Thank you. I am thinking there was a trail started with arrows that was abandoned and was routed another way. I think they took down the first few arrows but left the rest. A lot of the races missed the new turn and went down the trail far enough to see the arrows that were still there. That trail came to a dead end, so it really confused everyone when they were following arrows but went nowhere. That is my theory anyway. So we just needed better marking at that turn, but even more importantly, removing all unused arrows from trails that racers might come across. You can definitely see where the wrong turn was with the GPS map and the video.

Yes, that downhill was scary! I thought it was dangerous if you were not expecting it. The 3rd lap I made sure to keep my butt back past the seat, clamp down on both brakes going as slow as possible until you get to the really steep part, then ease up on the brakes and hold on for dear life until it levels off again! I see you in the background, very cool!

Thanks Chuck. I like to get the jump on the start since I have a bit of an advantage with the electric motorcycle, but I know all these guys are pretty much faster than myself, so I am not so concerned about trying to get in front of most of them before we get into the woods. Some of them I would just be in their way since they are so fast. The Stark still shows on schedule, end of October. Your battery question is a good one. The Freeride has a 3.88 kwh battery, and the Stark Varg supposedly has a 6.5 kwh battery. With this race we had a 7.7 mile course. One of my Freeride batteries did 2 laps with I am guessing about 20% battery capacity left. 3.88 kwh * 0.8 percent used = 3.1 kwh used for 2 laps. So if we assume all things being equal between the motorcycle (I’m hoping some things are better with the Varg), then we would need 3.1 kwh * 2 to make 4 laps = 6.2 kwh to complete the race. So by these calculations I would think the Stark Varg would complete the race with one battery. I am not 100% sure if I will do any more races, but there is an IXCR race in Milton KY on August 27th that I may go to. I will see how things go if I decide to go to that one or not. Yes, a lot of guys in the race took the wrong turn. Luckily I saw the arrow to the right at the last second and went the correct way. When they took the wrong turn they went down a trail that was never completed and they had nowhere to go. That is why most of them were going the wrong way on the course when I was coming around for my second lap. I think I have gotten the water pump issue figured out. First I thought it was the relay under the seat that was getting caked with mud. Then I broke the cover on the water pump in a crash one race which obviously makes it not work. Then I could not find any new pumps available so I used JB weld to fix it thinking it would work ok but it did not. Then I replaced the pump but did not flush the system which I think caused it to fail again. I also did not use the exact recommended OAT coolant (Not sure if this was an issue or not). So I have the system flushed, cleaned, new pump and correct coolant. So far so good! These pumps start working again for a while if you take them apart and put them back together again. This also puzzled me and threw me off track. I had a very tough time on that hill. Need extra speed and momentum to get up it. It was very slick. I wrote my own GPS mapping program called GPS2Video. All I do is run the race in my program with a Google map for one lap and let it map out the course. Then I capture that Google map with the path to an image and use that image when I restart the program to create the final video.

Yes.