On Jim Odom. From a Web article.
"This is not the most interesting job that Odom has had. He's been a movie stuntman. He's a champion flat-track motorcycle racer, the king of Altamont Speedway (yes, that one) out when this area used to be the stomping grounds of the Hell's Angels.
Odom is in the Motorcycle Hall of Fame. I found him in a 1971 advertisement for Suzuki sitting on a TM-400 Cyclone, with a trophy in one arm and a bikinied blonde woman in the other. Empty desert opens out behind them. The tagline reads, "Built to take on the country."
In 2004, well into his middle age, Odom rode a motorcycle called the Ack-Attack more than 300 miles an hour over the Bonneville Salt Flats. As he neared the end of his ride, in the spot where his speed would be measured for world-record purposes, a crosswind kicked up and the conditions on the track deteriorated. A writer on the scene says Odom slammed on the throttle and tried to "muscle his way through the wind and soft, slippery, rutted salt." It didn't work. His front wheel left the ground. The bike started to roll, its canopy popping off. His emergency parachute stopped the roll, and he got out of the Ack-Attack unharmed.
Now, at the State Water Project, he controls the throttle of a far more powerful machine.
water channel
The channel leading from the Clifton Court Forebay into the Banks Pumping Plant can send more than 10,000 cubic feet of water per second flowing into the California Aqueduct. Alexis Madrigal
Nominally, his work is mechanical, but most of what increases or decreases his plant's pumping has nothing to do with horsepower."