[Land-speed] A"Rat's Pix"page from World of Speed

[Ed Van Scoy]

Great fotos Ray, and great seein' ya on the salt!
Ed
-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Buck [mailto:rbuck at xmission.com]
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2009 09:53 PM
To: land-speed at autox.team.net
Subject: [Land-speed] A "Rat's Pix" page from World of Speed

I'm back home for the moment. I left the salt around 5 pm Friday. It's 10:30
now. I transferred the files from the laptop to the main box and threw a quick
web thingie together:
http://www.chevyasylum.com/lsr/bsf2009/wos/pix/Welcome.html It was a hard
workin 2.5 days. And it ain't gonna get a lot easier for about 10 days. Rolex
Grand-Am tomorrow, then back to the salt for the Shootout. I might get a
half-day off if they take extra time to set that up. There were several
records broken, but I really didn't have time to get into the speeds/records.
I was pretty much on my own, since the owner of landracing (Seldom Seen Slim,
aka Jon Wennerberg, for whom I was working) was busy getting his wife, Nancy
into the 200 mph club on a Hayabusa. She ran 204 today (I missed the run cuz I
took a potty break...dammit!) and has to run 206 tomorrow to break the record
over 200. It's a slightly strange deal, but that's the way they run it. There
were a few scares...the worst one was Bob Johnson in his Caddy XLR-S (I think)
who had broken the C/Gas Modified Sports record at Speed week and was trying
to get the Fuel record by adding a little nitro to the mix. He'd just run 257
to qualify for the record and all he had to do was stop, turn around, go to
impound and repeat it the next morning. However, he didn't expect the chute to
lift the ass end of the car off the ground. When that happened, the front end
dug in and it flipped end-over-end several times. Bob, the owner, builder and
driver of the car was hung upside-down in the harness cuz it landed on its
lid. When they got him out, all he had was a bloody nose...probably from
hangin like that for a few minutes before the EV guys got there. Tom Shannon
(friend of mine from Miller's and USFRA for years) was the first one on the
scene, but he didn't wanna let him out of the harnesses until he had some
help. But I was real happy to shake Bob's hand later that evening and see that
he was up, walking around and bitching cuz he couldn't back up the record.
Oh...and that he had a wrecked race car. There were a fair number of blown
motors, some of which oiled things down a bit (most of it seeps into the salt,
not like asphalt) and a few spins. There were also some of the craziest
vehicles (and I use the term loosely) running on the 130 mph Club course.
Karts, street luges (one ran on the long course at over 150 mph...with the
driver lying on his back) and various and sundry other wheeled things. I gotta
get some sleep. Ray