Boysen Ice Races
03/15/2023 | 5m 4s | Video has closed captioning.
Motor sports enthusiasts don't let winter slow them down. We join the Wyoming Offroad Racers Association as they use frozen Boysen Reservoir as their racetrack.
Aired: 03/15/23
Our Wyoming is a local public television program presented by Wyoming PBS.
(upbeat rock music) - We are out here on the Boysen Reservoir having ice races today.
(motorbike engines roaring) It's a beautiful day, and we're just having a lot of fun racing the machines.
(upbeat instrumental music) (upbeat instrumental music) (air whooshes) (engines humming) (upbeat rock music) (ATV engines roaring) My granddaughter, Brianna, comes out, and we've put her on one of my other four-wheelers, and so her and I are pretty competitive with each other.
And she has a lot of fun, and she loves it even more when she can beat grandma.
(Marlene laughs) (upbeat rock music) (ATV engines roaring) I do have the competitiveness in my system, but if I kill my bike, I start laughing and just start enjoying and having fun racing.
(ATV engines roaring) (upbeat rock music) (ATV engines roaring) (child groans) - Get through the snow!
(motorbike engine humming) - Ah!
- Oh, hey, hop on.
Okay, this track moves a different way, so you follow the track, okay?
Great, on your mark, get set, go!
(motorbike engine whirring) Oh, give it some gas.
Ready?
(motorbike engine roaring) She just turned five about a week ago.
She started ice racing this year.
(motorbike engine whirring) (upbeat rock music) She loves it.
She was really excited to get out here today, so she'll have a good time.
- Cool.
(upbeat rock music continues) (motorbike engine roaring) - So here's the screws we use, and then we got a long screw and a short screw, that has nothing to do with the head, but the actual length of the shank.
So this here's a long screw bike.
We actually go through the knobby, then there's an inner liner inside of here, and these go through and into that inner liner, so they get real stiff and they won't deflect.
They won't twist and lose their biting head.
A short screw bike over here, we simply just go right into the knobby, same tire, same pattern and everything, but we just go into the nobby and into the carcass a little bit.
So what you have here is these screws will flex and they'll lose their cutting edge.
(motorbike engine humming) So these bikes have got a tremendous more amount of traction than these do.
We were just talking, it seems like anybody that tries a bike comes back.
Nobody's said like, "Oh, that's not for me."
It's a long winter and everybody here's into motorsports, and doing this type of stuff in the summers, and it's just another way to keep everybody together.
(upbeat rock music) (motorbike engine roaring) (BBQ sizzling) (foot pattering) - [Participant] Keep waving it!
Keep waving it!
(upbeat rock music continues) (engine humming) (ATV engines roaring) - It's been going good.
I'm having a lot of fun trying to keep up with Brian Bower.
He's fast, so just always learning something new from following him or trying to keep up with him.
(motorbike engine roaring) - It's something I did when I was my kids' age, and I've always enjoyed it, and my boy's 13 years old.
Right now we're racing together.
Within the next year, maybe two, (motorbike engines roaring) we'll be battling real close.
So yeah, we're real competitive.
(Brian laughs) (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music continues) (motorbike engines roaring) (motorbike engines roaring) - Yeah, we are crazy, but (laughs) I'm laughing the whole time, because I just thoroughly enjoy the ice races out here.
It's something that everybody enjoys doing together, and you don't see a lot of that anymore.
It's just really a fun, family-oriented sport.
(upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music continues)
