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Show THE DAILY HERALD, (www.heraidextra.com), Provo, Utah, Thursday, November 18, 1999 Page A16 r LOCAL iThera's saint in ihelr bteni Speed demons make West Desert their track By PAT CHRISTIAN The Daily Herald WENDOVER Get on the interstate. Drive west from JJjSalt Lake City. Normality will give way to JJhature's strange white world. Out of your sight, in a field of white, a single car pulling a of yi trailer heads east out Wendover, growing smaller as it farther into the whiteness. ; Away from anything dark or gray, it stops. People push if you can call it another car ; out of the trailer, tin-- j that ; ker with it and it roars like some ungodly vestige of Hell. This one is long like a hand-- j hewn Indian's arrow. Like a city coming to life in a film, another car j arrives. Then another ... anoth- er ... another. Is it the season of the j Lemming or the seven-yea- r locust? Have the ants come to ; feed where there is nothing to ; J stop-actio- n feed on? ; It's the speed freaks. They come here three times a j year... Speed Week in August ... World of Speed in September ... World Finals in October. Come November, it will flood here - thanks to these speed j freaks - and there will be a lake here until April. From all over this planet they arrive ... come to go faster with their artificial legs, their I cars, than anyone else has on this whiteness no hill to climb there's Ijwhere hor coast down, nor curve in jtjthe road, not even a road, Jwhere mufflers are for cars in 3gthe city, not out here. Every year, records in different classes are broken by peo- . ple like Rick Vesco, who owns a recreational vehicle and snowmobile shop in Brigham City, and his brother Don who has an automobile shop in ; ; J J J J here-to-for- e . Temecula, Calif. People on this . '. I blue-skie- d water planet have always chased land speed records even before the first natives of Wendover ran from their mountain caves toward the white horizon, just because . . . for the quest. The first timed, official record with a man in a car was 39.24 mph over a kilometer course. In France in 1898, Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Lauba- t was behind the wheeLChasing speed in cars started in 1912 on the Bonneville Salt Flats. But it wasn't until the late 1940s that organized racing events started, sponsored by the Southern California Timing Association, which still organizes the runs. In 1965, here on the salt, Art Arfons held on and drove his Green Monster 576 mph to become the fastest man on Earth, if not the sky. Speed freaks here, traveling at the speed of bright salt, are all purists, chasing records in cars whose engines drive the wheels of their cars. Jet or rocket thrust vehicles have gone faster, vVen going faster than sound. cars are These not suited to the salt flats so they run on dry lakes. g The wheel-driveland speed record has stood at 409 mph since 1991, set by Al Teague with a jet turbine driving its wheels. At least that was until Rick and Don Vesco became the fastest men on the Salt Flats last week. They are the kings of the n flats after driving their Turbinators 427 mph with Don holding on to the steering wheel. When you walk out into all that endless supply of salt, be wary of dark spots in the distance. They get big really quickly, coming at you out of the whiteness at the bright speed of salt. Actually these speed freaks aren't freaks at all. They've got day jobs and are good friends to each other and their neighbors and colleagues back home. They're millionaires, members of the middle class, engineers, and they are also environmentalists. They are the saviors of the salt, that in the final analysis isn't so endless after all. It was only these speed addicts who first noticed the salt disappearing and did something about it. No one else seemed to care as early or as much about this natural wonder a salt desert. It wasn't the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance or Sierra Club, it was the speed addicts. No tree huggers out here where nothing lives and the only sound is a few planes flying overhead and the unobstructed wind. "We think it may have started in 1949," Rick Vesco said about the surface of the salt disappearing. John Vesco, Rick's father, raced before him on the salt in Number 444, a Model B streamliner. Rick started racing at 14, setting his first land speed record on a motorcycle at 131 mph. Ford-powere- Q PAT CHRISTIAN AThe Dw1 Speed demon: Crews prepare Don and Rick Vesco's car for a record attempt at the Bonneville Salt near Wendover. ! Courtesy pholo Speed demon: Rick Vesco, who owns a recreational vehicle and snowmobile shop in Brigham City, is one of the many speedsters who seek to set records in Utah's salt flats. dent of the Southern California Timing Association says he also runs his Alfa Romeo streamliner 30 miles from his Lancaster, Calif, home at El Mirage, a dry lake bed. But he said it allows for only a 1.3 mile course. He says you can get a five mile run on the Bonneville Salt Flats, and it is the most special and unique place to run and trails a lot of world-recor- d history. He says it would be a tragedy to lose the Salt Flats for speed trials. began to focus on a nearby potash mining company. The speed addicts fired off letters to the Secretary of the Interior while the salt continued to get thinner. Soon, it was feared, it would get too thin to drive on. Something had to be done. Save the Salt Inc. was formed by those like Rick who loved the salt flats and racing. Rick was made chairman of Save the Salt Inc. and served and finally the BLM began listening. "Why, it's like a national treasure or monument," he says, adding that there's hardly any other multiple-usexcept for slowly hauling the salt away for profit. Manghelli credits Vesco and other members of Save the e 1988-199- Mike Manghelli, vice presi- - The project requires 111 of ditches and Bix miles of j as well as monster pumps1 and plumbing that deposit n water on the saj flats where the speed free! have been racing since 19; "It's probably 30 years Rick says. i' But he added that hopdt Salt Inc. for hopefully saving the salt flats. Vesco said that in 1990, Save the Salt Inc. was finally able to convince the State of Utah and the Federal Government to allocate $1.5 million for a study to determine what was causing the loss. In 1995, the report by U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that mining was the major cause of the salt disappearing. Rick says the loss had been occurring for about 50 years and had been caused by a number of mining operations, some having come and gone. He credits Reilly Industries for accepting blame for everyone and now agreeing to resalt nearly 28 square miles of salt flats where the fast cars run. HOW TO DECORATE ONE salt-lade- the five-yea- r agreement -- 5; 4 that now has Reilly pump! water that is 19 to 24 percr salt onto the course Novenf will rebu through April the deteriorated surface. The program isn five-ye- over, he says. But at least it appears the annual loss of si has been halted and hope: will now get thicker and leai a brighter and whiter fui that unnatural world. TREE AND KEEP IN TOUCH WITH .ANOTHER. Get A FREE ORNAMENT AND A n d In 1977, Rick went back to the future, redesigning dad's old 444 with a 700cc Yamaha motorcycle engine and ran 196 mph. Rick said after noticing the thickness of the salt surface getting thinner ever year, he and other racers asked the Bureau of Land Management to do something to see what the problem might be and what could be done to prevent disaster for the speed freaks. Another use over the years had been extraction of salt and other minerals. And attention $30 Sprint PCS Phone No matter how many branches in your family tree, a Sprint PCS I " REBATE WITH ANY Phone from RadioShack is the perfect gift for staying in touch i and enjoying the clarity of Sprints nationwide, network. all-digi- tal Especially now, since any Sprint PCS Phone comes with a $30 rebate mail-i- n - $100 when you buy two. a week; science and social science, two days and other subjects as needed, said Bayles. To pay for the program the FUNDS Continued from A1J demic assistance. More than 580 responded to the BYU survey on the program. 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