Chico Human Powered Vehicle Project
Chico sweeps HPV road compeitions!!!!!
Midnight Mocha and Double Latte at the finish
line.
In an amazing display of team excellance Chico HPV won both the
single rider and tandem road races in the annual ASME compeition held
in Reno April 27-28. Overall Double Latte finished second, while
Midnight Mocha took home fifth. It had been a long year but all the hard
work paid off with the first time a team has won both road races.
In the sprint race on Saturday Double Latte took second at 35.2 mph,
only .6 mph from first. Midnight Mocha claimed sixth with a speed just
under 39 mph. The ever changing wind conditions made for an exciting
sprint event. Wheather to run a fairing or not was a tough deciscion,
but after dumping the bike at 35 mph it was decided maybe without would
be best, but wait!!! Then the winds died for a brief moment and Mike
Cusick was able to power the tattered fairing to the blazing speed of 39
mph. Earlier in the day in more favorable conditions Alicia Mercer
secured a high road race start by cranking out a speed of 33+ mph.
Sunday was the day Chico had been waiting for, with top-notch bikes and
talented riders we knew great things were ahead. Alicia started things
off by quickly taking the lead and then comfortably settling in behind
Hawaii for the remainder of her laps. Then Kevin Hulick hopped on
and promptly put Chico in the lead. Kevin then turned control over to
Mike Cusick who as head designer of the bike decided it was time to see
how well the bike handled in a crash. It did quite well and a quick
recovery put Chico back into the lead over Reno. I (Andy Palmer) then
took the reins for the reminder of the race, holding off Reno for a 15
second victory.
In the tandem road race Mike and Alicia were the first to go and
they secured a lead that would not be relinquished. Kevin and Andy then
tooled around for a few laps, concentrating more on not crashing then
going fast. Then the way fast team of head designer/pilot/tandem rider
extrodinaire Dave Tarkington and super fast/retro man/comfy seat designer
Darin Smedberg took control and secured Chico's second win of the day.
Here are the RESULTS
Here are some web sites pertaining to HPV's
ACT HPV Challenge
Dutch HPV archive
International Human Powered Vehicle
Archive
Cal Poly
SLO HPV
UC Berkeley
Human Powered Vehicle Project
Return to Andy Palmer's
Homepage