Whew. The summer is almost over. Good thing, as I seem to be getting attracted to the dirt more and more often. Friday I went up to Loudon register. I decided to run two sprint races Saturday, and give my still bandaged and tender broken right thumb the day off on Sunday.
Those of you who have followed my epic journey into motorcycle racing will perhaps recall that at the conclusion of my last installment, I had tweaked the front end of my bike in the grass outside Turn 9 last weekend, after unwisely deciding to pass someone on the inside in such a fashion that put me next to him at the apex of the turn. His line then closed on me, and we both went into the weeds. That same weekend, I bought a freshly crashed EX which had lots of good parts, including a good front tire (which I needed pretty badly).
SO, I spent some time over the last two weeks playing musical fork tubes and front ends. I decided that my fork tubes had indeed been slightly bent, and that the ones from my new parts bike were straight. They also reportedly have Gold-valve emulators in them, so I put those on my bike, with the newer front tire/wheel. I also took the lowered bars to replace my stock bars and risers. This put my hands much lower and made it possible to lay right on the gastank and still have good throttle control. I also scavenged the case guards for my beast. I cut down a cracked stock windscreen I had on hand, to minimize the stress on the horizontal crack, and rivetted the whole thing to the fairing with an aluminum brace behind it. The fairly smashed gages were ziptied in place, and worked well, except the tach needle takes a moment to settle when I shift. I can live with that.
I had arranged with Mike Isabelle, whom I had met online through one of the e-lists devoted to EX's, to share a garage. By the time he got there Friday morning, there were only two left-in the more expensive North garages, which get locked down between 8pm and 7am. I have heard that foot-traffic is still allowed to move around, but no vehicles. Anyway, at $160 for the weekend, we figured we might find someone else to share with us and make it not too expensive an experiment. I asked at the front gate, but forgot which garage he was in by the time I got down there, so I just wandered around a bit looking for his number. Then I saw a green F150 with a U-haul trailer, which fit his description of his vehicle, headed toward the end of the south end of the track. Sure enough, it was his. He crashed in Turn 2, but not too bad. We got him back together for the next practice of the day, and I moved all my stuff into the garage. It was cool. It so happened that BJ Worsham & Matt Lai were in the garage two over from mine. That was cool.
Saturday, September 26, 1998
The weather was a little cool, not too bad. Slightly cloudy. First practice wasn't too bad, until about lap 5 when a red middleweight bike pulled up on my right as we approached turn 6. He closed with a high speed differential, then braked to run next to me, about two inches to my right...Hey, man, this is practice, I don't need it that bad, so I slowed more than usual, and let him by. As we neared the apex for 6, he and I closed on a purple EX going slower than both of us. I didn't trust the line the purple EX would take, so I backed out of it a little more, and watched as Mr.Red tried to pass on the outside just past the apex to 6. Mr. Purple kept drifting wider and wider, and I watched Mr.Red go over the right aligator strips and head for the dirt. Uh, oh. Then he was gone. I passed Mr. Purple on the outside of 9, and beat him to the bottom of the hill by a good margin. By the time I got to turn 12, they had redflagged out practice to clean up Mr. Red. I hope he's ok.
During the break between practices, I borrowed a seat Mike had which had been cut down 2 inches. This made it really low and really hard, as there wasn't much foam left in there. I also put on rearsets made from aluminum plate. They were NOT the five minute install job as advertised, but inside an hour or so, I had gotten things apparently back together and working.
The rearsets worked ok, but the seat was too low: they cramped my knees after a few laps. I liked the firm seat-though. Less lifting required to slide my butt side-to-side. The steering with the new front end componentry was a little odd-it steered much quicker than it used to, and felt twitchy on tip-in. By the end of the weekend, I was pretty sure it was mostly the rider which needed to be dialed in, not the suspension. At one point in the second practice, I ran wide in Turn 10, went off track, and reentered the track by way of a ditch at the edge of the pavement. Climbing the 4 inch lip at speed and an angle of about 30 degrees set the front end to occilating pretty wildly, tossing me out of the seat some, and back and forth some, but I kept it upright, and pulled into the pits to assess what had happened. In bouncing around, I had folded both footpegs up with my ankles. Ouch. But no real damage. Back out for a few laps....Then practice was over. I left a nice peg-imprint in the back of my left ankle, so alittle limping is in order, but hey, "It's just a flesh wound". I checked my rear tire pressure, and found that I was at 23 psi, after heating them up. Not good. No wonder the rear felt weird....I reset the tire pressures to 29 rear 30 front after things cooled a bit.
I checked the lap-time sheets during lunch, and found that my transmitter wasn't working consistently: it had recorded 3 laps each practice, while my hand scorer had 5 and 6 laps. Glad I caught that before the racing started. I got a new battery from the tech guys (thanks, Bob!), and everything was hunky-dorey.
The rider's meeting included the note from Director of Safety Jerry Wood that of the approx. 4000 crashes at Loudon logged by the track safety workers, there were only 500 where an ambulance was dispached at all, and less than 60 of those which required transport offsite for more extensive treatment than the infield medical center could provide. Doesn't sound as scary as the racing-press makes it out to be, does it? Those tire barriers really work.
My first race was number 5A, Lightweight Thunderbike. This is the AMA class analogous to the CCS LW Sportsman I usually run. I got a decent grid position: third row, with 27 entires, and I think closer to 22 on the grid. I got a horrible start, and wound up about 12th to turn 1A. Then one more bike passed me on the back straight. After that, I spent the whole race playing catchup. I passed five or six bikes, including one lapper on the last lap (who turned out to be Don, a fellow NH-MSF instructor who was racing for the first time, using a Penguin school bike). On the white-flag lap, I could see the leaders at the end of the front straight as I pulled onto it at 12. So much for a great finish. But I got got 6th, giving me 7 points, so I have enough to move to junior now. YAY! I also turned my fastest lap so far: 1:31.474 officially. Faster than the fastest lap posted by three of the guys ahead of me to the line in that race. A better start would have gotten me a trophy and lots more points. BJ & Matt both broke the 1:30 barrier this weekend, so I have some work to do still. I've heard that the really hot folks (read: Woods Family Members) can turn 1:24s with basically stock ex's. Matt has a Penske rear shock, and so do the Woods EXs, maybe that's something I should look into....
My second race was number 7, right on the heels of the first race. I pulled into the garage. Had some water, and looked the bike over. I found that the shift-lever pivot bolt was almost falling out. Shit! so I snugged it back up, and headed out. I apparently tightened it too much, causing the lever to bind some, so my shifting was pretty screwed for the whole next race. I came off the grid in third gear (I think). Oh, it was awful. I was dead last to turn one, and should have just accepted that I'd finish last. I found that I could shift through gears 3-4-5-6 ok, so I pushed hard, and was mid-pack by the end of the second lap. There were a lot of new guys following lines that scared me (my last wreck having been a result of my predicting someone else's bad lines incorrectly). But near the end, I thought I could go around this one fella on the outside into 1, I think I actually did pass him, but I never felt like I had cleared the guy enough to cut back onto the racing line. I decided that I wasn't gonna make it close enough to the line to make it around 1A at the speed I was carrying, so I straightened up to curb-hop, and went into the grass, where I looked back at traffic, decided there was no good place to reenter, and fell down, again. Slid on my back head first a while, making cool vertical green stripes in the leather, all the while hoping that the bike wasn't catching up to me too quickly. It wasn't. I got up, picked the bike up, checked the levers-all ok. Turned the key, pressed the starter and got nothing. No click, no nuthin. So I tried bumpstarting it. I was dying there, pushing that damn bike along the grass and then the pavement, and after the fifth try, I gave up. Gasping for air, soaked in sweat. I pushed the bike back to the garage. Accepted the well-wishes of those present. And decided I'd had enough. I went home and showered, and relaxed a little. I made one of my goals for the season, though: I got enough points to move out of the Amateur class. I can't wait. I have to petition for the
move 10 days in advance of an event, though, and since there's only 6 days until our next race, I'll be AM one more time. I preregistered this time, so maybe if I get a good grid spot, and keep from crashing, I'll get another trophy. That would be nice. Sunday was a day of rest & packing up & watching some of the AMA Amateur Grand Nationals races. At one point, someone lowsided heading up the hill from turn 3, he wound up in the grass to the right of the track. His bike collected another bike, then bike number 3 went over bike number 2, resulting in rider #3 cartwheeling in the air with his bike OVER his head, then landed behind the little berm at turn 4, next to one of the corner worker's vans. Everyone walked away. It was the first time I've seen something quite that dramatic in person. It was pretty impressive. Glad everyone was ok. See ya'all next week for the season finale!
Summary
two sprint races = $100
Pit pass = $25
Gas truck/bike = $15
Food = 15 (mostly from home)
One DNF
One 6th of 27, for 7 points
I have 12 races and 48 points toward the 10 races / 45 points needed to move to Junior.
BIKE SETUP:
Same final drive (14/42)
rear tire=decent 150/80-16 Metzler ME33 Laser
front tire=decent 120/80-16 Dunlop K591
28psi front, 30 psi rear
mesh air filter screen
Mystery front end: reportedly gold valve emulators, with UNK springs.
UNK fork oil weight
stock rear spring
Sintered EBC-HH
No forkbrace
93 Octane pumpgas
