Tuesday open practice at the Cactus Classic. This year is the last year at this facility. Pretty sad, but exciting at the same time. This is one of the longest running events in the US. My first time here was only in 2005, but still, that’s 9 years for me at this facility.

Anyways…. Today was just open practice. It was a pretty laid back day. The track is sugared like last year, but it seems different though. You can still see allot of the sugar on the track and there are sugar lines all over the entire track. The layout is pretty good, pretty simple, but with a really strange uphill section on the back right. You really need to be precise through it to be fast. Grip was pretty high out there, and I think it’s easy to push too hard. The track isn’t very smooth, lots of big rolling bumps seem to be all over the track. Those bumps will catch you in the turns and fling you straight off the track.

I ran all 3 cars today. I ran my 2wd the most. It felt really good today, tried some setup stuff and I’m mostly happy with it. Ran a few different tires, but mainly just burned packs to learn the track. Ran my truck in mid motor and it felt really good, so I’m pleased with that so far. Ran my 4wd a little and it seemed pretty good. Didn’t really have my good tires for 4wd today, so I’ll run it more tomorrow.

After practice a bunch of us did a mtb ride from Bike Haus.

Chris Denny let me borrow his sons bike and Maifield let Joe borrow his bike. Here is my ride….Specialized Camber.

It was really cool, my friend Peter from Switzerland even got to do the ride. He is a pretty good downhill racer and came out to the US for a few months of vacation and is also doing a bunch of RC.

The ride was cool. It was a night ride, so with the lights it was pretty fun. Trails are different than home, but cool. We had a good size group of probably 15-20 riders. Peter and I pretty much rode together, not at the very front, but just off the front group. Ate a whole bunch of dust, and dusted out my eyes, but I really did enjoy myself, and got a pretty good burn. We left from the Bike Haus shop and did a 17 mile loop and ended at a taco shop and ate dinner.

All in all, good day 1. Tomorrow will be a little more serious with more controlled practice and trying get the right tires on the cars and getting it all dialed in. Now it’s off to bed. Thanks for checking in and check back tomorrow for more updates. I’ll have some pics from the track. God Bless.