up top waiting to come back down. Glenn actually came away in pretty good shape with only heavy bruising and a chipped bone or two so that was good! Now on the ride back down after Glenn got hauled away in the ambulance we were coming down around a right hand sweeper and one of the motard guys front brake locked up and his bike and himself went right over the edge! I came upon the aftermath below where the motard actually came down the side of the mountain and took out another rider on his way down and there was chaos! Never have I seen anything like it, the rider below had his GoPro going and caught it all on video:
Crazy right?
Here is a video of me going up the middle section on Project Supertwin:
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, bike was running good and I was learning the course as quickly as I could! Such a Great time!!!
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