The Goldrush America at Redwood Acres Speedway

"EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY!, The chain's jammed!", I shout on the radio. I had been pedaling around and around the Redwood Acres Speedway in Eureka, CA, in the Goldrush America streamliner at about 28 mph, when suddenly the pedals refuse to move. I coast to a stop and the van drives across the infield with tools and crew. At first we can't figure out why the pedals are unmovable. Then we notice the problem. The chain is quickly detached and routed correctly. Once again I'm circling the track. A couple of pit stops later, the problem is permanently solved with plastic ties.

This odyssey started six hours earlier on July 24, 2004, as an attempt on the-24 hour track record for human powered vehicles. The Goldrush America is a fully enclosed streamlined bicycle designed and built by Easy Racers' owner, Gardner Martin for Team RAAM in 1989. Since then it has had a long career of track races, criteriums and road races. It even set one of the previous 24-hour track records in 1994. Gardner agreed to let me 'borrow' the Goldrush for this attempt, as long as I did all the mechanical work to rehabilitate it and make it fit me. Little did I realize what I was in for.... The Goldrush was originally designed around Fast Freddie Markham, who in addition to being much faster than I am, is also shorter. After changing the front and rear wheel sizes, seat and handle bar, and extensive drive train modifications, it was almost ready. Unfortunately it was never completely ready, as we later found out.

Ron Bobb squeezes into the Goldrush America

Redwood Acres Speedway in Eureka, CA is the perfect track for an attempt like this. It is a large, smooth asphalt track; velodromes are much too small for this type of ride. Daytime temperatures seldom get over 70 degrees.

For most of the daylight hours, things went fairly well. Speeds were quite good and pit stops, although slow at times, were going well - two of the crew were new to racing. As darkness began to fall, the pain in my butt changed from uncomfortable to awful. The streamliner body kept me from moving around much and I was sitting like a sack of potatoes on a seat that is normally pretty comfortable.

Efficient crew are essential

Eureka's mild seacoast climate worked against us, too. Fog began to creep in and land on the windshield. The warm moist air inside the body began to condense on the inside of the windshield. Soon I could only see out of a small strip down each side of it, and was forced to run a little wide in the turns to lessen the chances of hitting cones, which marked the inner circumference of the track. Eventually after trying several remedies, the crew cut vents, which helped. By that time, the pain was really getting intense and pit stops had been steadily lowering the average speed.

My spirits were at an all time low at 16:30 hours, when I decided that it was pointless to continue. The crew tried hard to talk me into continuing but I could not get myself to ride the remaining hours of what looked like endless, intense pain. We packed up and drove back with me trying to deal with a DNF.

One of 800 laps

Two days later, coach John Hughes, returning from the Rocky Mountain 1200, called me on his cell phone to find out how the ride had gone. While explaining what had transpired, I heard Lee Mitchell, shouting from the driver's seat, "What about the 12 hour record?" We hadn't even bothered to check. Fortunately, we had apparently set a record after all.

Rider, crew and officials learned a lot from this ride. How many times have I heard Lee say that you have to be flexible.... .

Ron Bobb rode 800 laps in 11:59:35.4 according to the printout from the timer - that's 54 seconds per lap! The Speedway survey says it is 1810.52 feet per lap, so he rode 274.32 miles in 12 hours, a new Masters HPV record (age 50-59).