Barking Spider Race 01/20/2002
Thanks to the great folks at Fud
1/15/02-Off to Yuma to find Greg
at DesertKarts. I meet him for lunch along with PilotMike and we head
off to his shop. After some tight turns through his ally and into his
yard, I get set up and settle in. He builds some really cool cars and
sells the plans and parts at very reasonable prices at DesertKarts.com
. I pull my top-end off for a freshening up and swap out to a ported
cylinder. We drive around Yuma picking up parts and running errands.
Greg manages to break a CV joint in his Toyota but we make it home.
We fabricate a monster rear bumper for my Pilot just for the race. 
Yes, it's a little big but I don't want any thing to smash my tranny
or suspension pieces. I prep the rest of the car and start the
careful break-in process. I eventually go for a slow ride and the
motor feels good. Greg's son, Chris joins me in the other Pilot for
some ride time out behind their shop. Very dusty place and I hope the
course isn't that bad. DunePilot shows up late on Thursday and we
head into town for beer and pizza. Friday was suposed to be the day
we headed off to Buttercup and dune a little more but things slowed
us down. DP insist we build him a rear bumper and skid plate. We cut
up a burned Ford truck hood for his skid and make a nifty rear
bumper. We meet up with PilotMike for lunch and hang out with him for
a while and finally leave in the afternoon. We make a stop by
Holtsville to visit a business associate of DP and head to Plaster
City West.
We
kinda find the place and find a camp with a nice campfire and it is
Fud himself! He gives us the scoop on where to set up and off we go.
DP manages to get stuck in the dirt(never mind he is in a F350 4x4).
He wiggles it out and we find our camp/pit and set up for the night.
We wake up to cool crisp air and start finishing our prepping of the cars. We get everything up to speed and go for a test drive. I air up my tires to about 12 psi and Greg insist I am bouncing too much and airs me down to about 8psi. I don't go 100 yards before I hit a rock and knock my tire off the bead and bend the wheel into an abstract shape. Out with the brass mallet and that Douglas wheel is as good as new. I air my tires back up and we run the course. The dust is bad but we just spread out a bit and stop often to regroup and compare observations. I notice this is the roughest place I have ever riden, lots of rough, rocky, whooped filled, nasty terrain. James Saastas later tells me this is a tame course. Wow, this is gonna be tougher than I thought. My buggy drinks almost the whole tank in 20 miles at a slow pace so we figure that I am gonna need to pit twice. We go out for another half lap and pronounce everything good. It is time to finsih preping the cars and DP just about loses his mind when his zipties keep busting while installing window nets. I get a good laugh and call it a night.
Sunday- Another brisk morning and we begin to get ready but where is Greg? Neither of us know anyone else here and the thought of pitting for ourselves does not sound fun. Other competitors start to trickle in and we size up the competition. There is a Drakart that I was warned about by several people driven by a teenage boy nicknamed "Squirel". I know anyone with that nickname has got to drive like a loon and sure enough, he does.
There were 2 EEE cars, some Pilots, and the Drakart, 6 of us in all. We take care of the last minute details and Greg shows up right before the drivers meeting. We are gridded behind the rows of bikes and quads. They allow about 5 minutes for the dust to settle between waves.
Our class starts and it is a drag race to the first
wash. The kid in the Drakart has a lot more motor than I do so he
edges away from me. I have to back off some due to the dust. I let
him get far enough away to see him but not in his dust. The race
course is very rough and there are more whoops than I ever want to
see again. It almost seemed the entire course was made up of those
nasty deep desert whoops that are so uneven and weird spacing!
I make my first pit and notice DunePilot and James Saastas aproaching behind me. Time to make some time. I blast away and start to pass some of the slower bikes and quads. Soon, some of the faster bikes catch me and zip by. I am having a ball. Greg is pitting me twice a lot and DunePilot just once so he is doing double duty. About the 50 mile mark I notice a yellow machine in the middle of the whoops. It is the Drakart and he has broken a belt, oh darn, I make sure he is ok and roost past him. I ran even harder now that I knew I was in the lead! I pounded out the last section of the course and crossed the line for my first desert win.
