The Racing Wade at NHIS, June 7, 2003
Friday, June 6, 2003
Tim and I rode up to the track on Friday afternoon to take care of my license renewal paperwork, and registration. I was able to get my old number back: 371. That's pretty cool. People who pre-register are usually the more hardcore folk, and they are the ones at the track Friday afternoon, so the line at the PRE-entry window was huge. Having not preregistered at all, put me in the POST-entry line, which was very short. In fact it was non-existant by the time I got my license renewal and AMA membership straightened out. They wanted to put me in the blue practice (medium speed) but I insisted that I belonged in the slow RED practice...after some thought, they decided to follow my suggestion. Good thing, too. I would have been a traffic hazard in the faster sessions. I was in and outta there badda-bing badda-boom with a transponder and registration paperwork in the saddlebag of the bike by about 7:15pm. We stopped for some yummy subs at Brookside, then headed home. It was a glorious night for a ride. We stopped at Walmart in Rochester to look for a battery for Tim's TT225, and took home the physically smallest battery they had on the shelf. It turned out to be way too big to fit the hole, so we just cleaned up the old one, and put it on the trickle charger for the night.
Saturday, June 7, 2003.
Tim and I were up at 4:30a to put the final touches on his bike. It still wouldn't start, so I planned to mess with it between practices at the track. Loaded the SV and his TT on the little red flatbed, and filled the astro with the rest of the gear, including a tarp to string up off the fence. Having lost touch with Chris Rayner, and the garage crew, I figured I'd just hang out at the fence again, like the old days. It was nice to not have to do anything to MY bike, except put it on the charger over night for insurance.
I grabbed the paperwork out of the streetbike saddlebag, and at about 6:20 Tim, Connie, and I were off to the races again!
As I got ready to go through tech, I realized that I had failed to pick up the transponder in the streetbike. D'oh! A $50 donation to the NHIS coffers got me a new one for the weekend. No education is cheap, right? I'll probably remember the transponder next time. As I rolled into tech, I realized that I have a belly pan, for the first time ever, and I have to take it off....some of Micky's garage mates loaned me a 10mm socket to pull it off with, and Micky stickered the bike and helmet and I was on my way.
First practice went OK. Air temps were in the high 50s low 60s, and the track was dry. I slowly whittled my times down. I found that the SV feels more like the EX on the track than it does in the pits. The 1/8-turn throttle Micky installed takes some getting used to. The twist force required is a higher than stock (no surprise there), and I have to be very deliberate about twisting it to get the last 10% of the twist out of it. When I DID get the full effect coming out of 12, Turn 1 came up at a scary fast clip! What I've lost over the past 18 months in corners by being timid, I almost made up for in motor on the straight. The brakes on the beast are great, and I decided that I need to do more bench-presses. Holding myself up off the bars during the hard braking into T3 after the tires were warm was real work! I got some 1:30s in this session. I don't think I passed anyone except with motor on the front straight. I hope I wasn't too much of a slug in corners. I realized after I got back in that I had never checked the tire pressures. But it felt OK, so I just let it ride.
I had Tim hunt down a new spark plug for his TT at street and comp. We got that installed and with a little careful choke operation his TT blat-blatted to life again. Nice to hear after all that time being ignored. So he got his gear on and went out gallavanting. As with years gone by, his having a good place to ride around was a big part of going to the track.
My second practice session went OK. I trimmed the times, and regularly got caught behind slower traffic (probably riders on cold tires, I figured), but turned 1:30's steady, and two laps in the 1:27s. This is still two seconds off my best times on the Ratbike-EX, but faster than I've run in more than two years. With more motor available in the SV, it's all about cornering. I planted a knee in T6 several times, though I'm not getting in there as quick as I'd like, but I'm still *way* slow through 1, 3, and 9, particularly. I've just got to stop using those damn brakes. All they do is slow you down, ya know? I'm happy with the result, even though this is about 6 seconds off the pace for moderately competetive SV650s, I'm told.
Then the rain started about noon. It was clear it would NOT stop until after dark. I figured I'd just putter around the track, but the more I listened to the rain beating off the tarp and the truck roof, the more I realized that that was pointless. As one other rider put it, I already know how to go slow, so why go out to practice that? I realize that racing the rain is a good way to practice being smooth, but on a new bike not equipped with either tires appropriate for the task after being away so long, I decided I'll work on smooth another day. During race 2, as the rain came down, a synthetic oil spill from car-racing last week in Turn 2 became a problem. Synth stuff just doesn't go away...they pressure washed the track, and put down fluffy stuff, and warned everyone about it, and got back to racing about an hour late. They announced that all sprints were trimmed to 6 laps for the rest of the day. That really sealed the deal for me, and we started packing up.
I'll be back to race again another day! Hope to see everyone at the track NEXT Saturday!
Costs 3 armbands to get into the track = $60 1 sprint race registration = $60 Second transponder = $50 Gas and food = $25
SUMMARY: This was a cheap weekend, really:
-Wade Bartlett, June 8, 2003
Last modified on 08JUNE2003