As an ongoing part of our training* for the Rally, Dane decided to take part in this year’s Cliffhanger 1/4 mile Sprints.

Very, very, unfunnily early on Sunday morning, we arose,  failed to welcome the crisp new day, and got ready for the sprints. Which involved Dane suiting up and missioning off on Il Duce (his bike), and my packing the car full of the rest of his gear, and missioning off too.

Il Duce. Sexy, sexy beast.

Over the Rimutakas. For those who aren’t familiar, this is a 30 km stretch of vertiginous mountain road, with pretty much no shoulder, no barriers which would actually _stop_ a car, and very long, very steep drops into the canyon. Hairy. Very hairy. Oh yeah, and super bendy, too. Classic Kiwi, in other words :)

It’s also much slower in a car than a bike – even a car with Derek**’s ability to not fail completely on extended hills.

Once we’d arrived (a backroad or two in Carterton), and the scrutineering had been accomplished – the bit where marshalls check all bikes, gear and riders to make sure they’re roadworthy – the crowd of some 43/44 bikers then rode together down the road, to begin the day.  Which is made of up of a series of standing and flying sprints.

Standing sprints are where one, well, has a standing start, and then has one’s speed clocked a quarter mile later.  Flying sprints one is already going – I guess this gives a better measure of the bike’s top speed, as opposed to its acceleration.

So, while I got sunburnt, I also got to film a number of biker’s going nnnnNNNNNNNEEEEEEEooowwwww past me one at a time.

We didn’t stay all day – Dane had a few tries, but Il Duce is not like the other bikes there, and isn’t really built for going very very fast, and staying stable.  He managed to get a quite respectable 189 (and a bit) km/h.  Other bikes were topping out at over 300 km/h…

I managed not to fail completely at getting footage of his runs – number 1 and number 2 -.  This is impressive, considering I have no attention span, there were lots of riders, one couldn’t always tell details, and we weren’t told which rider was coming up…

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* It’s training because it’s also not an entirely sensible thing to do. But lots of fun, and testing boundaries. So it TOTALLY counts.

** Our car.  For those interested, my bicycle’s name is Leviathan.

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Number 1

Number 2