{"id":26634,"date":"2024-06-19T00:01:36","date_gmt":"2024-06-19T07:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=26634"},"modified":"2024-06-19T17:06:10","modified_gmt":"2024-06-20T00:06:10","slug":"the-wayback-machine-the-springfield-mile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/06\/19\/the-wayback-machine-the-springfield-mile\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wayback Machine: The Springfield Mile"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

That photo above?\u00a0 It’s the Springfield mile, with riders exiting Turn 4 at over 100 mph on their way up to 140 or so. These boys are really flying.\u00a0 It is an incredible thing to see.<\/p>\n

But I’m getting ahead of myself.\u00a0\u00a0Two blogs back I wrote about the East Windsor half-mile dirt track, which has gone the way of the dodo bird.\u00a0 The Springfield Mile is bigger and better and last I checked it’s still with us.\u00a0 A dozen years ago I made the trek out to Illinois to watch the big boys (and a lady or two) mix it up and it was awesome.\u00a0 I don’t know if this is accurate or if it’s more biker bullshit, but the guys claim the bikes hit 140 mph in the straights and maintain a cool 100 in the turns.\u00a0 And “straights” is a relative term.\u00a0 The track is basically a big oval, with the straights being less of a curve.\u00a0 What’s nice about oval track racing, though, is you usually can see all the action all the time.\u00a0 When you go to a grand prix type event, you get to see the bikes or the cars for just an instant when they scream past wherever you are.\u00a0 Oval tracks are a better deal, I think.<\/p>\n

We planned to ride to Springfield from So Cal, but just before it was wheels-in-the-wells time my good buddy Larry passed and I stayed for his funeral.\u00a0 We flew instead and because that gave us a little bit more of our most precious commodity (time), we bopped around Springfield a bit more.\u00a0 We visited Springfield’s Lincoln Museum and had a lot of fun getting there. I drove our rental car and we promptly got lost (it was in the pre-GPS era). We pulled alongside a police officer and he gave us directions. As soon as I pulled away, I asked my buds which way to go. “I don’t know,” they answered, “we weren’t listening…” Neither was I. We all had a good laugh over that one.<\/p>\n

\"\"
An interesting Norton in the fairgrounds parking lot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Another shot of the Norton.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Illinois State Fairgrounds has two tracks, one is a quarter-mile dirt oval and the other is the big mile track.\u00a0 The quarter-mile races were awesome.\u00a0 This racing, all by itself, would have been worth the trip out there.\u00a0 I love watching the flat trackers.<\/p>\n

\"\"
These boys are kicking up some dirt coming out of Turn 4 on the Illinois State Fairgrounds quarter-mile track.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
One of the riders lost it coming our of Turn 4 and he crashed hard directly in front of us.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
I didn’t think he was going to get up, but he did.\u00a0 The next day, this guy won a heat on the 1-mile track.\u00a0 The announcer said he was “tougher than a $2 steak.” I believe it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next day, we went to the 1-mile track on the other side of the State Fairgrounds.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The field entering Turn 2 at over 100 mph on the Springfield 1-mile track. The noise is incredible and there’s nothing like it.\u00a0 These guys are drifting sideways at 100 mph, just a few inches apart!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
The same shot as above, but with the two fastest riders at the Springfield Mile identified.\u00a0 The arrows point to Chris Carr (National No. 4 in the white and orange leathers) and Kenny Coolbeth (National No. 1 in the black leathers).\u00a0 Coolbeth won on Sunday and Carr won on Monday.\u00a0 This photo was just after the start.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
One lap later: Coolbeth and Carr are riding as a closely-matched pair well ahead of the group.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was really happy with these shots. I had my old Nikon D200 and a cheap lens (a 10-year old, mostly plastic, $139 Sigma 70-300). I zoomed out to 300 mm, set the ISO to 1000 for a very high shutter speed (even though it was a bright day), and the lens at f5.6 (the fastest the inexpensive Sigma would go at 300mm).\u00a0 The camera’s autofocus wouldn’t keep up with the motorcycles at this speed, so I manually focused on Turn 2 and waited (but not for long) for the motorcycles to enter the viewfinder.\u00a0 It was close enough for government work, freezing the 100-mph action for the photos you see above.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Kenny Coolbeth, after winning the Springfield Mile.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Nicole Cheza, a very fast rider. She won the “Dash for Cash” and the crowd loved it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
A Harley XR-750 rider having fun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As you might expect, there were quite a few things happening off the track, too.\u00a0 Johnsonville Brats had a huge tractor trailer onsite equipped with grills, and they were serving free grilled brat sandwiches.\u00a0 It was a first for me, and it worked…I’ve been buying Johnsonville brats ever since.\u00a0 There were hundreds of interesting motorcycles on display and a vintage World War II bomber orbiting the area.<\/p>\n

\"\"
An old B-17 flying above the track…it made several appearances that weekend.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
An old Ariel Square Four. The owner started it and it sounded like two Triumph 650s.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
An old two-stroke Bridgestone, a marque that never quite made it in the US. Imagine the marketing discussions in Japan: “Let’s logo it the BS…that will work!”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So there you have it, along with a bit of advice from yours truly:\u00a0 If you ever have an opportunity to see the Springfield Mile, go for it.\u00a0 I had a great time and I would do it again in a heartbeat.<\/p>\n

\n

More epic rides are here<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\n

We want you!\u00a0 Sign up here for a free subscription!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joe Berk That photo above?\u00a0 It’s the Springfield mile, with riders exiting Turn 4 at over 100 mph on their way up to 140 or so. These boys are really flying.\u00a0 It is an incredible thing to see. But I’m getting ahead of myself.\u00a0\u00a0Two blogs back I wrote about the East Windsor half-mile dirt … Continue reading “The Wayback Machine: The Springfield Mile”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[392,96,452,103,89],"tags":[4186,653,4185],"class_list":["post-26634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-back-in-the-day","category-feel-good-stuff","category-harley","category-harley-davidson","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","tag-motorcycle-dirt-track-racing","tag-motorcycle-racing","tag-the-springfield-mile"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/DSC_1240-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26634"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26756,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26634\/revisions\/26756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}