Thursday 12 May 2016

Travis and the Ronin at Pikes Peak


This is a video of our poet, regular contributor and friend Travis racing the firebreathing Ronin at Pikes Peak last year. The video is long because it shows three full 10 or so minute runs from different angles, but I'll be honest and say I didn't watch them all right through.

The beginning of the film is loaded with emotion and significance as Travis hugs his wife before the start, she kisses him on the chinbar of his helmet and walks to the side wiping a tear from behind her sunglasses. Earlier in the week their good friend Carl Sorensen crashed in practice and died. Travis had been weighing up the opportunity versus risk since then and came to a decision. Watch how he leaves the startline to see how committed he was to his decision. Travis would come second overall behind Honda America's official CBR1000 entry.

You can either watch the entire film, flick through the different angles or choose one angle and watch the whole race, but at the very least have a flick through to see the landscape change from lush forest to barren rockfield to snowline. At 35:16 Travis passes as a deer at over 100mph.

At the beginning the mechanic uses the line 'Colorado bike, Colorado rider, Colorado race'. It made me smile because I used that line when I visited Ronin in Denver to be the first journalist in the world to ride the road bike and put the idea of this Pikes Peak project in Ronin's mind. Who doesn't love it when a plan comes together?

Read my Ronin road test in Sideburn 19. G

UPDATE: This post was supposed to go up yesterday but was SNAFU'd. Sorry!

3 comments:

Harley said...

At 19 mins in there's an amazing save when the front end washes out, total commitment.

Pete Stansfield said...

Watched the whole thing, scary as hell but massive respect for that man.

747 said...

I tell ya, I sure love it when a plan comes together!