1995 Blues Brothers Trike Race Second Incarnation

by Neal Fisher

          The second year saw many innovations in the Blues Brothers’ quest for glory at the Killington Trike race. The trike got faster, the music louder, and a marketing division was created. But the greatest advancement, the one that the crowd loved best, the single most exciting, enduring, knock-your-socks-off creation, the secret weapon that no one could counter was undoubtedly THE BABES! But more about that later, let’s go back to the darkness of winter, a short, cold day early in 1995.

Ledoux is in his garage (before he expanded it into the Taj Mahal of garages), and the wood stove is keeping out the lonely gloom of a chilly, late January night. A faint light from the single, tiny window reflects off the snowdrifts, belying the Dr. Frankenstein-like aura that was hidden inside. Ledoux pulls the shades and furtively slides a large box out from underneath the workbench. He reaches into the dusty container, carefully lifts out an object wrapped in old newspaper, and slowly unwraps it. “This…” he says to Neal who has stopped by with a six-pack of Long Trail, “this is how we are going to destroy them.” Ledoux’s eyes mist over (probably from the dust) and he holds up a wheel. The magical wheel can’t be bigger than a small personal pizza. Its hub is solid, dark red, and the tire looks to be a thin strip of black rubber.

Ledoux explains that this was the wheel that carried his son to victory many years ago at the Boy Scout Soap Box Derby (Bob never throws anything away). He recalls how his son careened away from all, descending as a stone thrown from a cliff, so fast that the actual race was merely a formality. Laughing, cackling, he raises the wheel toward the heavens. “And this wheel will rise again, we will smote the Stooges and reap the glory of victory. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Neal opens a beer. “I thought the rules said we couldn’t modify the trike?”  Bob reassures him that no one will be the wiser, that he knows the other teams have done the same, and he begins to recite the friction coefficients of stainless steel versus ceramic ball bearings. As he ignites the oxy-acetylene torch he smiles and says, “They will never know what hit them”. And thus was born the trike that the Blue Brothers would carry forth into battle that sultry Sunday in July of 1995.

Ledoux was in a frenzy of creation and the effect spilled over to Neal. He had recently purchased an 1100-watt Carver amplifier and two gigantic Peavy speakers dreaming that someday, with enough practice, he was going to be a competent disc jockey. Last years’ tiny car speakers could barely be heard by the boisterous crowd. If the DJ equipment could be hooked up to the Blues Mobile the resulting effect would deluge the crowd with blues music. Sunderhauf had a trailer connection on the Blues Mobile for his boat. Ledoux had a trailer that was large enough to carry the DJ equipment, the Blues Brothers, the Blues Babes, and a small herd of caribou. All they needed was a very long extension cord. Or a small gasoline-powered generator.

That spring Charlotte (who was single at the time but was strutting her stuff for Andy) had the brilliant idea for the Blues Brothers secret weapon. It consisted of three vital parts: 1) a tiny black dress 2) stockings with lines down the back, and 3) babes with enough guts to wear them. Fortunately the ski club had no shortage of women with the goods and the guts. Milli Arnold, Martha O’Neal, and Angie Testa joined Charlotte as the first cadre of Babes (in fact the number of Babes through the ensuing years would far outnumber the guys).  Completing the outfit required a black hat and black sunglasses. As if that wasn’t enough, Betsy Gaudian and Charlie Ammann dressed in character as “the penguin” and Curtis the orphanage caretaker. One final requirement: no one was allowed to smile keeping in character with the Blues Brothers guiding ideology “We’re on a mission from God”.

f you have never seen “The Blues Brothers” movie some of the details may seem confusing. The day before the trike race Neal and Bob went to all the open restaurants on the access road and posted “playbills” on bulletin boards and inside bathrooms. “One day only, the Blues Brothers” was plastered on telephone poles and guardrails. Taken from a scene early in the movie, we tossed car cigarette lighters out the window to the crowd (they definitely had not seen the movie as they were throwing them back at us. Neal still has a collection of dozens of lighters to this day). As one more guarantee of success, we gave free drink vouchers to the judges as the rules explicitly stated that the bribing of judges was allowed and encouraged.

And it all came together on that Sunday in July.

The babes were absolutely striking, never smiling, and driving the crowd wild with desire, lust and yearning. 

Ledouxs’ trike, replete with a stainless steel axle, ball bearing hubs, a steel headset scavenged from a child’s tricycle discarded at the junkyard (ask Ledoux about junkyards, he is the Jedi Knight of Manchester’s), and a new elongated wooden seat to accommodate the larger gluts of a full grown Blues Brother. Strangely, it still did not appear to be as heavily modified as it actually was. And it was fast; Bob said it was the fastest on the access road.

Up the hill the Stooges were sporting two small speakers on top of their black Chevy Blazer, driving back and forth in front of the crowd, playing the theme from “The Three Stooges”. It was obviously an idea stolen from last years Blues Brothers (the sincerest form of flattery) and improved upon, as the speakers were bigger and louder than the Blues Mobile was last year. The sound coming from their 12-volt PA speakers was lacking punch and clarity but the crowd loved them anyway. The stooges beamed with pride. They had no idea what was about to happen.

It came slowly up the hill, unnoticed at first, and can be compared to the mysterious phenomenon of water receding from the beach as the unseen and unsuspected tsunami begins to rise up. Observers note the strange phenomenon, unable to discern the power and ferocity that will soon be coming forth. Only instead of a towering wave of water, this was music. It was faint, yet very clear, and getting louder. I know that music, the spectators think; where have I heard it before. Louder, and still getting louder every second. Where is it coming from? Suddenly, there, out on the street, an old police car towing an ungainly conglomerate of people and equipment. The music is impossibly loud, echoing off the surrounding mountains. The stooges stare in disbelief; the crowd is captivated. Suddenly the music stops, a few people notice the hum of a small Honda generator and then, just as suddenly, the music starts again, louder than before, if that’s possible, and everyone recognizes “She Caught the Kady”, the opening theme of the Blues Brothers movie. The entire entourage begins to roll slowly forward, turning into the Grist Mill driveway, a juggernaut, and that guy has a microphone! “Ladies and gentlemen, just back from their tour of Europe, Asia, and the sub-continent, the triumphant return of the Bluuuuuues Brothers Rhythm and Blues Quartet”. We had them at hello.

In fact, this was the beginning of several years of Blues Brothers and Babes domination of the Killington Tricycle race. The two would eventually become synonymous. You couldn’t talk about the trike race without mentioning the Blues team, and vice-versa. We had the costumes, the car, the music, the Babes, and there on the hood of the car, striking in his black suit, hat and glasses, a stunning woman seated next to him, sat Bob astride the glorious steed that would carry us to victory. Of course there were 20 others teams that thought otherwise, and we would have to defeat them in a run-off heat and a final race for the roses, but what could wrong? Our trike was fast!

As mentioned in the first year history (see 1994) the trike race is a stage race, each rider handing off the trike, helmet, and boxer shorts to the next teammate. Between the three stages is a series of  “antics” or tasks that the rider must perform successfully before the next stage is started. This tomfoolery tends to slow down the fast trikes and speed up the slow ones making for a more exciting race and introducing the uncertainty of chance, luck, and good (or bad) fortune. But it was still critical to have a fast trike. If you recall from last year our unmodified “Big Wheel” exploded in turn one, before Andy even made it to the first hand-off. We got a little further this year.

At the start, as usual, Andy poured the requisite beer over his face and Neal pushed him off the start line. Nerves were on edge but the trike held together around the first turn and the hand-off to Ledoux went smoothly. Bob got back on course, not the first one out of transition, and was trailing the others slightly. However, the speed of the highly engineered machine and a little luck seemed to be all that was needed to insure victory and advancement to the final. And it was fast. Ledoux was screaming down the hill gaining on the competition at a furious pace. His boasting was justified; the hours of work in a sequestered garage was paying off. And then it happened.

A spectator, amazed at the speed of a child’s toy, yelled in excitement “Look at how fast he is”.  Hubris can be a terrible enemy. Smiling from ear-to-ear, supremely confidant of putting another trophy on the shelf, Bob heard the woman’s exclamations and looked back over his shoulder as a conquering Caesar returning to Rome. He leaned backward trying to see who the admirer was and the trike tipped backwards as his weight shifted. That alone was no problem but the modified seat had been extended beyond the rear axle and it dragged on the ground. The resulting leverage applied enough force to the seat to break it in half and it detached from the trike. In an instant Bob went from a triumphant Caesar to a panicky Chuck Yeager looking for the eject button before the violent and inexorable ending would smash him and the vehicle to bits. Somehow he managed to regain control, sliding sideways into the next transition area. But the seat was gone and in its place were two bolts protruding up from the frame and right where Sunderhauf would have to place his butt crack. Ledoux gave Sunderhauf a warning. “Don’t sit down unless you enjoy major surgery”. Sunderhauf ran down the final stage carrying the trike in his arms. He crossed the finish line dead last.

It gets worse. Although they had lost the heat, the Blues Brothers had completed the race, albeit on two feet, not three wheels. But the judges decided they were going to have one final run-off for all the losers, and that the victor of the consolation heat would automatically qualify for the final. And because Sunderhauf ran across the finish line we avoided a “D.N.F.” and the requisite disqualification. Why did the judges decide this? It could have been Ledoux begging them. It could have been the free drink bribes. It could have been the music. It could have been the large number of Mountain Laurel supporters. Whatever it was, Ledoux, desperate and frantic, used whatever scavenged tools he could find to make the wounded trike roadworthy. The seat was useless. The bolts sticking up where the seat had been could not be removed. I have never seen a man strike an object with a hammer as hard as Bob did that afternoon.

Repairs were impossible. Racers were being summoned to the starting line. LeClair, Ledoux, and Sunderhauf improvised a method that would avoid the pain and bloodshed (they thought) that would result from sitting on the damaged machine. They would kneel and the bolts would stick up harmlessly between their knees. This created a higher center of gravity that would cause some instability but there was no other choice. First LeClair and he made it to the first transition. We were falling behind a little. Then Ledoux, and he made it to the second transition but we were now clearly losing. Sunderhauf took the hand-off and looked at the others that were already rolling toward the finish line. The crowd was screaming at Sunderhauf to get on the trike. Win here and we had a shot at glory, lose and we would forever walk in shame. Surely the speed of our three-wheeler would carry us past the competition. We just needed to get it rolling and let gravity do the rest. In his haste, Sunderhauf stood on the trike and pushed it downhill.

It is necessary here to discuss two scientific factors that contributed to the impending tragedy. The first principle encompasses gravity, friction, and the speed of descent. In a perfect vacuum a feather will fall as fast as a bowling ball (no time to explain this, just take my word for it). However, throw in some friction (wind, the road, the wheels, the bearings, the list is long) and weight does become a factor, even an advantage. The heavier the object, the quicker it is going to go downhill. Sunderhauf is bigger than Ledoux. He is bigger than LeClair. He is a big guy and big guys go downhill faster than little guys. Added to this was the rolling speed of our trike. It probably was the fastest trike on the mountain. Put a big guy on a fast trike and speed increases dramatically.

The second principle concerns center of gravity and the tendency for objects to tip over. An object with a low center of gravity is difficult to tip over. The opposite is true for an object with a high center of gravity. The higher the center of gravity, the easier it becomes for an object to fall over. This is true for all objects. Candlesticks. Skiers. Cars. And big guys on fast trikes. A big guys standing on a child’s tricycle has a very high center of gravity.

Sunderhauf was standing on the trike and had to lean over to hold the handlebars. This made it difficult for him to look forward as he had to strain his neck backward as far as possible to see down the racecourse. At first it would have been easy for him to jump off but he’s no coward. The speed of the trike began to increase and Bob tried to look forward and he leaned backward ever so slightly as he lifted his head. This removed some of the weight from the front wheel. (This is bad too. It needs to be firmly on the road to maintain control.) The speed was still increasing, dramatically so. The trike began to wobble. And still, every agonizing microsecond, the trike descended faster and the wobble increased. The entire assembly, man and machine, was an irresistible force and the outcome was inevitable. Jumping off now was out of the question, not because of pride but because of velocity and the certain injury that would occur. Slowing down was impossible. Finally the wobble became stronger than the forward motion and Sunderhauf was catapulted through the air. The scene, amazingly, was captured by a Mountain Times photographer. It shows Bob dancing on his head, the trike spinning wildly away. Bob didn’t have time to fasten his helmet and that is also bouncing down the road. Luckily, the only damage was cuts, scrapes, and bruises (lots of all three). The photograph was squirreled away in the Mountain Times archives but resurfaced three years later as a reference photo. It reminded us all of Sunderhauf’s sacrifice and we were grateful that the image had been captured for posterity. 

Driving back to Connecticut that night I was riding shotgun as Sunderhauf guided the Blues Mobile south on I-91. The drivers’ side windshield wiper malfunctioned in the heavy rain and kept rotating past the window edge onto the side of the car and getting stuck there. I took the hangar from my Blues Brothers suit and fashioned a device that would prevent the wiper from extending too far. Bob shifted uncomfortably in his seat, stiffness settling in from the horrendous crash he suffered earlier in the day. Only once did he complain, if it was a complaint at all. “Neal” he said, “It hurts to lift my leg to move my foot from the gas pedal to the brake”.