Jam On It!

If you’re not a follower of or participant in WERA road racing, you might not be familiar with Cycle Jam. WERA is made up of several regions (Northeast, Mid-Central, Southeast, etc.) and through out the season folks race at events in their respective regions competing for regional championships. If you’re a reader of this blog, you know that I was fortunate to have won two such championships last year.

Cycle Jam is a once per year event that is on every region’s calendar. This means that about a zillion people enter each class. For some classes like C SS / C SB, this is normal. For others like the D classes, Heavyweight Twins, etc. it’s a bit of extra fun to have a full grid.

In addition, the WERA National Challenge series also has a full weekend of racing at the same event. This means that there is a round of the National Endurance series on Friday, regional sprints on Saturday, and National sprints on Sunday. That’s a full program of racing fo sho!

My plans are to run the sprints on Saturday and Sunday on the TL (as long  as its new motor is good…go Matt!), and also I’m going to be doing the endurance race with Gil Cutchen, Ryan Nelson, and Scott Padgitt on Gil’s 03 R6. To add to the fun, lots of folks will be coming to town to hang out at the track, watch me race for the first time, and participate as pit crew. My Step-Father George, my brother Seth, my Father In-law Jerry, and several of my best friends will all be there.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my amazing sponsors who have really stuck by me this year, even though it’s been a bumpy ride so far.

EBC Brakes : Garry at EBC has been great to me, supplying the latest in brick-wall stopping power in the form of HH Kit pads. If you haven’t tried these, do it.

Sonic Springs : Rich is another guy who didn’t’ know me from a hole in the wall before this Spring, but has always treated me like a valued asset…I won’t forget it. Great springs, low low prices (how about 35% cheaper than Race Tech?), great guys.

Cycle Therapy : If you need parts in a hurry, there’s no place better to call. How do I know this? When I stacked my R6 this past February, Mike K. called me to ask how I was doing (really…cool eh?), and when I told him about the bike’s smashed tank and other bits, he assured me I needn’t worry. By the end of the week, I had a garage full of replacement parts. Mike rocks. End of story.

VHS Photography: Vicky and co. take some awesome snaps (look around in this blog for many awesome examples), but that’s only the beginning of the story. Very few people in ‘the scene’ do so much so often to help racers out. She knows everybody, and if you need a part, or advice, or whatever, she knows how to get it…and she’ll stop at nothing until you’ve got whatever you need.

www.StickboyRacing.com :  We all know that Bridgestone tires kick maximum ass. What you might not know is that Stickboy and Honey (Derek and Lori) treat every one of their customers like royalty.  If you want the best tires going, and you want to feel like you’re the only customer who matters, you need to start buying your tires from Stick.

www.314Racing.com : Darrin’s ability to find just the exact deal you need, exactly when you need it, is legendary. If there’s any such thing as a ‘go-to guy’ when it comes to buying bike parts and racing gear, Darrin is that guy.

Scorpion Helmets : Joleen at Scorpion has been nothing but supportive all year. The helmets are the best available at the sub-$400 price point…and they start at under $150…no kidding. Joleen didn’t know me from Adam at the start to this year, but that hasn’t stopped her from taking a chance on me, and for that I am very grateful. Stop by my pit at Cycle Jam to see my latest custom Scorpion lid…it’s Bad Ass.

Fasttrack Motorsports : At risk of sounding like a broken record, I have to thank Mark personally for his above-and-beyond help this year. The season started out with my completely destroying the graphic job he spent hours creating, and went from there. I don’t know why he stuck with me after that, but I sure as heck am glad he did. I owe everything good about this season to Mark, and I’m going to do my level best to earn that support in the coming months.


I started out this season with high hopes, and higher expectations. When I approached my sponsors for this year, I regaled them with tales of C class dominance and huge exposure on the track and off. Between my crash and my late decision to change classes, some of these promises have not come to pass. My lack of enthusiasm stemming from racing in the C class had a negative impact on my ability to properly represent those who are so generously helping me out, and that’s not cool.

And yet, here I am approaching Cycle Jam, about to race a bike I’ve yet to ride (assuming Matt was lucky and found me a good motor), and every one of my sponsors has stuck by me. That, friends, is cool. Way cool.

So now, it’s on me. It’s on me to demonstrate that I’m worth the effort, and it’s on me to bring back the level of fun and performance that got me all of this great support in the first place. Can I do it? Hell yes I can.

See you next week!

Cycle Jam is only a week and a half away! Yay!

You might be wondering why I’m looking forward to Cycle Jam when I haven’t even talked about this past weekend’s Talladega round yet. Well, I actually had an ok weekend at Tally, if you don’t count the part where the TLR I spent all week getting ready to race went exactly (1) lap in the first session of Friday’s practice round before eating its own transmission for breakfast. Here’s a brief synopsis of my Friday.

Vroom.

Clank.

Damnit.

I was actually quite lucky…as I came back to T1 to begin lap 2, the bike wouldn’t downshift. I thought nothing of it, and assumed that my last upshift must have been lazy, so I upshifted again…still no downshift. At this point I just pulled in the clutch and coasted around T2 and off the track. When I got down to about 3 mph, the rear wheel locked up and I skidded to a stop. That’s the lucky part…if that had happened, say, on the back stretch at the top of 4th gear, that might have been…bad.

So, Fuzzy (crash truck guy) and I dragged the bike into the crash truck and dragged it into my pit. I pulled the clutch out, but was unable to determine what the problem might be, so I resolved to hang out with my good pal Harry “Mr. Wu” Wolle, and enjoy the day.

Later that afternoon Mark P. from FastTrack showed up, and upon hearing about my dilemma he (of course…this is what he does) immediately offered to let me ride his SV650 in the Heavyweight Twins classes on Sunday so as to get some points. Once again, Mark Peterson is The Man®!

I didn’t have much to do on Saturday, so I just hung around with my friends, watched the races, and drank water. It was about 95f all day, so water drinking was definitely the #1 pastime for all.

Mark was planning to race his bike in F2, but luckily F2 came after both HWT classes, so prepping to ride his bike was a simple matter of sticking my numbers over his and swapping transponders (transponders are used by the racing org. to keep track of everyone’s position and times on the track). A quick flip of the shift knuckle to reverse the shift pattern, and I was ready to rumble.

I had never ridden Tally in the counter-clockwise direction (unless you count my one lap on Friday) so I was really looking forward to practice. I went out in the second 750-up Novice class practice, and on lap #5 my friend Marty high-sided his Aprilia Mille at the exit of the bowl, and the session was red-flagged. I rode by the aftermath, and I could tell by the area Marty and the bike ended up in that it was a pretty nasty getoff, buy luckily Marty was ok. He beat up his shoulder a bit, but that’s all.

So, after 5 laps to learn the track and Mark’s bike, it was time to grid up for Race #1, Heavyweight Twins Superbike. I got an ok start, and passed 2 guys in the first lap. I spent the rest of the race chasing an RC51, but I didn’t have anything for him, and I finished 4th.

Next up later on was Heavyweight Twins Superstock. I had high hopes for this race, as now I had a bit of track knowledge, and I was mostly used to Marks bike. I got a better start, and even managed to pass a few experts in the first couple of corners. As the laps went on, it became apparent that the tires were pretty worn at this point, and ‘pushing’ was not on the menu. I settled in at a comfortable safe pace which turned out to be essentially the same times from race #1 (1:09) and finished 3rd in the class…not too shabby on an unfamiliar bike v. 1000cc bikes. I also had a fun battle with Steve Webster, which, as usual, he go the better of.

My deepest gratitude goes to Mark at Fasttrack for getting me out on the track so that I could win my first trophy of the year! More importantly, I had a BALL riding that 650…the fun is back for sure! I likes me some fun…here's a pic of me on Mark's SuperClean SV650.

The TLR is in SC at the moment in the midst of a motor transplant. Wish it and me luck…we need it! Thanks to the veritable army of folks who tried to help me get the TLR back going again; I truly appreciate it.