you fellas need some luck chucking your way, but i know Sam won't give up cheers Mick
What dose "give up" mean Mick ?
I sure did feel like it at 8.30 am yesterday.
Having not changed anything on the bike since last weekend (apart from the gearing) when it ran as well as it ever had, we were looking at it being just like a walk in the park.
It all started to go wrong at 8.30am when we arrived at the air field to find that the quarter mile coarse had been set up at the end of the runway instead of in the middle.
I spoke to the race director and the timing crew only to find that the event organiser who was in the USA organising his own record attempt at Bonneville later in the year had forgot to tell them of my attempt at this venue.
I was asked not to be to down hearted and hang on while they had a word with people.
After the riders briefing and roll call, they told all competitors of the problem and asked for volunteers to stay behind at the end of the meeting to move all the equipment over a kilometer down the coarse, this would take about an hour and about 30 people.
There was a unanimous show of hand and I felt privileged.
The only stipulation was that I made a sighting pass the full length of the runway to make sure the bike was in fine fettle to do the attempt before they went to this trouble.
When the time came to do the run, I fired the bike and went to the end of the runway.
The starter for whatever reason, kept me waiting on the line for what seemed like an eternity.
The motor was getting extremely hot and just as I was about to kill it, got the go ahead.
I eased it off the line at a steady pace as the build up to top end speed was well over the distance I needed to get there.
After about half a mile I opened the throttle, it accelerated hard but at 10k started to miss and just got worse the further I went.
I returned to the pit and changed the plug but the bike wouldn't fire after that.
I'm not sure what went wrong after the good showing at last weekend test.
The only good thing of the weekend was the people around me, my team, all the other riders,
the officials and my transport. The little Fiat Panda race transporter made the 500 mile round on just £43 of gas.
Oh well, back to the drawing board
Sam.