Greetings 754,
I would have PM'ed with this but think some of the readers might be amused hearing about your Kelowna drag strip.
I moved from Seattle to Sacramento a few years ago, got married and piled my mountain of old SOHC boxes into shelves in the garage. The bike currently stands guard while my wife complains about the stuff 'cluttering' up her parking space. The bulk of it's most recent changes are on hold until I finish up a guys hot rod LTD Kawi.
I know a few of the Kelowna folks from the old Spokane Dragbike days. Purple Haired Lora, and Gordy with the old Silver Bullet turbo Kawi, I believe he's racing it in Pro Mod. And Niel who's bike was so low he used the header as a kick stand, last I saw of him was at the AHRA world finals with a blown chevy alcohol dragster that pulled monster wheel stands.
I saw your beautiful, albeit scary, dragstrip on the mountain top / ski resot back in the mid-ninetys (95?) when Jack Wyatt and the Impulse Nitro funny cars came to town. We were approached in Seattle to do a match race in Kelowna as a way of promoting the track. Jack and I fired up the car in the Safeway parking lot for the 6 o'clock news sports report. We fogged out the crowd pretty good
and when he whacked the throttle it was like the parting of the Red Sea...
And I will never forget how the fumes and tire smoke laid down over the spectators at the track that night, and the folks that used tree stumps for seating along the sides.
But mostly I remember the volunteers at the top end.
For those reading this, the 1/8th mile track ran off
INTO THE WOODS (
) and you could say it wasn't exactally up to the NHRA standards we were running. I don't care how fast Gordy's turbo bike ran there, when I saw it dissapear into a cloud of dirt into the trees, I got worried. At that point we deemed the track to be just too narrow, slick, and dark for side-by-side nitro runs along that Armco barrier, so we ran the cars individually.
I had asked Gordy, Neil, and Wild Bill (he had the Pena framed bike) if they could round up a few guys to hang out at the top end wearing nomex and holding flash lights and fire extinguishers JUST IN CASE anything happened, they said they would.
After Jack's run I got to the end of the track and found A HERD of like 20 drivers fully suited up to do battle.
Good times!
