IHRA: Driver Spotlight - Nitro Harley rider Rickey House

Rickey House has always raced something – four wheeled or two – but about 10 years ago he began migrating from less powerful motorcycles to the IHRA Nitro Motorcycles. And that was all she wrote.

The other motorcycles "didn't give me the adrenaline rush the Nitro bikes do," said the 57-year-old Texan. And as far as the idea of going to a slower class as he gets older – "It's kind of hard to back up, you know?"

House has had a solid career in cycle racing since he bought a bike from fellow IHRA racer Randall Andras in 2006 – but it hasn't always been easy. Like that time in 2010 when he was racing at a track in Arizona that had a very rough shutdown area.

"The bike flipped at 200 mph and I went off," he said. He spent the night in the hospital, then came back the next day and ran two more rounds on a damaged bike.

Why? Because that's what racers do.

Then, at Norwalk, he did his burnout and the engine dropped a cylinder and blew the head off; House ended up knocked out, with a concussion. "That," he said, "was a sonic boom, right there."

Still, safety features continue to make racing less risky – as if running 225mph on two wheels will ever be safe – and one of the best features to come along, House says, is the parachute. He was wary of the first one he installed, making a practice run to the 330-foot mark and pulling the parachute. Now, he seldom thinks about it. 

"I'll get to the end, pull the chute, chop the throttle and that's it," he said.

Also, if a bike is drifting toward the wall, pulling the chute can help get it back toward the center of the lane. "Before that, you just had to manhandle it, and I'm not that big of a guy," he said.

House, 57, plans to keep going as long as he can, but he admits that as he gets older, it takes a little longer to heal up after a mishap.

"I'm not what I used to be," he said. "It may be age, but I keep thinking it's the motorcycles that did it!"

Aside from his own bike repair shop, American V-Twinn Cycles in Humble, Texas, House has some additional sponsors that help keep him on the road and on the track, like Javelina Harley- Davidson; CC Forbes, an oil drilling supplier; and OTR Fleet Services.