Thunder on the Mountain!

On Sunday, June 16th, Pat and I went to the Thunder on the Mountain funny car/drag races at the Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, west of Denver.  I've been to a few vintage European car races and loved it (I own a vintage German car, so it's only natural!), but I've never been to a drag race before. It was amazing! Those cars are SO fast. The heats are only about seven or eight seconds long, and by the time they reach the finish line, the cars (or motorcycles) are going over well over 200 miles per hour. Imagine going from a dead stop to 230MPH in seven seconds. It boggles the mind!

Of course it was a ridiculously fun photo opportunity all day long, not to mention people-watching, so I had a great time snapping away.  Instead of posting a bunch of pictures over the next several days, I'll just post all of them today for you to enjoy.

 

There was a rainstorm just before we arrived. A wet track is unsafe, so all racing halted until the crews could dry it off. This man is sprinkling some sort of desiccant onto the surface to speed drying.

 

 

Start your engines! At the beginning of the heat, the drivers spin their tires against the track to heat them up. It's called "burning out" and it's super cool!

 

A very cute race fan. As you can see, he was mesmerized.

I think the motorcycle racers are particularly insane. From zero to 200+ miles per hour in eight seconds, on a MOTORCYCLE?!? That's just crazy!

 

I made this GIF for you so you could see what it looked like, but I wish I'd made some video so you could hear it too. The noise from the engines is ear splitting.

 

 

Playing with the fisheye lens. This booth was selling sno-cones.

The denizen of the sno-cone booth. It must have been uncomfortably hot in there, but she still had a nice smile for my camera!

 

I had to get a picture of this young lady before we left. You know how much I love people with fearless personal style!