Need for speed keeps Harley racer heading back to the strip
Wednesday, November 12, 2008 7:54 PM PST
By Rick S. Alvord
Printable version
E-mail this articleTerry Brown was having some work done on one of his high-octane motorcycles when a friend made a comment that caused him to raise his eyebrows.
OK, forget the eyebrows. It caused him to “cuss him up one side and down the other,” Brown said.
“He told me I wasn’t going to be running that bike very much longer anyway,” said the 60-year-old Castle Rock resident, who captured his second straight Super Gas Division crown this past season in the Canadian Motorcycle Drag Racing Association.
“He said, ‘Well, you ARE getting up there. What the heck does that mean?” Brown added. “We are going to do this for as long as it is still fun and we can still cut lights on the young guys.”
Brown competes on the CMDRA circuit with a Harley Davidson dragster that hits speeds of up to 140 miles per hour. As if winning four of six races to claim back-to-back Super Gas titles wasn’t enough, he also competed in the Modified Class this season with a different bike, and finished second overall in the point standings after winning three of six races.
In Super Gas, he won in Ashcroft, British Columbia, in Edmonton, Alberta, twice and in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
“We had to be on our game all year because of the competition,” Brown said. “In the Modified Class, we managed a top speed of 156 miles per hour at some of the events. It was a friend’s bike, and it was a lot different than my Super Gas bike. It was a torque monster and a real handful to run.”
This was Brown’s 10th year of Canadian racing. He and his longtime girlfriend, Peggy Smith, are a team. She serves as his crew chief and biggest fan.
Their travails through Canada always lead to a few good stories for the folks back home in Castle Rock.
“I’ve been traveling in Canada for 10 years and haven’t hit anything with the truck — until now,” Brown said. “We hit a bear on the way to Edmonton. That’s not really funny, but it did happen. I narrowly missed him/her with the truck, but the front of the trailer caught it. When I got the truck stopped, we looked things over and by that time, two guys were hauling it off the road. One of the guys was the town of Fernley’s butcher.”
When Brown recently attended the CMDRA awards banquet, the circuit’s director presented him with a stuffed bear covered with Band-Aids. The bear was wearing a sign around its neck that read, “NO HUNTING.”
Brown and Smith left Castle Rock for better weather in Arizona, and possibly Mexico, in late October. But he plans to be back in time to embark on a possible Super Gas three-peat.
He turns 61 in May.
“I’m feeling great and already looking forward to next year,” Brown said. “Why stop now?”
Brown added that he is in need of sponsors for the 2009 season. Anyone interested in helping can e-mail him at shrapnelracing@wwestsky.net
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