short track

Last night was my 3rd attempt at short track racing over at ETSU. I really wish I could go every week because I have a feeling the season is not going to last much longer, maybe a month? Before the race I took the dogs on a 2 1/2 hour hike and since they can't talk back to me in English (Jackson does his best, Moonshine just makes a funny growl) I had alot of time to think about new things to shoot with the Hero cam. I hadn't shot short track yet because it's just a 20-30 minute race of lap after lap in a grassy field, very fun to do and watch but on film the scenery might not change a whole lot. I had a couple of cool ideas that might have made for some interesting footage so I went home and looked at a couple of different angles to mount the camera to my bike for even more added excitement. I didn't find anything cool so I went with the usual handlebar mount which seems to give the best perspective. The helmet mount makes the footage seem way too high up. I added a bit of loc-tite to the mounting hardware screws because in the past rides the camera tends to slip down over rough terrain hence the short version of last weeks video of "Green's Lick" @ Bent Creek.
I had plans to arrive early and practice the jump on the downhill portion of the course but with a bum thumb I decided to pass this week and save it for another time. I have a feeling it won't be a problem but I'm just not too sure about the landing, I'm not used to there a ramped one. After seeing multiple folks burp flat tires on it I'm glad I passed it up.
The crowd last night was the largest I've seen yet this summer, 25 in attendance I think was the total I heard so there was a request to break it up into "A" & "B" groups. I opted for the B group like most everyone else that I ride with and the B group seemed to be the largest so I had no problem with it. I did start in the back of the pack something I've yet to do so I got to do more passing than getting passed this week but I think I prefer the front. I paid my $1 entry fee which I'm surprised to see has not draw more of a crowd but this time I paid with a paper bill instead of the usual change. I know I said I was gonna pay with rolls of pennies but I forgot. Even Mike Thomas "The local cult hero" showed and coughed up a dinero this week. He still goofed off yelled out a false start that fooled us all for a split second and cruised to the side lines before it was over but he did show up with a new CX bike "The Rustolium".
Even though my knee and thumb were arguing with me through warm-up they eventually gave in and decided to let me race. On my first warm up lap I crossed the top of the hill and began the semi bumpy decent and I noticed something fly off my bike. I turned to look and saw my Hero cam bouncing down the trail behind me. I pulled over and retrieved it before it suffered more abuse and shoved it in my jersey pocket and inspected the mount and saw that it was trashed beyond repair. I tried to rearrange the mount using less parts but in my effort to secure it the loc-tite had done it's job and nothing was budging without a screwdriver.
After it the race was over I checked my stats and was happy to hear I finished 13 laps, 1 up from last time, I still got lapped by 2 riders but technically they were riding in the "A" class. I'm not sure what place I ended up in, because of the split of the two groups I don't know exactly who raced what.

Still no photos to show, Google must be really having problems lately, I can't even copy and paste text within this post so if the format seems a little funky you'll know why. Flickr Google, Flickr, I still have my old Yahoo address so it wouldn't be difficult to create.