December 2003 Stories... Hellbent & Friends

HELLFIRE 00 (Hellbent Racing) • Ok. All I can say about that day is it was bad but fun. i had a perfectly running bike except for the slightly kinked throttle cable. My first lap out in practice went well dispite the mud. then it was time to turn up the wick. In doing so i found that my bike liked to hit the powerband and then stay there. Regardless of throttle position. This makes for a very entertaining ride on a muddy day. I cut practice short a lap to do some surgury. At this time I had not realized my cable to be at fault. Tearing into the carb Scot and I located a missing carb sleeve clip. Through some quick engerneering with some bailing wire, clip in place. 250 evo moto and I was ready. Wack the throtttle on the start and realize that it was not the problem. Mud and a sticky throttle. I slowly putted around the track finishing last and a lap down. Nothing like feathering a clutch and a racing engine over the tunnel jump. Back to the pits. Throttle sleeve removed, low and behold, broken cable end. The cable kept hooking up in the housing. We tried to rig it. It was worse. "Thats it I'm done. Chris pass me a beer!" I exclaimed. Then I stood around with my good friends. I think it's a good way to spend a saturday. HF

ZAMO 109 (Hellbent Racing) • The gate drops. I activate my triple top-secret hole-shot solution and it rewards me with a catapult launch into 1st place. Other riders flail behind me as I arc through the shallows of the bay which has suddenly appeared at the end of the starting straight-a-way. Tide must have come in. I sloosh around the first corner and decide I can put some distance between me and 2nd place if I hang it out just a "tad" more. My left foot is down, skiing over the standing water, plowing a wake as I line up for corner number two. I swing wide, avoiding the terribly deep rut which leads to hell on the inside of the corner. With my 465 swimming, I blast around the corner and set off through the slop-trough strait. Some things wrong. I am aiming the way I came. The sky is falling. The earth is rising. Mud. With a sinking feeling, both spiritually, and physically, I cascade into the foot deep mud. My face, denuded of goggles by choice slips beneath the surface. A new experience, I am inside the track! I rise up. Splash! Second place sends a gout of slop into my face. I reach for my bike. Splash! Third and fourth go by, drenching my ooze covered body with further torrents of cold, brown, goo. I pick up my fallen steed and start off after the pack. Dead last, covered more completely than ever before in my life, in mud. Kick starter is mud stuck in the retracted position. I smile. This sucks. What a blast!

COLE CABLER 515 (Flying 15 Race Team) • I felt something when I woke up that morning.Some sort of reluctance to get out of bed, a premonition maybe of the day to come. Coffee helped, loaded up and I was on my way. First time I drove up by myself, and showed up to find that all my team had decided to wuss out. I had sent out a big email that I was bringing chili, maybe it was that on not the rain? So, the Hellbent guys made room for me and I pitted with them. Apparently my chili reputation hadn't made it to Seattle yet. Went out for practice and waterskied around the track. Everybody there knows what it was like, we raced through thin gruel and liquid concrete. We hydroplaned over lakes, and slogged through the trenches. Crusty demons of dirt ain't shit anymore! I did have a couple good starts, and then was plagued with throttle issues the same as some of the Hellbent guys. My throttle grip was even coming off, that was a first. When my throttle cable stuck the final time, it didn't really bother me. Two heats in that stuff was like a whole day or two of racing. Dried off, opened a beer, and attacked the chili. Not a bad day at all! Cole

TODD KALAMAR (Spectator, from the Cretins Road Racing Team) • It was kind of like going to a road race event, I mean, it was raining...... And I did get up before the sun....... But the bikes in the back of CJ's truck weren't made for the pavement..... Not sure if they were made for what the track, and the weather, had in store either!! "i think it's clearing" we finally arrived at woodland, in a torrent of rain, jacked on caffeine...... Cretinous scene..... Armored warriors walking among the trees...... Loud, smoking, snorting machines...... And the track..... Well, you guys were there...... Looked more like a swamp than a race track....... Racing? Sure, you could call it that..... Just try and get your bike around the track..... I dare ya...... I double dog dare ya!! And hey, a few guys did make it out for more than one motto....... Freaks...... I have decide that Woodland is a strange place..... Where strange people converge..... For savage weekends of battle, and mockery..... Against man and machine.... And mother nature..... Chock one up for one mother of a rain storm..... And chock one up for the boys who got out there and did battle...... I'm sure the chili and the beer tasted especially sweet that day..... I know it did to me..... Thanks for a fun first, at the home for the mentally disturbed!! Maybe next time i'll bring a bike.... tk