The tales of a true privateer on the open road
By Kenyon Kluge
5/10/2002 – We finally head out on the road. I say finally for two reasons. The first is for the fact that in spite of having done 3 races already we didn’t really travel that far to get to them, with the exception of Daytona that I flew too. The other races where Fontana, CA and Sears Point CA, I will reserve my writing on those to other documents which may or may not be added to this one at some point in time. The second reason for my exacerbation towards our delay of getting on the road is because we left 3 day’s behind schedule for a multitude of reasons.
The original plan was to return from the Sears Point AMA event on Monday the 6th, spend the next two day’s packing and getting ready to leaven and head out for Georgia on Wednesday the 8th of May 2002. On Tuesday the stock market took a further turn for the worst and it became dubious as to whether we would be able to go at all. Wednesday the stock price came back up and we where again planning to leave only one day late. On Wednesday evening the news was put forth to me that there may be a problem with the engine that I recently had built that might cause it to catastrophically fail. Since money was tight and the spare bikes engine is a little tired I thought it very important to avoid this type of failure at all costs. On Thursday morning I got more information regarding this topic and the news that I should definitely have my engine looked at. I took it in to the shop and we found that it was in deed getting ready to destroy itself.
After much deliberation we decided to pull the head, which was where the problem was, and I would take the rest of the bike with me to Georgia. Meanwhile every effort would be made to fix the problem with the head and then ship it to me, and I would assemble it at Road Atlanta, hopefully, before the race. It this didn’t happen I would do my best on the spare bike and would get the A bike put back together for Pikes Peak, two weeks after Road Atlanta.
So on Friday afternoon on the 10th of may we got on the road. Even this was a little late since we had planed to get out in the morning, but it is surprising how much work there is to be done when you are leaving home for 4 months and everything you need to live and race needs to be packed into your truck and trailer. Hell I usually have a hard enough time packing for one weekend of racing that is occurring a few hours from home much less to be all the way on the other side of the US. We did make good time though and nearly hit our mileage goal for the day despite leaving about 5 hours later than planed. I am hoping that if we drive hard the first couple of days that the last couple will be more leisurely and we can stop and see the sights a little. If not then for sure after leaving Atlanta we will have plenty of time to stop and smell the roses. Well its off to bed and hope I can sleep through the noise of all the semi trucks pulling in and out of the rest stop where we are parked for the night. There is so much to get used to but its fun.
5/11/2002 – Day two, we wake up at the rest stop in CA and get back on Hwy 40 within two hours we have crossed the border into Arizona, we go by the Colorado River and then head down to lake Havisue. We eat lunch at the lake, swim a little, and ride our bikes around. We get back on the road at around 2pm. After many hours of driving we settle at another rest stop in New Mexico. Several states down we are making good progress.
5/12/2002 – We are up early at our rest stop. Some stretching to ease the soreness of driving breakfast and we are back on the road. Today was a day of a lot of driving. At lunchtime we tried to go to a dinosaur museum in Tuscuana New Mexico but it ended up being closed on Sundays. We drove much later into the night than I had intended so we made a lot of progress and finally stopped just past Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
5/13/2002 – Another hard day of driving and we found ourselves in Tennessee. Arkansaw, Oklahoma, and Tennessee are very beautiful. The first green we have seen in a few days. There isn’t very much to tell as most of the day was spent driving. We saw many sights along the way. One weird thing was that instead of the normal hairy bloody things that I am used to seeing on the side of the road I saw many armadillos apparently in their natural state of dormant bloody messes on the side of the road. I say their natural state since I have not actually seen one move so as far as I know this is how they live out their entire lives. Just after thinking this I see one scuttle out of the way of my truck and so I realize that they do indeed move and the bloodiness is just a byproduct of their lifestyle, hanging out on the freeway as a pastime.
5/14/02 – Another morning waking up in a rest stop. We make some coffee, and we are on the road again. A good day of driving and we arrive at a campsite near road Atlanta at around 6:30pm. With the trailer all hooked up we enjoy some more luxury living than what we have had all week. Tomorrow we head to the trace and get ready for promoter practice happening on Thursday.
5/15/02 – Well the day started with a little extra sleep,
and then we drove around for an hour and a half looking for a Wells Fargo so
that I could take care of some money issues. Then we finished up cleaning and
unhooking the trailer and were on our way to the track. We got here around
2:30pm and where in and setting up around 3pm. We set up the pit and then
proceeded to tear the bikes apart swapping parts from the A bike that doesn’t
have a head onto the B bike with a complete engine. We got most of it done and
then called it a night watched some Steven Segal movie on TV and will be
heading to bed soon.
5/16/02 – Well finally some riding. I got to take my first laps around Road Atlanta. It’s a gorgeous track, literally winding through the forest with a lot of flowing turns and elevation changes. There are lots of switchbacks and S’s that flow quickly and then down the back straight and down the hill into the front straight is extremely fast. So here’s the lap, going down the front straight, drop a gear and hang it out to the right and back on the gas up the hill, bank it slightly to the left drop a gear break a little and then throw it right. Immediately back to the left and up a gear heading down the hill into a right left, right, and finally left back at the top of the hill again. Cresting the hill hard on the gas as the bike wheelies and shoots down the short straight. Going down the hill, a little braking at the end of the straight and then a medium speed right, and then immediately another right much tighter. Coming out of the corner its up through the gears to sixth and down the back straightaway which rolls up back down up and then down again veers to the right and then its on the brakes as you come down the back hill. This is difficult because the hill is very steep and you are trying to brake down to 2nd gear from being in redline in 6th. This tight left is connected to a tight right. Its back on the gas coming out of this right and then cresting the hill and turning to the right as you drop down the hill and finish it off with an incredibly fast right hander at the bottom which makes it one long very fast right. On the first lap I also experienced the dirt on the outside of this last turn down the hill. You can’t see the turn at all since the ground is falling away and even cruzing through here slowly I had no choice but to do some dirtracking. A couple of laps later I did some dirtracking in turn 3. Fortunately I had been practicing on the TTR125 so neither of these resulted in any ground surfing. My following sessions where much more successful droping 3 seconds on the second one, 2 on the third one and another second on the last session. The bike is feeling good though I would really like to have the extra horsepower that I had in my A bike engine. (Stupid Yosh) I feel like the day was very successful and that there is a lot more time to be had tommorow.
5/21/02 – Well its been a couple of days since the last entry. I have been busy racing, but I will try to recount the events of the weekend. Friday we had a couple more practice sessions. The first was getting back up to speed from Thursday and the second I made another second worth of progress. Friday night and Saturday morning it poured down rain. Though it had stopped by the time we woke up the ground was still very wet and continued to be so through the morning practice sessions. Luckily I was the last session up so there was a bit of a dry line forming by the time I went out. Not very many people participated in the morning practice but I had made a couple of changes that I wanted to try out before my qualifying session. I was amazed that I could do lap times only a couple of seconds off my previous pace with the track so wet. When my back end tried to come around on me in turn one I decided it was time to come in to avoid some ground surfing. I was also having problems with the bike choking coming out of the slower corners and so was trying to figure out what this problem was. It came time to qualifying and I went out for my session. It was going pretty well and I was dropping time quickly. About half way through the session the bike started up with the choking problem very severely and I felt that I could not continue with the session. Besides I thought I had put in a time that was fast enough to qualify. The results came out and I did indeed qualify in position 25 out of 30 that made it to the grid. I took the bike to Dynojet in and attempt to determine what the problem was. They had a theory about the butterfly valves being the problem and made some map changes to try to rectify the problem, however I would not be able to try this theory until the next morning in practice. I celebrated with a Bud made some dinner and went to bed. Morning practice on Sunday revealed that that the problem was not rectified. So I went to work swapping the throttle bodies, gas tank, black box, powercommander, and battery form the other bike in an effort to rectify the problem. Then I did some praying that one of these would fix the problem. Race time came and I got out on the grid, and I was ready to go. The practice lap revealed that all the work swapping parts had not done a lick of good so I figured I would just have to ride through the problem. I got an ok start and was off passing people. 2 laps in we had a red flag. On the restart I got another decent start and was back on my way picking people off. Seven laps in and we had another red flag and they decided to delay the end of the race till after the Superbike race since they had to meet the live TV schedule. Once again after the Superbike race we found ourselves grided up with the new order that we had last been in and I was now up a couple of rows. I got a stupendous start passing about 3 rows and was going good, coming over the top of the hill out of turn 5 I found myself staring at a rider that was sliding down the pavement very afraid that I was about to run him over. I swerved to the left and just barely missed him. Then I had to swerve further to the left to miss his bike, and we had another red flag. Lined up for the fourth time we started to wonder if we wherever going to finish this race. Another start and another good run into turn one. Unfortunately it wasn’t as good as the last one and I got pushed wide into turn one. I ran a pretty good race passing several people despite the rear wheel locking up slightly every time I came out of the slow corner and thus had a lot of trouble driving down the straights. I finished 20th which earned me enough points to be ranked 15th over all in Formula Xtreme. All in all a very successful weekend. We pack up and go to a campsite to recover for a couple of days before heading to Colorado.
Monday was LaWanna’s B-Day so we put off all the laundry shopping and such and went into Atlanta to have some fun. We went to Atlanta underground, which is a classic shopping outlet under the street level, and then we went to the Coca Cola exhibit, which was cool. We also had lunch at Hooters. Then we headed back to the campsite but stopped on the way and did some shopping. LaWanna bought some shorts pants a top and some tenishoes. I bought some stuff for the trailer and we bought more food. We went back to the trailer and did some work on the home, then headed back to the shopping area and had dinner at TGI Friday’s. Then there were more drinks at Joes Crab Shack and then we went to the movies and saw Star Wars 2. Yoda had an ass kicking seen so I was very happy.
Today we spent the day doing laundry, cleaning the trailer, and running errands to get everything back together. I finished up the day doing some bike work trying to find the problem with the bike that I was having over the weekend. I didn’t have any luck fining it but I did eliminate a couple of things that it could have been. Well it’s off to bed so we can get on the road tomorrow to head towards Colorado.
5/23/02 – Well on Wednesday I spent the morning doing bike work trying to find the problem with the Superstock bike to no avail. The only thing I discovered was that it was not two other things that I looked at then we set out for Colorado. We made it through Georgia, Tennessee, and into Kentucky before the day was over. Thursday was a long day of driving. We awoke early and where on the road by 8am. We covered Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and into Kansas. We have now stopped for the night and are making dinner. Tomorrow we should be into Colorado and Saturday we should be in Fountain, CO where Pikes Peak is located.
5/25/02 – On Saturday around 11am we arrived in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We got to our campsite and got the trailer set up. Then we ran some errands, I rode around the site a little on my mountain bike, we had a pizza dinner and went to bed. Today we got up had breakfast and I changed the oil on the truck. I had it tuned up right before we left Santa Cruz two weeks ago but we have already done over 4000 miles. This was done quickly and so we where off to have some fun. We went to a local Memorial Day festival and walked around a little. Then we had lunch and went to some old Anasazi Indian Cave dwellings. These where very cool and for as old as they where it was pretty amazing that they could build such intricate buildings. After this we went to The Cave of the Winds. This is a large natural cave that you can take tours of. We took one of the tours that were done completely by candlelight. This was one of the funniest things we have done yet on our trip. It was about and hour and a half tour and was a lot of fun. I was craving some Chinese food so we got some on the way back to camp.
5/28/02 – Yesterday I found some local mountain bike trails. There are some pretty incredible trails here, the unfortunate thing is that part way through one of the black diamond trails and I lost all the pressure in my rear hydraulic brakes. So I had to do the rest of the trail and then the ones to get back to the truck with only the front brake. Well I bled the brake and put some new tires on the bike and went back today. I had a great time riding, though it was tough not knowing the trails. Tomorrow I should receive the head of my engine so I can put the bike back together and have something to ride this weekend.
6/02/02 – Well another race down and another track learned. I did receive the head for my engine and in the middle of the trailer park where we where staying I broke down both bikes to swap parts and put the engine together on the A bike. It was amusing to have two race bikes torn apart with parts scattered all around the trailer. I have neglected taking pictures but I blame it on being preoccupied by getting the bikes ready to race. I did get the bike running and all the parts swapped. It seemed like everything was right on track. On Thursday afternoon we went to the track to discover that the woman on the phone at Pikes Peak had lied to me. I was told that there was definitely no promoter practice and that they would not be letting vehicles into the pits until Thursday afternoon. Well when I got there bikes where going around the track and the pits where filled. We got put in the way way back which didn’t turn out to be so bad in the long run but now I had to qualify on a track that I had never ridden after only 2 practice sessions on Friday. I got the bike tech’d and everything ready to go. Then I got up on top of the trailer and realized that I could see the entire track from there. It is a very small track.
One lap around Pikes Peak: I starts down the front straight which really isn’t a straight but a very slight left hander on the banking. Its wide open and they have a small plastic curbing to hold you high on the banking to the end. Then it’s a steeper left as you come down of the banking. The left is continuous but you need to lean it hard coming off the banking stand it up a little so that you can catch a down shift and then put the bike back down. There is a couple really big bumps mid corner and if you let the bike go wide after the bumps then it gets bumpier on the outside of the corner where you want to get back on the gas hard. You enter back on to the back straight which is really just a continuous left because you drift out onto the straight and then have to turn it back in to get back into the infield. There is a short straight where all the braking and down shifting is done for a tight 2nd gear left-hander. Another short straight after that and then you have to slow back down for a long right had corner. You drive out of the right-hander and set up for a left right switchback, which is followed by another long tight left which leads out onto the banking/front straight. This is all done in 54 seconds if you are a Superbike on qualifiers or 1 minute flat if you are me.
On Friday I went out to run my practice sessions. The firs
session went well and I quickly learned the track, but I noticed that the bike
was running very hot. In-between sessions I checked the coolant level which was
fine. I decided to swap radiators since I had the other bike there and it
wasn’t going anywhere until I installed the new tranny. The second session went
ok but I spent most of the time worrying about the engine temp, which was still
really high. I finally pulled my head out of my butt and picked up some more
time late in the session but I was still off the pace that I thought I needed.
I checked a couple more things before my qualifying session, which ended up
getting me nowhere since the bike was still running hot in qualifying. I tried
to just put it out of my head and run some fast laps but not being focused and
not having very much track time hurt me and the best I could do was a very low
1 minuet time. I thought for sure that this was not enough to qualify but when
I checked the board it turned out to be enough by almost 2 seconds so I was in
the main event for the next day. I tried a couple more things to get the temperature
down on the bike, cutting open the thermostat so that it was always on helped
but then I tried some 110 octane and that put me right back where I had started
for the race. Despite the hot bike I ran the entire race. I got a good start
but then pushed the front end on some of the painted stripes in turn one which
where still a little slick from the rain that had delayed the race by 20
minuets, so I had to back off a little and lost some of the advantage that I
had gained. Then at the end of the first lap a squirrelly local guy cut right
across my bow in the last corner and then he went wide, pushing me really wide
and out in to the marbles. Then when I was getting back on line another guy
swings wide and almost takes out my front end. If I hadn’t seen him out of the
corner of my eye we would have both been sliding into the air bails at the top
of the track. By now everyone had gone by me and I spent the rest of the race
reeling them in one by one and tacking back positions. I ended up in 24th
out of 32 that finished. Not bad considering the entire weekend and having
qualified in 28th. Sunday I spent a very frustrating day swapping
the tranny out of the other bike and re-installing the engine. I managed to
strip out one of the engine mounts that is integral to the head so I will need
to locate a 10mm Helicoil kit in the next three days since promoter practice at
Road America starts on Thursday. We drove about a 100 miles Sunday evening and
settled in for the night at a rest stop off of the Interstate 70. We will drive
hard for the next 2 day’s so that we can get to Wisconsin a day early to do
laundry and fix the engine mount on the bike before practice starts. The
thought for this weekend is 1) Why don’t I have a team of mechanics to fix my
bike for me and 2) I am really getting tired of tearing my bike down and
putting it back together between every session.
6/4/02 – Two day’s of hard driving and we have reached Milwakii Wisconsin. Along the way I did manage to find my 10mm Helicoil kit. I thought that it was going to be hard to find but I went into a Napa Auto parts and the only metric kit that they had on the shelf happened to be a 10mm. We camped out at a campsite along the freeway in Illinois. It was a nice campsite with a pool that we took a swim in and the sites where nice, and quiet. We where up early and drove all day to reach our destination. We had dinner at a small pub on the corner by the campsite witch was also having blues night and the musicians where pretty good.
6/6/02 – On Wednesday we got to the track at about 2pm. We got our pit spot and I proceeded to once again tear the bikes down and attempt to repair things. Well the Helicoil kit that was so easy to find was the wrong kit. The thread pitch was 1.5 instead of 1.25. Luckily I had an a bolt that was the right thread pitch but it was not long enough to use by frame slider to I did without. I put the rest of the bikes together and was finally done around 9pm. Thursday morning and I get to ride Road America. My first impression was that this is a very very very long track. There is so much to learn that I was still taking it easy on the third lap trying to remember which turn came next. I big excitement of the firs session was that the transmission that I had replaced was working perfectly. The second session I was trying out the A bike that was overheating at Pikes Peak, and low and behold it was no-longer overheating. This day was going my way and I had shed another 6 seconds to boot. Another 5 seconds on the third session and an additional 2 seconds on the last session. I would describe a lap around road America but I still don’t feel like I have a great grasp on the track in my head so I will refrain until after tomorrow. More practice and qualifying tomorrow.
6/8/02 – Friday practice went well as well as qualifying. I managed to nock another to two seconds off for qualifying and ended up in 20th. This track suites my riding and is a lot of fun so as I promised a description of the lap. You come flying down the front straight 6th gear wide open as fast as you can make the bike go. Break and go down three gears for a fast turn one. Up a gear as you accelerate down a hill to another right at the bottom and then its driving hard out and down a long straight as you wind through the trees. There is a sharp downhill at the end of the straight as you are hard on the brakes. A tight left hand turn and then up another hill. You crest a hill go under a bridge and have to be careful not to break too hard as you crest the hill as the back end of the bike will pop of the ground just as you need to make another sharp left. Accelerate down a short straight up a gear and fly through a right hand turn and continue to accelerate down another straight that goes down hill. On the breaks and drop a gear and its into another 90 degree left. Accelerate and its into the carousel, a long sweeping right-hander. Accelerate again as you leave the end of the never ending corner. Up into 5th and then lean it over to the right as you go through the kink very fast. Up into 6th and you are flying through the trees and sweeping to the left. Brake and drop 4 gears, throw it right and back on the gas as you go up the hill and then throw it left and into the bind left under the bridge cresting the hill and sliding it over the pavement. Hold the throttle on and then gradually roll off as you come into the last right-hander that takes you onto the front straight. Up through the gears as you go down the straight up the hill where the bike wheelies in 5th. Hold the throttle on as you cross the start finish and there you are another 4+ miles down and one of the longest laps I have ever taken. At lap times of 2:22 my average speed was around 101mph. Saturday came and the race was on, there was a crash with a stalled rider on the start and the race was redflaged right away, and another bike Poped and blew oil all over the front straight. We waited about 20 minuets and then restarted the race. I ran another smooth consistent race to finish 16th, my best finish yet. With the points that go along with the finish I am back into 15th overall. Another successful weekend, and I am starting to feel like I belong here doing this AMA thing. I also feel like I am growing immensely as a racer. My techniques are changing, my approach to riding is changing, and I am starting to feel like I am gaining more diversified skills that will allow me to go fast anywhere I go and not just on the same tracks that I ride all the time.
6/12/02 – We made our way to a campsite near the track in Fond Du Lac. On Monday we went to a local vintage town, which was made up buildings that dated back to the late 1800’s. It was pretty interesting and the guided where very good and had a lot of information about the vintage devices and paraphernalia. We then made our way over to an amusement park where they had off road go-karts as well as road karts. The off road karts where a lot of fun and you could even catch some air over a couple of the hills if one kept the gas on. We both enjoyed these a great deal. The on road karts where fun too but not as much fun. We ran a few errands and drove around the town a bit. We got dinner at an Applebee’s and then went to the movie to see Undercover Brother, which was very funny. The next day we drove a little north to the EAA a flight museum. This was one of the best air and flight museums that I have ever been too. It was very complete and had many rare and beautiful planes including vintage planes, military planes from WW 1 and up, and private race and development planes. LaWanna then went to one of the malls and got her nails done while I went to a BMX track near by. I wanted to ride the track but there was a race going on so I just stayed and watched for a while. On Wednesday we left camp and drove west to the Wisconsin Dells. The Dells is a series of rivers that run through canyons and around them a tourist town has sprouted up with waterslide parks, go-karts tracks, and small amusements. I will describe the Dells in more detail tomorrow after we have gone on one of the boat tours. Once we arrived we went downtown and went to a Sci-fi/UFO museum, which had a lot of cool movie artifacts and some interesting UFO tidbits. We then went through a haunted house that was kind of cheesy. We looked around in the stores and bought a couple trinkets, and then had dinner at a small Italian restaurant that had food that was ok but not great. After dinner we went to the Guinness book of world records museum. This was very interesting and contained a great deal of amusing and amazing exhibits. And now we have retired back to the trailer for some rest before the many activity’s we have planed for the coming days.
6/19/02 – The day after my last entry we took a tour of the Dells on the DUCKS. These are military amphibious vehicles that have been converted into tour vehicles. The tour lasted about an hour and wound through the woods on dirt trails and then the DUCKS drove right into the water. We then went down river a for a few minuets and then back up on land over to one of the lakes where we went back in the water and then ended the trip back on land and back to where start. Both the forest part of the trip as well as the river parts where very beautiful. We then spent some time at an internet café and then went to a robot museum which was really just a bunch of science exhibits. It would have been really cool except that they packed too many people into the exhibit and so it was crowded and very annoying. The next day it was rainy and dreary so we spent the day inside mostly and only went out to go grocery shopping. The next day was fairly lax as well and the hilight was playing mini golf and then spending some more time at the internet café, though I did get in a mountain bike ride. I couldn’t find any good off road trails to ride but had a long ride on a country road through fields, farmlands, and forests. Sunday I went and rented a wave runner and motored around one of the lakes for an hour. A nap and then some dinner at a pizza place, which was some of the pest pizza I had had in a long time, then we went next door to a night club where we played some pool and had a couple of drinks. On Monday we spent another lazy day hanging out around the trailer. Tuesday we went to a water slide park called Noah’s Ark which boasts being the largest water park in the US. I can’t speak to their claim being true but it certainly was a very big park. We had a great time and then as if that wasn’t good enough for one day, we went back to the sports bar to watch the Road America Formula Xtreme race. It was cool to be in a state half way across the US in a local bar and be able to watch yourself on TV. Some local guy’s came in and we had a great time shooting the shit and having a few beers. And finally today we made the journey to Minnesota. We are at a campsite a few miles north of Minneapolis. We are watching TV or at least trying to watch in between the tornado warnings that keep coming in every 10 minuets. It is currently calm here but I think the storm is moving east ward through the state which is towards us.
6/20/02 – Today we went to the Mall of America, the largest mall in the US. We spent all day there. It is three stories high and each story is very large. In the middle of the mall is a small amusement park called Snoopy’s Park, with a roller coaster, log ride, ferris wheel, and a couple of other small rides. We walked around and looked in a lot of stores, and then we played a couple games of bowling accompanied by drinks. Then there where some video games, dinner at Planet Hollywood, and back to home.
6/25/02 – The day after the Mall trip was a rain day, so we spent most of the day hanging out around the trailer. On Saturday we went downtown Minneapolis and wandered around on the skyway. All the buildings downtown are connected by walkways on the second story so you can traverse almost the entire downtown without going outside. followed it up with a bike ride around a lake near to the trailer park. Sunday we went to the Minnesota Zoo in Minneapolis. There where a lot of cool animals there and it was one of the better zoo’s that I have been to. We finished off the day by seeing the Ultimate X movie on the IMAX screen at the zoo. It is a movie about the X Game and was very well done. We stopped by the supermarket for some food and Wanna bought some pudding, which she proceeded to suck down like a vacuum cleaner. Monday we moved a little more north to a town called St Cloud. It’s a small town and a good place to stay and do some laundry. I got in a good ride around another lake that is near the campsite. We also made another grocery run and Wanna again bought some pudding and again sucked it down like a Hoover. So far there has been a thunder storm every night and it has been hotter than hell during the day. And I don’t mean any wussy thunder storms these are the kind that warrant storm watches that get posted on TV every 10 minuets. Watching TV here has been a big pain in the ass, and last night we had to go into the basement of the main building because there was a tornado warning. Weather here sucks! Tomorrow we head to the track.
6/29/02 – Well another race down and it was pretty successful. Brainerd is a fairly bumpy track and it goes like this. A very very very long front straight. Wide open in 6th gear all the way down and then it’s in to turn one barely rolling off the throttle. Out of turn one and down a small straight that leads into turn two which is a 5th gear turn, followed by another short straight into a tight right hand turn the third in a row. Short straight and into the first left 2nd gear turn which quickly switches back into a right. A quick straight with a left at the end, up a gear down the next straight and then lean it left through a left kink and then back to the right for the switchback. Then you have to stand on the brakes as you go through a really tight right hand 90 degree turn and then its up a long straight down two gears for the right hander and then back onto the front straight.
The Thursday practice went well, I think I am getting the hang of riding new tracks and looking back at my times I was running qualifying time by the second practice session. I continued to drop some time every practice session. We got 5 25min practice sessions on Thursday and by the end of the day I was beat. I found that for me to go fast here I was sliding the bike a lot and this is more physically demanding then a smooth track or flowing track. Friday in practice I experimented with a couple of things and only found one additional second in practice. However in qualifying I found an additional second, unfortunately everyone else found 2 seconds and so I ended up in 27th place, not a great grid position. The race started and with me getting a terrible start I am picking up positions and on the third lap the red flag comes out. On the restart I get a little better start and quickly move up a couple of spots. It ends up with Jeff Bostrom and myself dicing it up. Jeff was faster than me through turn one and two but I was faster through the infield sections. I made the mistake of tipping my hand though and showed him a wheel on the front straight with two laps to go. This prompted Jeff to run a defensive line and in the end I was not able to get by. Well next time I won’t be so hasty. I ended up finishing in 20th, which isn’t bad, and my overall standing improved to 14th. We will be heading back to California early tomorrow and are very excited about getting home. My writing was just interrupted by a pretty spectacular fireworks show but on by the track. Which reminds me that they put on a very nice event here. Fans are camping out all around the track and the promoters arranged bands to play for the last couple of hours then this fire works display. With the exception of all the bugs this is a pretty nice event. Road America was very similar; they know how to put on a race here in the east.
7/21/02 - Well now it has been several weeks since my last journal entry. I was back in Santa Cruz to do the Laguna Seca race and with all the excitement I forgot to make entries. Well I will try to sum up the time that has past but first let me talk about today as it is fresh in my mind, then I will go back over the Laguna Seca.
Today is our second day back on the road and heading for Ohio. We intended to leave on Friday of maybe optimistically on Thursday so that we would have had a much more leisurely drive. Alas more bike problems caused us to have to wait around until the bike was ready to go with us. So our drive is not as leasurly as we would like and we find ourselves driving pretty hard to reach Ohio by Tuesday night in order to stay at a campground, and fill up the tanks of the camper before we go to the track on Wednesday. Yesterday was fairly uneventful with us getting out of California and most of the way through Nevada before we stopped. Today we made and early start and most of the day was just plain driving. At around 7:45pm (by my clock which had not been adjusted for the time difference and this read and hour earlier than it was) I looked to my left and saw some of the most spectacular sunset clouds I have ever seen. There where about three different types of clouds all intermingled. There where horizontal fluffy thin long clouds that shone yellowish and made a frame around the other clouds. Behind them and rather vertical where more dense clouds that looked like popcorn and where a deep amber color fading to orange and read near the ends. Intermingle with these other two types where small cumulus clouds that where all different colors depending on where each one was. It was such a sight, I watched as much as I could without running of the road. Then when I thought it was almost over I looked in the side view mirror and it looked like the world and sky over the mountains that we had just crossed was on fire. The entire sky was deep amber and read fading to oranges and yellows. I have never seen so much of the sky lit up in this way it was pretty spectacular. A little after that we stopped in a rest stop in the middle of Wyoming to make some dinner. After having a couple of hot dogs I was feeling really worn out on driving for the day so we decided to stay the night there. There where a couple of pyramid shapes over by the bathroom and they looked perfect for skateboarding. I couldn’t resist getting the board out and having a go on them. While I was in Santa Cruz I bought some new, big, fat, soft, old school wheels for my board and now that I have these on the board I have fallen back in love with skating again. After playing at the rest stop for a little while I was rejuvenated and felt like driving some more so we did another 120 miles that night before settling into the rest stop where we are now, and that brings us up to the present so now for the past couple of weeks.
So after the race was over at Brainerd we packed up and where prepared to leave the track and head for home early Sunday morning. We where eager to get home so we could spend some time out of the trailer and away from each other. The trip has been good but it is hard being stuck in such a small place with anyone. We drove franticly to get back to Santa Cruz and it looked like we would make it in just 3 day’s. Most of the trip home was just driving and not very interesting but on the second night when I felt like I could not drive anymore and was going through nowhere land in Utah/Nevada. I started looking for a rest stop and it seemed like one would never appear. Finally I saw a rest stop sign and we pulled in found a spot and I was relieved not to be driving any more. Wanna went straight to bed but I was a little wound up and needed to unwind a little before I could sleep. So I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and started to wander around the rest stop. I saw that there was a ramp up to a lookout tower that was about 15 feet of the ground. I walked up to the top and started reading the plaque that was at the top and it said that I was looking out over the Salt Flats. Excitedly I looked up and out over the white expanse that disappeared into the dark night beyond vision in all directions. I had always wanted to see the salt flats and now inadvertently I had stopped at them without even knowing I had. It was an incredible night seeing all the white illuminated only by the lights of the rest stop. I walked down the overlook and headed out into the salt. I kept walking, and walking, and walking off into the darkness. It was easy to keep walking but kind of foreign to be able to keep walking even though there was no longer any light. There was nothing to trip on though since it was utterly flat. I got out far enough that I was standing in the middle of a bunch of salt, in complete darkness, and I looked up into the sky and was awestruck by how incredible the stars where. They where so bright since the nearest lights where the rest stop lights that where very weak and from there the next closest was 30 – 40 miles away. I can’t explain all the feelings I had at that moment or how beautiful it was out there but lets say that I will count this as one of the most incredible experiences of my life. The third day I made it to San Jose so I could drop of the engine with issues at G-Force then it was off to Tim and Kerri’s house where we would stay for the two weeks that we where back. A well needed shower and shave and we settled down for the night to enjoy Tim’s very nice large screen TV and very plush chairs. The ironic thing is that when we retired to our room for a good sleep we realized that the front room of the house receives all the road noises from Mt Hermon road. It was much like the rest stops we stayed in on the road, though we where still very glad to have a real bed to sleep in and it really wasn’t that bad. Well rested we started our vacation in Santa Cruz for lunch I had Sushi which I had been craving the entire trip, then for dinner I had Sushi again. Much alcohol followed. I found out the next day that my engine had been throwing a crank bearing and would not be available for Laguna. The solution was to put the A engine head on the B engine bottom end to have one full engine for Laguna. The day of one practice session and qualifying session came and I finally had some much needed help in the pits. It was very nice to not have to do my own mechanics work. The unfortunate thing was that in the practice session and the first half of qualifying we went completely the wrong direction on our set up and my lap times where reflecting it. About half way through qualifying the rear end of my bike decided that it really wanted to exit turn 4 before the front end of my bike. The front of my bike then argued with the back of my bike and I found myself hanging on to the handlebars with my feet flailing in the air. I quickly pitted and we started in the opposite direction with the set up on the bike and it immediately yielded results. I pitted 2 more times and kept dropping time but ran out of qualifying before I got where I wanted to be. On Friday my work paid for the entire office to go out for surfing lessons and I got to go along despite being on a leave of absence. I had a great time and learned a lot more about surfing than I knew before. Saturday we where back at the track and hopping that our set up changes would do some good for the race. Practice went well and I was already running the same times as I ran in qualifying so the race held some promise. When I was on the hot pit wall all ready to go for the race and we where told that they would be delaying the Formula Xtreme race until after World Superbike practice and then WS Superpole so our race would now be run at around 5pm almost 4 hours later than it was supposed to. Plus we had to move all of our stuff out of the hot pit and would not be able to get back into the hot pit till just before our race. Finally after much waiting the race was underway. I got a good start but a bad selection into turn two and lost a couple of spots. I was dicing with a couple of people for the first half of the race then I got by everyone near me and spent the rest of the race on a consistent pace. It was going good and I was on the last lap when I went into the corkscrew a little narrow and I cassed the left side of the bike on the raised candy striping that Laguna has. The bike took off and apparently bounced off the striping on the other side of the track and started cartwheeling. I slid and then tumbled and then slid some more, when I had come to a stop I quickly got to the bike picked it up and got it to start. I was getting ready to jump on and head down the hill when the turn worker yield to me that my rear tire was flat and that I couldn’t ride it. Discouraged I gave it up and got a ride back down to the pits on a golf cart along with Roger Hayden who had had a mechanical in the corkscrew. My pit crew went up to get the bike from tech and when I saw them rolling it over to the pits I saw what they had meant when they said the tire was flat. The entire back end of the bike was bouncing up and down and making a noise like thump thump thump. Inspecting the bike it was much worse than I had thought. I managed to completely destroy my rear mag rim, both Ohlens forks, the triple clamps, sub frame, fairings, and miscellaneous controls. Well good thing I have that back up bike but unfortunately I don’t have a back up set of Ohlens forks. Well I should have enough to make it through the last two races.
7/22/02 – Another day of driving and we are making good time, nothing else was very exiting but when we finally stopped at the rest stop for the night I got some more skating in and am getting some of my old skills back. It looks like I will be skating the rest stops of America, maybe when I get back I can right a magazine article of the best rest stops to skate in America for one of the skate mag’s.
7/25/02 – We got to the track on Wednesday and it was back to doing all my own bike work myself. It is now Thursday night and I have been working on the bike constantly since yesterday afternoon. It is a lot of work to switch to a back up bike. There are all the little things that you had done to the primary bike and said you would do them to the back up bike as well but you never do, well I never do. I haven’t ridden Mid Ohio yet but so far it sucks, getting to the track is a pain in the ass, they charge to park the RV in the pits, and you can’t ride anything outside the pits, not even a bicycle. Oh yeah and we had to drive through Indian where they keep all the worst drivers in the world. From the moment we entered Indian to the time we left a couple of hours later we saw more illegal traffic maneuvers than we have seen on the entire trip put together and some of the stuff we saw was just plain stupid. So do not drive in Indiana unless you really have to. Tomorrow I get on the track so I am heading to bed now.
7/26/02 – Well now I have been on the track at Mid Ohio and I like it here even less. Here is a description of a lap; From the front straight which is not very long you go into a left hand turn that has a cement patch that runs the length of the corner and is about 2 feet off the inside striping which is a very large curb separating the pit out road from the actual track. As you will soon see this is one of the better corners. Accelerate hard out of this corner up a short straight and then lean it over to the right and then quickly back to the left which makes a chicane in the straight then it is quickly back to the right for a 180 degree right hand corner that has a cement patch that only leaves one foot off the inside of the corner. This patch also has a very nasty transition so you either want to be on this one foot on the inside of you have to stay on the cement patch for the duration of the corner. By the way the chicane off the straight was the only corner on the track that does not have a cement block in it. So anyway after you exit the 180 right hander you accelerate up to redline in 6th down a straight away that has a slight right hand kink in the middle. Then it’s back down to 2nd gear for a right hand with yes another cement block in it with a lovely pavement transition. Then it’s a left that crests a hill and continues down the other side of the hill while you are still leaned over making it difficult to hold your line as the pavement drops away from you. Accelerate down the hill and then back on the breaks for another right-hander, and yep you guessed it all these corners have cement patches. Following the right there is a slight left that crests a hill again just as you have to through it back to the right. There is then a very short straight that ends in a right-hander that again crests a hill where the bike wants to wheelie over the crest. Up a couple gears for a fast straight with a slight right hand kink tap the breaks drop a gear and trough it over to the left drop another gear going into the last right left combo that puts you back on the front straight. Of course more cement blocks with transitions, lots of traction changes, bumps and difficult elevation changes. It is a difficult track and is a little scary to learn to go fast on. My two practice sessions went well and my times are doing well but I need to drop a couple more seconds before qualifying to get where I want to be.
7/28/02 – Well today I raced. I can’t say it went well but I did manage to finish. First I should talk about how yesterday went and qualifying. The morning practice went well and then a little before qualifying the rain started coming down and I bought my first set of rain tires. I thought I would get my first rain riding experience but then the AMA decided to move the Formula Xtreme qualifying till after the Superbike race later in the afternoon when it was much dryer so no luck on the rain tires. Then when I finally did get to qualify I spun a crank bearing several laps in and before I got up to speed. Luckily I just managed to qualify though I ended up on the last row of the grid. That night I swapped in the stock engine so that I would have something to ride in the race. Tired, I got up the next morning and had a good practice session and then proceeded to wait all day long, as my race was the last race of the day. Finally we grided up and the lights went green. I got off the line well but made a bad choice of position in to turn one loosing a couple of spots and then again made a poor choice in to the next corner as well and lost an other spot. I was reeling in the next guy up at the end of the last lap when coming out of the right-hander going into the left onto the front straight the guy in front of me checked up. I saw the back of his bike coming at me very quickly. I swerved to the right to avoid hitting him and suddenly saw why he had checked up. There was a rider sliding down the pavement right in front of me. He was directly in my path, and I swerved to the left but unfortunately I still ended up running him over. Luckily I only hit one of his legs (well I guess it depends on how you look at it). Last I heard they did not know if his leg was broken or not but that he hadn’t been very bad off when they had helped him off the track. I felt bad and it took me a minuet to come to terms with what had happened and that I indeed did not have anywhere to go. I picked up the pace again but everyone was long gone. I manage to reel in and pass one guy and then I spent the rest of the race reeling in the next to guys ahead of me. I got right up on their butt, however I just didn’t have it in me to get by them before the end of the race. I needed to do exceptional but with running someone over I could only manage OK. All in all it was a pretty shabby weekend. The one thing that was the high point of the weekend is that I have started feeling like I am making friends on the circuit and like I belong there. A husband and wife Mark and Jane, that we had meet at Road America where there and we ate dinner with them on two of the nights and hung out with them a great deal throughout the weekend. I also had many other conversations through the weekend and it almost felt like I was at an AFM race with all my friends. I also talked to Gary Ricci about what it takes to run a team of the size that he is running. This information will be invaluable as I start to put together the team for next year.
7/30/02 – The night after the race we stayed at a KOA near the track but we didn’t care for the place very much so on Monday morning we moved south to another KOA near Columbus Ohio the state capital. Which also happens to be the home of AMA headquarters and the motorcycle hall of fame. So that was the first thing we did was head over to the hall of fame. It was pretty cool. Fist thing was in the parking lot they had garages for bikes only, all the other vehicles must park out in the open. They also have lockers in the garages to put your riding gear in. There where some very cool bikes in the museum but I was a little disappointed that there weren’t any newer bikes in the exhibit. It was a bit limited to older motorcycles and not very representative of the whole spectrum of motorcycles in the US. It was still very cool though. Then we had a good dinner followed by the movie Goldmember that was very funny. Today we are going to go into Columbus.
8/1/02 – Columbus was cool a lot of old buildings, and the state Capitol building was incredible. We took a self-guided tour of the building and the architecture was outstanding. There where also a lot of monuments surrounding the building which where very cool. After going through the state capitol we wander through a shopping mall that was downtown and then had some lunch at Johnny Rockets. Mmm mmmm chilly cheeseburgers. After that we drove a few blocks over to the Old German village. It wasn’t very exiting so we didn’t get out but the buildings where really cool and it was all cobblestone streets so we drove all around the town for a little while. The next day we picked up camp and headed east into Pennsylvania. We camped at a KOA just south of Pittsburgh. After getting the trailer all set up we decided to head into Pittsburgh. I only ended up driving through because it was such a pain in the ass driving there and then trying to get anywhere in the city was a super pain in the ass. My impression from driving through was that it was old, dirty, ugly, the roads suck, and the drivers are almost as bad as the drivers in Indiana. So when we accidentally got on a road that took us out of the city we decided that it wasn’t worth trying to back track to get back to the city and we headed back to camp.
8/3/02 - On the first we left the campsite near Pittsburgh and we headed to Hershey Pennsylvania the headquarters of Hershey chocolates. After getting to the campsite and getting settled we drove around to get the lay of the land. We headed into Harsiburg the capitol of Pennsylvania. The capital building here was also very cool and we walked around downtown a little. The next day we went to Chocolate Land and took the free tour. It was pretty short and not very exiting but a little cool. We then made our way to the Indian Echo caves and took the tour. The caves had a lot of cool formations and where pretty but there was a lot of damage from various people vandalizing the caves over the years. The tour was also fun because they gave a lot of history and facts about the caves and formations. After the caves we went to the movies to see Signs. It was good but a little predictable. Today we slept in and then headed east to Lancaster and went to the Lancaster Historical Museum. It was really a very good exhibit, with lots of historical information. Wanna then got a nail job while I skated around and got a root beer float. The only other exiting thing was that when I got back to the campsite I went next door where there is a cornfield and ran through the corn stalks until I was out in the middle of the field. I wanted to see what it was like to run through the corn like you see in so many movies. Tomorrow we head to Virginia.
8/7/02 – On Sunday we made the drive to Virginia and stopped at a campsite in Charlottesville. We arrived in the early evening; we set up camp and then drove into Charlottesville. There is a nice coble stoned downtown area, and we ended up having diner in an outdoor dinning area in the middle of the main street-walking mall. It was a nice warm evening and the food was pretty good. The next morning I headed out early and drove about 20 miles down the road to the near by river. I rented a Kayak and the service dropped me off 7.5 miles up the river and I made my way back down over the next 4 hours. The water level was really low but it was still a lot of fun. I stopped on an island an climbed to the top of a rock cliff over looking the river. About half way through the trip there where some rapids they where pretty mellow but fun non the less. I went back around and up stream so that I could do the rapids a second time. I stopped a little further down river to eat lunch and then covered the last bit of distance. It was a lot of fun and I think that I would like to do more kayaking in the future, especially some kayaking with some more difficult rapids. That evening we rented a movie and had dinner at the trailer. The next day we went back to downtown to go into some of the shops that where closed the last time we where there. We then did some grocery shopping and got ready to go to the track the next day. Today we made the drive down to VIR, set up the pit and did some work on the bike. Tomorrow I have promoter practice.
8/8/02 – Well the practice day went relatively well. I felt good with where I got in learning the track though I was a little frustrated because losing pucks kept interrupting my sessions. I lost 3 in all. Its something about the candy striping here, it has little ridges that take a puck right off. The other thing about the candy striping is that it isn’t candy striped. It is just lighter brown cement than the black pavement. It is a little weird and it took me about a session to figure out my apex’s. So here is your track description; So I will start out coming out of the last right hand corner and onto the front straight. You can carry some speed through this corner and immediately shift into 4th as you keep the bike slightly leaned over as the track bends slightly to the right. Straighten the bike back out, since you are on a straight after all and go all the way up to 6th gear. Keep it pegged in 6th as you bend it right again for a slightly sharper right that is a part of the straight. Get the bike back upright while still keeping the throttle pegged and then pop up out of the bubble, break hard and drop 4 gears for the near 180 right at the end of the straight. After the this first right hand 180 there is another right hand kink which you really just treat as a second apex of the first corner. There is a short straight that I go up a gear for and then lean it over for a left bring it up a little drop a gear and then into another left. Here there is another short straight at the end of which is a tight left hand corner that you need to hold tight on so that you have a good line as you quickly flip it back over to the right. Coming out of the right drift out to the left edge of the track so that at the end of the short straight you can late apex the right-hander that gives you a good line for the following S’s of left, right, left that if done right you can almost make into a straight that leads onto another straight. At the end of the real straight you will break hard and drop two gears in preparation for the right hand corner that goes up a steep hill and is slightly off camber. It is difficult to keep from spinning up that back tire at the top of the hill. Get back on it as soon as possible go up another gear go slightly to the right and then set up for a 90 degree left that crests a small hill at the apex and then goes down to a right that has a little valley in the middle. You hold the throttle neutral through both these corners and then pick it up a little coming out and through the right left combo that again could be a straight if done right. You come over the top of the hill after this combo and then break and drop a gear for the trip down the hill. The trip down the hill starts with a sharp right-hander and then into a left with a short straight that is followed by another left that makes for mostly one big turn. You hold the left tight on the exit so that you can set up for a right-hander that drops you onto the bottom of the hill. This is a weird corner because the hill gets suddenly a little steeper and the bike drops away from you a little as you drop down all leaned over. Hold the throttle on through the fast right-hander that gets you up onto the front straight.
8/9/02 – Today was the first official AMA day and the practice went well. I dropped another couple of seconds and am standing pretty well in the order. I need another couple of seconds though to be where I would like to be. So far the weather here has been nice, moderate, and in the mid 80’s. It is supposed to be like this all weekend and we are hoping that this will hold out.
8/10/02 – Today I had qualifying. In morning practice I touched on a 1:34 so I was pretty confident about how the weekend was turning out so far. In qualifying I quickly went out and ran low 34’s and then there was a crash on the backside of the course that left debris on the track so I pulled of to let the turn workers clear the track. I then made a suspension adjustment while I was in the pits. On the first lap out it became apparent that this was not the right direction to go on the set up so I pulled back in and went the opposite direction on the set up. The bike felt much better but I had lost my rhythm and had apparently inserted my head into my butt. So I pulled in and called it a qualifying session. I qualified in 21st not great but not terrible. After the day’s events where over a local model airplane club came out and put on a demonstration of their scale flying planes. It was a lot of fun to watch. Tomorrow is the race and I am looking forward to both racing and having raced the last race of the season and being able to head home.
8/12/02 – It’s now Monday night, the day after the last race of the AMA season, and we are in Arkansas on our way home. I had had high hopes of Virginia being a good race weekend for me and until Sunday it was going pretty well. I hadn’t been going astoundingly fast but I was beating all the locals and was right on the heels of the very fast riders. Unfortunately in Sunday morning practice when I was just about done with my session coming out of turn 3 I ran a little wide. I stood the bike up and ran it off into the dirt. I was dragging the rear brake and was doing a pretty good job of getting slowed down to make the turn to get back on the track when the back end hit a bump or some thing and started fishtailing slightly I let of on the break in hopes that it would come back in line but instead the next thing I know is that the whole bike is sidewise. I thought to myself “your fucked now” and then on queue I was suddenly ejected from the bike. I came down hard on my left side and then rolled a bit. As soon as I stopped I decided to hop up because it hadn’t seemed that bad to me. When I stood up it became obvious that I had hit much harder than I had thought I stumbled around and almost fell over having to steady myself with my hands and take a second to figure out which way to run to get out of the impact zone. I got my bearings and more cautiously I headed for the barrier separating the turn worker area from the impact area. When I got to the fence I once again had to stop and crouch down and gather myself up before I could make the effort to step over the 2 foot fence. My left shoulder was now hurting a lot and my ribs on the left side where painful as well. After loosening my back protector belt and unzipping my leathers so I could breath I felt a bit better. The turn workers showed me how to get back and I started the walk back to my pit about ¾ mile away. I got to my pit and told Wanna I was alright, then had her help me get the leathers off my soar shoulder. I went down to the medical unit to get checked out. They couldn’t really tell anything and the biggest help they could give was to show us how to get to the nearest doc in a box and they also called ahead so we where at the front of the short line when we got there. I got my X-Rays and sure enough I had broken my left collarbone. And so my AMA season ended with an injury, which is a sucky way to end the year but I shouldn’t be surprised since this is the third year in a row that I have ended with an injury. I am really getting tired of spending all my off season recovering instead of doing all the fun activity’s that I don’t have time to do during the normal season. Well at least this year the season is over 2 months earlier that usual so the off-season will not be a complete waste, and this collarbone is not a very bad break so I should recover quickly. Well we should get back into town on Friday so only another 4-day’s of driving ahead.