Speaking of pit bikes, my vote for coolest one at the March Meet belongs to Terry Cox. The very same Terry Cox who was driving the lone 426-powered AA/FD in attendance and who also went for a ride in the “Time Traveler” AA/FC on Saturday while Jack Beckman was at his son's first birthday party. Terry's ride is something I'm very familiar with. It's a 1976 FMF Team Replica in red anodized finish complete with Motomags. This frame was very cutting-edge BITD at the beginning of BMX racing. The frame is built of 6061 aluminum heat-treated to T-6 after welding, and came anodized in red or gold or a clear ball-burnished finish. They sold for $79.95 and were one of the more popular BMX bikes in ‘76-77. How do I know this? I was factory FMF in 1976-77 and freaked out when Terry rode up to my pit on the thing! Terry and his wife Alison own a very cool bike shop in Nor-Cal, so of course he finds all the cool forgotten stuff!
More March news. Cub Scout pack 824 - you remember them, my boys both belong to dens in this pack and last summer we talked about how they are more organized than the Funny Car Association. Anyway, they had their Pinewood Derby. Ah, yes, a time for a Scout and his dad (or significant adult in the home, this from the new Scout handbook) to bond and build a little wooden car that runs/races down a gravity track about 50 feet long. Sounds simple and fun. Ha!
I will say that I defied all thoughts of getting the gram scale out of the clutch box to try and persuade the boys on a design that could get to 'weight' easier than what they wanted to build. Weight was 141 grams. Already I was digging out the Mallory and figuring where to put it for maximum transfer. I tried not to notice the other dads with the CNC machine shops and/or mainframe at JPL staying up all night "helping" their kids.
Well, it just so happened I was racing the weekend of a design workshop so their mom Pam (Madame Pamita on DRO Video.com) took them. They came back with some really cool shapes. A bluebird landspeed-looking thing and a truck. Okay, we can work with this. They came up with some paint schemes Carter would be proud of and started practicing doing flames on the back of their homework...sometimes not just on the back. We hit the local model shop and dropped some coin on lots of Testor's product for the paint jobs. We did some sanding, some painting, more sanding, recoating. I got some 1,000-grit sandpaper to sand the mold marks off of the wheels (it said we could do it in the rules!) and the guys started working on how they wanted their numbers to look on the cars.
Things were coming together just great until Morgan got the chicken pox three days before the race. Miles was acting funky too. Great. Danny Pisano had volunteered to bring the Funny Car to display at the Derby weeks ago. Now my guys couldn't go.
So, I went with Danny and the Funny Car, watched the CNC shop-tuned up red truck win Miles's class. Didn't watch Morgan's class because I was eating a hotdog and talking to a mom who said that since I drive that race car, "I'll never think of you in the same way again." Uh, okay. Cut to me standing there holding an empty foil hotdog wrapper with a feeling of "well, that was fun."
A lot has already been written on the web and in print but I would be remiss to not send healing thoughts to the families of John Shoemaker and Pat Foster. Glad I knew you both, if even for a brief time. Rest in peace, guys.
