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.