Burke Mountain Hill Climb

Seth's brother, Raffi, came to visit for three weeks. Within a few days of arrival, he had found, test ridden and bought a used motorcycle. What is with these boys! The motorcyle had been wrecked, and required (still requires) a little work. Right away, Raffi and Seth were working to figure out exactly what needed to be replaced before they could get it registered and inspected, so that Raffi could ride it before he left (in three weeks).

A few days later, Raffi called the shop where they had ordered some plastic pieces to replace the broken ones, and discovered that they had arrived! Oh joy! He went out to leave, and a few minutes later came back. "Truck won't start," he says to me. "Really?" I don't know why, but I was surprised that the old piece of junk had finally kicked the bucket. "Hmmm." I said, not really knowing what to do. Usually when this sort of thing happens, I just wait for Seth to come home. Raffi, however, NEEDED to get the new pieces of his motorcycle. "I guess you can take my motorcycle if you want," I said, evetually. He was off! He found the biggest bag he could carry on his back and was gone in a flash.

A few days later, we still haven't gotten the truck to start, not because it is completely broken down, but because we really haven't even looked at it since Raffi came back in and said it wouldn't start. Raffi was going to go up to Burlington to hang out with his cousin, and he was going to take my motorcycle. He leaves.

A few minutes later my phone rings, and its Raffi. "No WAY," I think to myself, "that thing is BRAND NEW!" After a rather confusing conversation with Raffi, I discover that he is only just at the bottom of the hill we live on, but while he was riding down the hill, the bike turned off and stopped. OK, now, this is a BMW motorcycle. It is a 2007 model year X Challenge, and we just bought it in February. This should not be happening. Surely, it has to do with Raffi. He did already break the truck, and now he broke my beautiful motorcycle. (I jest. There is no way that Raffi could have caused this...just bad timing...That won't stop me from teasing him, though.)

So! My BMW is broken! We call the shop where we bought it, and the owner, Max, picks up the phone. (We thought that was kind of crazy. Does anyone else think that is crazy, that the owner of a BMW dealership just answers the regular phone?) The dealership is 2.5 hours away from us, so it is kind of a pain to go all the way down there. Seth mentioned that to Max, who said "You guys are in Vermont right? You bought the bike in February? I remember you guys." (?! He remembers us!) "We're racing up at Burke Mountain this weekend, so if you bring the bike up there, we can bring it back here and fix it up." Seth is the one who was on the phone, and I originally thought he was talking to the head mechanic. He started getting excited. "YEA! I was going to come watch you guys race there this weekend!" I hear him say. I was not aware we were doing anything spectacular this weekend, but that's ok, he sometimes leaves me out of the loop. I didn't really hear the rest of the conversation, but Seth was SO excited when he got off the phone. "I get to race my mo-to-cycle, I get to race my mo-to-cycle," he kept saying in a sing-song voice. Any problems he may have had disappeared.

So! Seth is all set to race in the Burke Mountain Hill Climb! We brought his bike out on Friday evening for the tech inspection. We walked over to a booth to register him, and the lady behind it asked if I wanted to work the event. "Sure!" I said, rather excitedly. "I mean, uh, if you need me." Trying to tone down my excitement. She told me it was the only way I would get to see him race, so I agreed it would be best.

It seemed we were a bit early. Seth had been told that tech inspection started at 4, so we had been rushing to get there by 5 at the latest. I even took off early from work. None of the other motorcycle people were there. It turned out that Max was doing the motorcycle tech inspection, and he wasn't there either. We walked around the campgrounds at the bottom of the toll road a few times, looking at all the different cars that were arriving. Eventually, some of the other motorcycles arrived. One guy was riding an X Challenge. Same as my bike! His worked though.

His girlfriend, Jen, was also talked in to working. The guys went up on a "rookie orientation," and Jen and I got to know each other. Max had arrived at this point, in his extended wheelbase, extended roof Dodge Sprinter, something Seth has been lusting after for a few years now. He says it would be the perfect "motorcycle hauling machine." Apparently he's right, because Max has a fleet of them. The guys get back from their orientation, and are visibly excited by the Toll Road, which is what they will be racing for the next two days. We hear that Max will be doing tech inspection for the motorcycles in a separate parking lot. We all head over there, but it seems that Max has disappeared! I guess he had to go on a rookie orientation too. We wait there for about an hour (well, it seemed like an hour...it was probably about 20 minutes.) The other guys put numbers on their motorcycles while we're waiting, and Seth remembers that he doesn't have any numbers! Oh no! Andrew, who is Jen's boyfriend, the man with the X Challenge, has three sets of three sixes. He makes himself #66, and gives the rest to Seth. What a nice guy! Seth turned them around and made himself number 9. Ha. After a while, the people who knew Max decided he wouldn't care if we just left without doing tech inspection. "They are all going to pass anyway," said Andrew. We left. It occurred to me that I hadn't taken any pictures! What is wrong with me! So I took some on the way home:

(We hit a pothole right as I took this picture.)


The next morning, we had to wake up bright and early to get there by 7, since we missed tech inspection the day before. We got there around 7:30. Seth and I both got out, and I found Jen, and we went to our worker's meeting. We got there a little late. "Leave their helmet on, have them sit down, and try to calm the driver down as much as possible." The lady in charge was saying. I looked at Jen. It had not occurred to me that we would see someone crash. I suddenly felt extremely under qualified to be working the event. I've never even taken a CPR class or anything. I don't have the slightest idea what to do if someone crashes, aside from leaving their helmet on, having them sit down, and trying to calm them down. This was a meeting we should not have been late for. Jen and I were assigned to checkpoint 1, which may have been the most boring checkpoint of them all. It was on a straightaway. The other checkpoints were right in the middle of crazy turns. We were being broken in. There were two other people at our checkpoint who did most of the work, since we had no idea what was going on for a while.

First the cars went up, there was a group A and a group B. At the end of group B, the motorcycles got to go.

Group A:
Group B:
Motorcycles! There's Seth!
Those pictures were from the "fam" or familiarization run. Once we knew what it meant, Jen and I kept saying familiarization run, because it sounds more normal than saying "fam run." I guess to us that just sounded incomplete/stupid. Anyway, during the familiarization run the whole group went up together, but during normal timed runs, they went up one at a time.

For the rest of the day, we just watched cars and motorcycles going past us at rediculous speeds. Each time one went by, we had to check them in over the radio. When car 45 went by, we had to say "Four Five by One." "Check One." the control person said. A few seconds later we heard "Four Five by Two." "Check Two." That was it. It seemed exciting at the time, but it really doesn't offer much in the way of an exciting story. No one wrecked (thank goodness).

We had a red flag at our booth, in case something up ahead was going wrong, we could stop a car before it got there. We had to use it twice. Once, on the first run, some kid started without his helmet on. It was sitting on the seat beside him, he just wasn't wearing it. We missed him, and they stopped him at checkpoint 2. Once he put his helmet on, he got to keep going.

The other person we had to red flag was Seth! When he started, they didn't start the time. So, we had to send him down to start again. We missed him too, so they got him at #2. We weren't that far from the start, so by the time we were hearing them tell us to flag them down, we were watching them pass us. That was our excuse, anyway. Here are someone else's pictures of Seth starting:



Here he comes at Checkpoint 1!

"Bike Nine by Check One."
"Check One"

There were two Porsches, somehow I neglected to get a picture of either of them. I did get this one though.


Doesn't this all sound terribly exciting?! It was for Seth. He had a blast racing. This is me at the end of the day, having decided that Mom would certainly yell at me if I didn't have a single picture of myself: