Photography by Larry Lawrence
One eye on the track and one on the radar screen of our smartphones.
AMA Pro Racing and the Grand National riders gave it one heck of a try at the Hagerstown (Md.) Half-Mile Saturday evening, but we all knew. We tried to ignore it, hoped that the radar was wrong, or the weather front would somehow make meteorological history and come to a screeching halt.
It didn’t.
A thunderstorm hit the track, fans were cleared from the grandstands and we all went back to the radar screens on our phones, searching for a ray of hope, literally.
After an hour or so of rain the race was finally canceled.
Who was the most bummed besides the promoter? Probably Kenny Coolbeth, Jr. Coolbeth was very fast on his Zanotti Racing Harley-Davidson XR750. He topped the charts in timed qualifying, stopping the clocks at 24.133-seconds on the banked red-clay oval. But when talking to Coolbeth after his excellent qualifying run there was no joy in his eyes, for he too couldn’t resist and had made the look off to the western skies, black with flashes of not-too-distant lightning. He knew his qualifying run would be for naught.
So we sauntered back and forth in the rain, getting wet and packing up – looking forward to Lima, Ohio, next weekend, (Saturday, June 27), and the broadsliding goodness that is the Lima Half-Mile.
