Bike 2 Beer IV: Durham edition

This past weekend, I lead another successful 21 mile bike and beer ride to downtown Durham and back. It was my first time to offer a Bull City route so I invited friends from that side of town to join us; some who have rode with me before and some who joined us for the first time. As you can see from the photos below, we had a great time touring the area with visits to several notable breweries and watering holes. Check out the pics below and the full gallery from the day on smugmug.com.

Keep an eye out on my new Bike 2 Beer Tours facebook page and twitter page for all the updates as I expand Bike 2 Beer tours to more trails, more breweries and more friends. Cheers!

racephan Fotos on flickr

Along with maintaining a large collection of motorsports photo galleries at smugmug.com since 2004, I have also been posting some of my favorites to my smaller flickr gallery feed over the past two years. Check out the slideshow below with over 100 of my favorite shots of sports cars, Indycars, motorcycles, drag racers, drifters, grid girls, MINI Coopers and more. Many of these were taken at VIRginia International Raceway though you might recognize other venues as well if you have followed by blog over the years.

Clips of Faith event coming to Raleigh

A friend of a friend recently told me about an upcoming charity event that is planned for downtown Raleigh and is part of a 14 city national tour being put on by New Belgium Brewing Company. The Clips of Faith tour features an evening of films made by craft beer fans and what else, craft beer! A charity is selected in each city visited along the tour to be the beneficiary of charitable contributions raised at the event. In Raleigh, New Belgium has chosen Triangle Spokes Group and I was contacted by one of their staff - Rich Nowalk to help spread the word about the event. Triangle Spokes Group is a spin-off from the original Charlotte Spokes Group whose missions are to purchase new bicycles for need-worthy children each Christmas season who would likely not receive them otherwise.

As an avid beercyclist, it did not take me long but a moment to volunteer to lend a hand to help promote such a great event and deserving charity. No child (or adult for that matter) should be without a bicycle and I certainly support the idea of getting new bikes to needy kids in our community.

Triangle Spokes Group is looking for 45 volunteers to staff the event plus for the rest of us to show up, drink New Belgium beer and enjoy the show. Check out the details below and contact Rich Nowalk at RichNowalk@mac.com with Triangle Spokes Group to volunteer.

If you plan to attend, you can also check out the TriBeer Meetup listing of the event for details. 

What is Clips of Faith?

www.clipsoffaith.com

-The Clips of Faith is a tour of 14 cities of HANDMADE FILMS while enjoying HANDMADE BEERS under the stars.

-Attached is more information on volunteer duties. And yes you will get some free beers!

Where is the Event

-City Plaza in Downtown Raleigh

When is the Event

-Thursday September 16. Event is from 6:30pm-9:30pm that night but volunteers will be needed at different times throughout the day and night.

Why?

-Triangle Spokes Group (founders Ashley Wilson and Rich & Jenn Nowalk) are reaching out to you because we need your time and energy for this great cause! We want this to be an annual event in Raleigh for the Triangle Spokes Group. Not only will it be fun, but a great way to help our community and more importantly the kids who look forward to getting bikes this holiday season. The Triangle Spokes Group will earn profits from both beer and merchandise sales so it has the chance to raise money for a lot of bikes! If you haven’t had the chance to watch how important the donations are then please watch some of our videos -http://trianglespokesgroup.org/media/videos/. Thanks to New Belgium, 14 cities across the country have a chance to make a difference through film and beer - how great is that! Now its your chance to get involved! Please respond ASAP if you are interested in helping us out, and we will let you know the volunteer opportunities available. Contact Rich Nowalk at RichNowalk@mac.com

AMA August weekend at VIR

This past Saturday, I got back out to Virginia International Raceway for the Suzuki White Lightning AMA Pro Superbike Nationals. It was the first time I had been able to get out to the track for the hot August event since 2006. A friend of mine who went with me that year has been going back to the track ever since and he met me out there for the afternoon of racing. Thankfully, there was a nice cloud cover most of the day so the heat remained in the low 90's instead of the high 90's as it has been in the past. I made it to the track in time to see all the main events including the Daytona Sportbike race 1 and the SuperSport race 1. Race 2 for both classes took place on Sunday.

VIR seems to have a knack for creating very close racing and record setting - today was no different. The Daytona Sportbike race had a margin of victory of 0.000 making it the closest finish in AMA history. I honestly do not know how officials decided who was the winner as it was the closest to a tie I have ever seen in racing. Officials declared Bobby Fong on a Ducati the winner over a very disappointed Martin Cardenas. The photo below showing the finish is from the AMA website while the rest of the photos here were taken by me. 

Not to be outdone, the top AMA Pro SuperSport class (formerly SuperBike) race ended with a 0.005 margin of victory with Tommy Hayden topping Ben Bostrom for the win. 

We stuck around for a while after the racing was over for the post-race stunt show with 3 stunt riders showing off between turns 3 and 4 with a couple of the VIR girls as props. As always, it was a great day at VIR.