THSCC Forums

I was standing in the welcome party food line on Friday night at the Peru Tour this past weekend and I spot somebody that looks strangely familiar. It turned out to be Phil Wehman which some of you may remember as a Tarheel member a few years ago. He used to drive a Caterham 7 that I believe he built in his garage while in NC.

After chatting with him for a bit, I find out he is an Indy region member and he was one of the organizers for the Tour. He sold the 7 a couple of years back and bought a Lotus Elise which he runs in ASP. He added a factory supercharger which bumped him to ASP and it sounded like he was really enjoying the car. More importantly, his wife liked the car better than the 7 since it had heat, A/C and other "normal car" amenities.

There were a few of us sitting around the hospitality tent on Saturday when we noticed a huge ambulance near the entrance to the site. I found out a couple of hours later that Phil was riding his bicycle with a large number of toilet paper rolls (16? in an attempt to refill the porto-johns) when either his shirt or a few rolls (depending on who was telling the story) got tangled up in the front spokes causing him to endo over the bars onto the Peru concrete. Apparently the concrete is as hard as it is grippy and he wound up suffering a serious compound fracture (described by several people as a "shattering") of one of his hand/wrists. Not good at all!

The only follow up report I've heard is that he spent the rest of the weekend at a major reconstructive hand clinic in a nearby larger city and it will be a fairly tough recovery. I didn't get a chance to get any contact information from him but I'm sure he would appreciate if everybody from Tarheel keeps him in their thoughts and prayers.

Jim