John, Butch, Bill, Marty, thank you so much for the congratulations and for all your help and support both recently and over the years. Everything that has gone on before at all the WARs and the ODBA race spectating and all of your experience and advice was instrumental in getting me at least this far. I didn't win nuthin but felt like a winner anyway, getting the respect of the other OB guys and some of the car motor guys too. Foremost of all I have Jeff Calbaugh and Bryan Welch to thank for coming all the way out here to help a crazy obsessed ignurnt carp racer like me...Shook can I get an amen?
Also a huge thanks to Kevin and Stacy Kraft and Kenny Shaw, they taught me a LOT that I had no idea of knowing so it was a crash course and they were all very patient with me and encouraging!!! Kevin even bolted the warm-up load wheel onto my propshaft the last morning when we were running behind, that's why Kevin got the "Sportsman of the Year" IHBA award in 2007!!! He is that kind of guy, complete stand-up man and helpful on every level.
Butch, you were absolutely right, that rope is a beeyotch and any breeze makes your boat want to go
sideways...heck the XR even is shaped like a weather vane, so it loves to point into the wind...:laughing I tell you they ought to have a disclaimer somewhere in the rules that you need to be pumping iron all winter long so you can twist your boat back into line against the wind. They (the other racers on the rope) were all hollerin at me at the same time with every type of advice on how to move the boat: "Go hand-over-hand!! Spread your arms out wide! Lean over the bow!" etc. I felt like :idiot After all that, I realized the best way was to move to the end of the boat that had the greatest amount of movement and twist the rope from there. That, and once getting lined up, sit on the back of the driver's seat (top) and use my hands as "human cleats" to hold that :cuss rope locked to each side of the cockpit to prevent any TRACE of deflection. Once it starts pivoting, FUGGET about trying to stop it, you gotta stop it before it picks up speed.
Then like the rope adventures aren't enough to make you sweat thru every layer and head dripping inside the helmet, sit back down, replace your unplugged lanyard...OK is the motor pointed straight? (turn around and look, dummy)...is the trim all the way down? ....Is the timer reset?.....Is the helmet visor down?....Have the earbuds of the raceiver fallen out of my ears? (Used scotch tape over the head for those, after the first run, LOL) And somewhere during this checkist the starter says, "LIGHTS!" And you watch the amber flashing and your heart starts pumpin and then the bar of numbers goes solid and I figured out you can count off 5 seconds for the bar and at the last moment, SHIFT! and pull yur hand out onto the wheel while your left hand holds the rope and all of a sudden it's 987654321....and I figured out that I need to leave on a 7, even "7.5" had me redlighting by -.164 and 7 has me at about .260 so there's work to be done there.
Next year...hot heads...and a lot more practice with that reaction time game online LOL...Hey I need to start eating that Ginko-Biloba stuff....:laughing I am rapidly heading into senior citizen territory.....But..am I addicted now? Uh...YEAH BABY!!
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