Cycle News

11TH ANNUAL BARBER VINTAGE FESTIVAL P116 Will is just 27 so he wasn't even born yet when the CBX he's racing was built. When asked about cornering clearance on the mile-wide six-banger, Will pointed to the bike's crankcase. "You can see I've drug half of it off," he says proudly. "We keep an extra crankcase cover around just in case." When asked how he convinced his son to race the CBX, his dad Bill says wryly, "He was the only one we could find who was naive enough to ride it." True Dedication to Racing What do you do if you're at Barber practicing on Thursday and the engine on your race bike blows up? If you have friends like Paul Elledge it's no problem. Elledge's buddies Jason Koschnitzke and Stephen Pettinger showed amazing dedica- tion by setting out for the almost 1400-mile round trip to Chicago to get another engine for Elledge's Yamaha XT500 and parts for Pettinger's BMW, which he crashed Thursday. Saying he ran the van at about 85 mph, Pet- tinger did the driving, while Koschnitzke worked on the bike in the back of the van in transit. Koschnitzke takes up the story from the time the XT's motor blew: "I went to the swap meet to look for another motor. Made a few calls to dealers and shops, went on Craigslist and nothing was happen- ing for us. Then it dawned on me I had Paul's XT ice-racing bike back at my shop in Chicago that was getting prepped for sale. So we put the plan together—hop in the van as quickly as we could and head straight for Chicago." The duo of Koschnitzke and Pettinger left Barber at about 4:30 in the afternoon Thursday with Elledge's XT in the back and got to Chicago at about 2:30 in the morning. They pulled the mo- tor out of the ice racing bike in about 45 minutes, gathered up all the parts that Pettinger needed for his BMW, threw everything in the van and sped back to Alabama with Koschnitzke wrenching in the back for all he was worth as they raced down I-65. "We got back down here at three in the after- noon on Friday, finished it up and it fired right up. Paul was even able to take it out for a scrub lap. Then Saturday it was off to the races." So after a crazy 24-hour odyssey Elledge's Yamaha XT made it on the racetrack. The team's story was told at the trophy presentation and they guys got a big hand from their fellow racers, many in the crowd probably having at one time or another, a similar story of sheer willpower when it came to finding a way to race come hell or high water. CN AHRMA vintage motocross was part of the racing activities at Barber. The course was old-school natural terrain through the woods.

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