Judging from the trailers and garages of other racers that i have been in, we start to accumulate a few things:
Piles of body work, some of it is still good, some it beyond saving, some of it needs minor repair that we will some day get around to doing when we feel like messing with itchy fiberglass and stinky compounds, some of it we pick through to find a piece just a little less broken then the one on the bike:
Street body work, this stuff is worth quite a bit on ebay, but i might still ride my bike on the street every now and then, and the bike sells better with street body work:
And last but not least, a pile of tires. Worn out race take off’s, the last set of street tries i bought, rain tires, my spare rims. Once again, i should get ride of these (and so should most racers) give them to a buddy who wants them or something, but hey, i always plan to mount them up and burn them up in practice or a trackday or back on the street or something, but i need them!
These are just a few of the things that racers all seem to have stacked somewhere.
I actually picked this poster up awhile ago at the Red Flag Fund auction that was held at Blackhawk. It is an autographed poster of Ben Bostrom riding a flat track Harley. A friend of mine who works at a frame shop did a beautiful job framing it. The picture doesn’t do it justice:
Got to try something new on a bike this weekend: Ice riding.
Now this sounds incredibly stupid, but it is actually a ton of fun! You basically take a dirt bike, put a bunch of screws in the tires and you have a ice bike! This was probably the most fun i have ever had on a bike! It is also a huge work out, i could usually only manage a few laps before having to come in for a break. My legs are still shot a day later, my arms were sore, and i was sweating. I am also hoping that is helps my riding, i have never been good at sliding a bike something i need to start doing to pick up time, and ice riding is all about sliding the bike. Ice riding is also a bit of a road racer convention, plenty of CCS riders and even a couple AMA riders in the mix.
Here are a few pictures, i am hoping to get a hold of a couple of me, but these are all i have for now, pics from redlinephoto.com :
AMA and CCS Rider/Visionsport Schools owner, Scott Ryan
CCS Rider Jesse, note studded tires
AMA Rider Blake Young
Crashes were often and sometimes spectacular
Wanted to go again this afternoon, but everyone bailed cause it was to cold! Can’t wait to do it again anyway.
So everything was in motion for me to start racing. I spent the off season getting my bike fully ready for racing, ended up getting a set of race plastics that actually fit my bike, instead of some cobbled together ones. Because of me attending trackdays, i had gotten to know Todd, the owner of Madison Sportbikes. He had started a race team called MSB Racing. They started up in the 2005 season, but got off to a rough start as one of the first racers was killed in a street bike crash, but they were off and running in 2006, with two riders, sponsors, and a very nice profesional looking team. By the end of 2006 both riders had left the team for various reasons, so they were looking for riders.
My name came up as someone who was looking to get into racing, so i soon accepted an offer to ride for the team, as it would make things much easier (not to mention cheaper for me). This also had the added effect that now i was fully committed to racing! Part of the MSB racing deal is paint, so my bike looked a lot nicer:
New plastics and MSB paint, before number plates
So, the season is getting closer, and i am getting more anxious, dreaming of all the victories that will come my way, my bike is ready, i am ready (so i think) and all i want to do is go racing.
The first race weekend of the year was at Blackhawk, and i can’t wait. I head to the track thursday evening to camp so that i can be there bright and early for the practice day on friday. I don’t remember much about that day, just getting back into a rytym (it was my first time back on track that year) and i have what are still some of my favorite pictures of me from that day:
I really don’t remember much about gridding up for my first race on Saturday, but i do remember being really nervous, because road race starts are intimidating! Being a trackday rider, i wasn’t used to going 100% from when the flag drops, i was used to slowly working up to speed, but racing is all about going all out from go. So i know i fell back at the start. A couple laps in, i was getting into a grove, battled with a guy for a little bit before pulling away, 4 laps in i was starting to catch a couple guys in front of me, which made me try harder.
Its strange, every crash i have had, it is like a strobe light to me. I don’t remeber the entire crash like a video, but i always have several differnt split seconds through out the crash frozen in my mind and a distinct thought assosiated with them. Every crash has been like that for me.
Exiting “the bus stop” (see video in earlier post) i am hard on the gas, and you have to transition from a hard right turn into a left turn, which means throwing your body from one side of the bike to the other, while on the gas, counter steering to transition the bike, and if you are a hair off line there is a bump to make it even better. I have a really bad habbit of pulling on my bars to move my body to the other side of the bike. With all the combined forces, this momentarily lifted my front tire of the ground while my bike was still turning to the right. By the time i got the bike stood up, i was headed strait for the wall on the inside of the corner, so in desperation, i grabbed a handful of brake and threw the bike into a left hand turn, but i was out of track and in the grass, i actually got this captured from two differnt camera angles:
I have just stood the bike back up after lifting the front tire, you can see i am trying to turn the bike to the left, as i am headed off track. I remember this instant, but i don’t really know what i was thinking, but i do remember being on the bike seeing that i was headed for the wall.
Hard on the brakes (forks are compressed, my hand is on the brake) and starting to get the bike turned.
But i was out of track, and DOT race tires don’t like brakes and turning on grass. I remember hitting the ground hard.
I remember sliding, and seeing the wall coming, and my exact though was “This is going to suck.”
Right after this picture was taken, i remember seeing the bike hit the wall, and seeing that i was not going to hit the bike thinking “well least i am not going to hit the bike, cause that would be worse.”
I don’t remember this…
Or this.
I do remember bouncing off the wall. I distinctly remember as i was falling off the wall and back to the ground, looking up the track, and seeing my friend (nicknamed spud) coming out of the bus stop and thinking “Hey i was beating spud!”
My next thought was “I can’t breath!” I hate having the wind knocked out of me. I remember getting up and thinking “wow i am fine” I was pretty dazed…the same person who took the first 3 pictures also shot this video right after i got up:
In the video the woman that comes and talks to me is a corner worker making sure i am ok, and asking me if i need the ambulance, which i refused. As soon as i got to the fence, Todd got there, and asks me if i am ok, and i say yeah. He asks if i am sure, because that “was a hard hit that you took.” I said well, my shoulder is starting to sting, to which he immediately he tells me to check my collar bone, which i do, and i instantly feel it is broken, and i remember saying, “ahh yeah its busted.”
Off to the med shed we go, every step it hurts more. Then check me over and say yeah its probably broken…do you want an ambulance, no, sign here to say we offered, here are directions to Rockford ER, ok thanks. Then they call over the PA for the pit crew for #187 please come and get me at the Med Shed.
On a side note, the next time i was at the track after hitting the wall, they had placed airfence in the exact spot i had hit the wall. Don’t know for sure if this was done because of me hitting there or not, but i do know i would rather have hit airfence over tires!
Next up: Learning the differnce between the motorcycle community, and the rest of your friends and family
Just finished up this book. Mark Gardiner is a middle aged man who works for an ad agency, but has always wanted to be a motorcycle racer. He has done some club racing and even earned his AMA Pro card, so he is better then the average club racer. But his dream since he was a boy was to race in the Isle of Mann TT Races. Finally he decides to go for it, with no guarantee that he will even be allowed to race, he sells most of what he owns, quits his job, moves to the Isle of Mann, and starts training and learning the course. The book is his all true account.
I really enjoyed this book, he is a very engaging author. His attention to detail and random things that he inserts make you feel like you are there with him. He doesn’t brag himself up, in fact he seems a little down on himself if anything. He makes no apologies for the TT’s deadly reputation, makes no effort to hide it, and in fact discusses it freely, often mentioning riders that have been killed in past years.
I have only one little thing i didn’t like, he spends to much time talking about working for an ad agency. But, he openly apologies for that in the book, and in fact tells you what page to skip to if you don’t want to read it, so i guess i can’t complain to much.
I myself have never been that big of a fan of the TT races or any of the other so called “real road” races, for the simple fact that to many people get killed. This isn’t to say i don’t like it, it is hard to not enjoy watching the spectacular shots that can only come from the Isle of Mann. After reading this book however, i have a renewed interest in the event. Not form a morbid sense of view, but from a respect for the riders and what they go through, and risk, to ride in a race that you would race ONLY if you absolutely LOVED to race it. Call me wrong, but i see something special about that.
I picked these books up on a whim while shopping for some reading material to get me through the winter. This two volume set is made up entirely of color pictures taken by Alan J. Sessarego. Mostly of AMA racing, but also a few WSB, and Motogp thrown in. These two volumes are 800 pages total, with over 1000 pictures.
I ended up being a bit disappointed in these books. I purchased them because my knowlege of the history of motorcycle racing is lacking, so i figured this would be a good crash course. It was, plenty of pictures of riders that i know in their early years, and plenty of guys i knew nothing about. However, there is little or no back story with the pictures, something that would have helped for some of them. The biggest disappointment to me however, was the quality of the pictures. Now i understand that camera technology has come a long ways in the last decade, so i can understand some of the older pictures not being that great, but the new pictures are nothing special either. Most of the colors are very muted and many of them are almost a bit fuzzy. Not what you would expect from a professinal photographer, most of them looked like snap shots, and that is a shame because some of the pictures would be worthy of hanging on a wall if they were just more vibrant and a little more crisp.
I rate this book: Borrow from a friend to page through
But alas, you can’t always keep getting getting faster with out hitting the deck, so towards the end of my 2nd year of riding, with nearly 25K street miles, half dozen trackdays, and getting into the advance group, i threw the bike down the track trying to stay in front of a friend of mine.
The damage was mostly cosmetic, and i was uninjured, but it did humble me a bit, but not for long. Only a couple weeks later i had the bike pieced back together, and this video was shot:
I remember watching this video, thinking, man i am pretty dang good, look at me passing guys like crazy. Maybe i SHOULD start racing, i have a race bike, all the gear i need and am eligible to get a license. That was the last trackday i did that year, so i had all winter to get ready.
So during the off season, i rebuilt the motor on my 600r, put it up for sale, and set out looking for a new bike. I also ended up picking up a barely used one piece leather race suit. A friend mine recommended a 2004 gsx-r 750 that was being sold by a friend of his. This had been a race bike, but hadn’t been raced very much, and with all the extra’s that came with it, it was a pretty good deal, so i bought it. I ended up riding it home in march i think it was, snow still in the ditches:
Some of the extra's
This bike was a new world compared to the 600! It makes about 50 more horsepower, and is about 100 pounds lighter! I quickly learned what i thought were nice gentle throttle applications on the 600, were horrible ham fisted on the 750.
I started the 2006 season doing a lot of street riding, and did a few trackdays, the first of which would be very influential in me deciding to race. I decided to take a track school put on by a great guy who goes by the moniker “Super Dave.” Dave is one of those crazy great people that i have come to realize are everywhere in motorcycle racing, great sense of humor, a bit crazy, and would do anything to help those he knows. Dave has a great program to raise money for kids with cancer, plus he does some other cool things for those kids, maybe i should talk about that later. Anyway, dave has since retired from teaching, but his school lives on in the hands of his lead instructor, AMA racer, and anther great guy, Scott Ryan. Here is his website: Vision Sport Riding School
I originally just took the school because i wanted to improve my riding, and i definitly did. Dave has a different approach to teaching then many schools. Instead of working on drills and what you as a rider are doing wrong, he focuses on the feedback the bike is giving you, and what to do to correct that, which in turn automatically improves your form, and makes you faster. It really works very well. Anyway, at the end of the school you are given the opportunity to take a test that makes you eligible to get a race license. I figured, what the heck, i might as well get it then i can do the racer practices on Fridays, which are cheaper then regular trackdays. I still never had any real ambitions to race, even though dave assured me that i could, and in fact should!
My bike in the race plastics at Dave's school
Dave is one of those guys that once you know him, you are a friend and he will help you however, and whenever he can. So through out the summer of ‘06 i did a few more trackdays, and got more pointers from dave, and more encouragement to race. I quickly got bumped into the advance group, which is the fastest group you can be in at a trackday, and i wasn’t the slowest guy out there! I was getting good at this!
