The morning of August 13, 2005 began at 6:00 am with loading of the luxurious and well-appointed NiteRider race vehicle, affectionately known as the “Death Star”. (Okay, it’s known by one NR guy as the Death Star.) After a couple of hours the motorcycle, riding gear, chairs, cooler full of grape soda, shiny new lights, and giggling kids were all loaded up and it was time to roll. I had figured that if I left San Diego by 9am that I would be in the desert wastelands outside of Vegas by 3pm – at worst. Unfortunately I was wrong, as we got to the race-course at around 7pm, not a good situation as there was precious little room to dock the Death Star and I would have a very short amount of time to pass out the couple hundred sales flyers we’d brought with us. As soon as we’d wedged the glossy black NiteRider Dodge into pit row I put my kids to work passing out the fresh off the presses 2006 tri-fold brochure as well as the race sale flyer, luckily a nine year old girl and a four year old future Stormtrooper make excellent workers and can be easily bought (and fueled) with a large bag of Skittles candy. With my wife Jennifer setting up the pit area and sales table, I was off to sign in and make liaison with the race promoter Kevin Livreri. I had signed up for the Open Sportsman class, I figured this would be a great test of our brand new HellFire HID bar mounted light system, surely 114 miles of brutal Nevada rocks would be enough to break something. Kevin thanked us for being there and we discussed his intentions to put on a three race series for next year in June, July, and August, sounded like a great idea to me. With sign ups and schmoosing done I strolled the pits extolling the virtues of helmet lighting and the glory of the soon to be released HellFire. My kids had apparently earned their Skittles as I saw quite a few people studying the 06 OffRoad brochure, that was my opening to introduce myself a few times, good stuff! With my sales pitchin’ done for the moment I rolled “Penelope”, my trusty little YZ250F, out into the staging area, it was now 8:30pm and pitch black. You could see the look of fear in the eyes of quite a few racers and nearly every time I saw my reflection in a truck window, I had butterflies the size of Sea Gulls. The course was 18 miles long and most of us would end up doing 6 long laps. Just as I had found my spot on the starting grid, Kevin called me up into the race center tent to give an impromptu “NiteRider Guy” speech. I pulled my helmet down far enough to speak into the microphone and invited everyone to go see my lovely wife for all of their lighting needs all really tough technical questions they may have. Finally at around 9:00 the first wave of Pro bikes and quads screamed off into the night, next came us lowly Open class scrubs. After a well performed engine stall off the start (deep sand + 2 nd gear + 250 fourstroke = embarrassing stall at start line), I was off onto the course. The first thing that struck me was how well I could see for how fast I was going, I knew that our small 40w output HID’s worked well for fast trail riding but was not sure how they would fair at desert racing speeds. I was able to maintain my speed in fifth or fourth gear through the rapidly growing sand whoops as well as the full throttle dirt roads that connected the whoop sections. The race course consisted of typical Nevada desert, lots of rocky sand washes and the odd dirt road here and there to give your legs a break from the whoops (visualize two foot tall waves of sand) that would continue to grow as the night wore on. The helmet system proved invaluable as always, I was able to see anything the desert held hidden in the shadows before it could jump out and knock me off the bike. A couple of times my helmet systems drained their three or four year old batteries and I was left with the bright bluish glow of my HellFire bar mounted system alone, I was still able to continue to push my YZ to it’s top speed however. I sorely missed being able to look into the aforementioned holes and shadows with my Cannibal helmet system. The race was going great, after three of the 18mile laps I was still in the lead, the bike was running great, and our new light system was still punching holes in the dark for me. My pit crew, Jennifer, Kaitlyn, and Jacob the Skittle eater, filled my tank, gave me clean goggles, and helped swap batteries on the HellFire and Cannibal light systems, I leisurely ate the Power Bar Jacob handed me, drank some Gatorade and once more hurdled myself into the dark. One thing that surprised me as I rolled through the pits on the way back out was the number off people taking pictures of me and my dusty YZ, I guess we did look odd flying by without the usual gigantic $2000.00, 15lb light system that used to be required for desert racing, and yet there we were. Apparently during my very relaxing pit stop someone had managed to get past Penelope and I and we had been relegated to second place, this was not going to stand. Despite the blisters forming on my hands and my complete lack of training for the race, we managed to pull back into first by the time we finished the fifth lap. I stopped at my pit for a splash of high-octane petrol, and noted that the Skittle Kids had gone to sleep, lucky little stinkers. The last lap was the best, the rocks weren’t as jarring, the whoops didn’t seem as tall, and best of all I was catching and passing a large number of very tired racers. All of my light systems were blazing and I was feeling great, not one crash, not too many horrifying moments, and the HellFire was about to claim it’s first race victory! The 114 miles had gone amazingly fast and I had a huge amount fun, the HellFire had survived it’s baptism by fire and come out a clear winner against machines with far larger and more expensive light systems. The combination of HellFire handle bar and Cannibal helmet light systems was at once simple and brutally effective, nothing bent, broke, or moved around. My final thought as we left the race site at two a.m. was how this new system is gonna’ change everything… 2006 HellFire A-1B |
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