Many moons ago, i got into track riding.
Got this write up done about it by a friend, thought I might share. Cracks me up to this day.
This constitutes my miscellaneous notes about the Track, the Track Bike, and Track Bike Month (TBM)...
I have cobbled together a group of ramblings here about what Ive learned and what Ive done and what I would do again&
To start with, it should be known that in my experience, motorcyclists are very calm, deliberate folk who never do anything on a whim or on impulse&And I also have a very nice beach property in New Mexico if anyone is interested. After spending a few hours watching friends out playing on an open track day, my friend and fellow debt-inducer BozemanMT says to me, hey, we have that 84 Interceptor in the garage, and its already set up to race. It would cost us next-to nothing to get it set up as a track bike, and we could see how fun it is.
First Lesson: NEVER EVER think that the phrase Track Bike and the word Inexpensive can be uttered in the same breath. If you do, you need to sign over all of your pay-checks to me, because I will be just as fiscally responsible for your money as you are. After deciding to embark on this great adventure, we began to prepare everything for the next Open Track Day, which would happen in Pueblo in two weeks. Let the spending begin!
Chapter 1: The Trailer
For the record, I don't have a vehicle that will tow a trailer. And on that fateful day, beyond some moron uttering I know where we can get a cheap trailer, we didnt have a trailer, either. That cheap trailer (courtesy of my father) had been sitting in the back yard, with snowmobiles resting on its tired back, since 1983 without any maintenance. Going out to take a look at it, it seemed to be in reasonable shape. Of course, wed have to find a way to dispose of the snowmobiles and that would be that. Sadly, this was wrong. After conning, er, inviting a friend over to help us tow the trailer over to our house, the real discoveries were about to begin.
For although the trailer looked okay from a distance, the plywood flooring had rotted out and need to be replaced, and it had rusted. New plywood, paint and some way to connect the bikes to the trailer would be in order. Around $500 in supplies later and our inexpensive trailer would be complete.
After installing new plywood and stripping off the old rusty parts, we decided that in order to keep our new $1000 trailer in good shape, it would be appropriate to paint the thing. Now in order to set the stage for the next chapter, you need to realize that life and the world continue to move about you as you are embarking on Track Bike Month. So, into this mix of lunacy, the weather decided to turn south and my Duc was at Ft. Collins Ducati getting serviced. A service that of course, took much longer than anticipated.
Chapter 2: It was a dark and stormy night&
Imagine if you will, Two tired, wet and hypothermic riders back from a fruitless, yet insane quest to pick up one Idiots bike from Ft. Collins. Enter into the picture one Gung-ho BozemanMT that has been busy filling his lungs with rust particles and steel shavings all day. Add 1/2 dozen cans of red "Rust-o-Leum" and one naked trailer. Close garage door, add beer and begin to stir...
When entering into painting in a closed area, there are several things that must be considered:
-the EPA forbids any aerosol painting without proper ventilation and filtering procedures.
-in a non-ventilated area (Read: without updraft fans that suck air up and out of the paint booth) atomized (or aerosol) paint particles tend to obey that law of physical motion that says they will stay in motion until coming to rest on the farthest points in the garage.
-breathing is a simple form of updraft ventilation. Therefore atomized paint is pulled out of the atmosphere at large and sucked at the rate of respiration into your lungs.
-the more paint that you inhale, the faster your breathing becomes.
The geniuses that decided to engage in this endeavor neglected to think (it was Pretty Darn Late on a Friday night...Like 8ish, So it could be that we were ill-equipped to think anyway. Although some may argue that time has no relevance to this matter) of the consequences.
After getting a chance to change into dry clothes (of course, Terry didn't see fit to bring dry clothing of his own, so I had to lend him some) we wandered out into the garage like sheep into the slaughterhouse. The door of the garage had to be lowered to reduce the wind and rain that raged outside. There was about 3 feet of opening to the garage door (because the tongue of the trailer stuck slightly outside of the garage) for fresh air to enter the room...We looked around for some short time for my painting mask, then said, aw heck, we'll be fine. And we commenced to spray-painting.
Second Lesson: Spraying paint is like shooting a shotgun. You hit some of what you aim at, and the rest (in roughly equal amounts) goes, well, everywhere that you're not aiming.
Soon we began to giggle that the room "looked awfully pink" from the clouds of paint in the air (Hello!!!! The air is filled with paint!!!!! Hello!!!) but we just kept on painting. It was some minutes after this that I realized that the shoes that Terry wore were rapidly being coated in pink (because it was falling out of the air) were the brand new ones I had just lent to him... Then BozemanMT wiped his nose and said "Hey guys...My nose is all red. Terry, your nose is all red, too...Wow, maybe we should call this one a night. Look at the floor and the air. Everything has this weird red cast to it..." We looked around. It did indeed resemble the set of a slasher movie. I will never be able to read some graphic violent scene in a novel that says, "the air erupted in a pink mist" the same way again.
We stumbled inside, taking off red coated shoes, pouring mineral spirits on hands and on paper towels to rub under noses...Terry had to escape home, and I handed him my car keys...You can see that we were obviously off of our collective rockers. Epilogue: All the principals of this incident awoke Saturday morning, heads pounding like a Led Zeppelin drum solo. I, for one, sneezed about 20 times before the discharge (ewww) was no longer "radiant red." Good thing that no one was reported missing by the local police that night, because the garage floor looked like the aftermath of a massacre. Despite being covered, BozemanMT's 748 had a new shade of red on about 45% of the fairing. The BMW had a red fender. The various garage-type implements (lawnmowers, ladders, tools, riding suits) are various shades of red from Light Pink to Crimson Tide. But the trailer, thankfully, had been completed.
Chapter 3: Riding the Perfect Beast.
The bike itself really was fairly inexpensive to get ready for the track. Thank goodness for small favors. The expensive stuff is everything else you have to have. A short list of those inexpensive items (can you say nickel-and-dimed to death?) include: Race leathers (more later), repair stands, timing equipment (again, more later), tie downs, tools, something to provide shade at the track, etc., etc.
Our first track day dawned bright and early. John would be providing the tow vehicle, so in exchange we broke his VF500 Interceptor (a tragic tie-down accident) and he got to pull down the bikes (ours and Terry's) for free. After trying to get lost, we pulled into Pueblo Motorsports Park and began to unload. There were about 12 people with bikes that day and one guy with a 911 Carrera at the track. Tom was kind enough to organize everything, so that all we had to do was show up and plonk down our $45 per rider for ½ day of hooliganism. Compared to everything else, this was a bargain.
Now the first thing anyone will tell you when you start talking about going to track days is that you ride your own pace, you never have to worry about competing, its all just for fun and excitement. And you know what, thats ALL true. But after going out on your first few laps around, getting used to the track, hoping that someone is kind enough to let you follow a good line, something starts happening. Pretty soon it comes down to the numbers. You start wanting to know just how fast did I go? The stopwatch comes out. And then, its all over for your wallet.
To be honest, my first few laps were frightening. I really felt like I had no idea what I was doing and what the bike would do before I lost it. I had two goals for the day: To get a knee down and to beat BozemanMT. I would meet one of those goals, anyway. After watching Bozeman go around the track for his second session, and watching him better my times by 5, then 8, then 10 seconds, I began to feel the competitive juices flow. I followed Tom around the track (and found out that riding on the dirt is not conducive to better lap times) and got a better idea of the line to follow. I began to shave time. I began to experiment, and I began to get really comfortable with the idea that I was in control of the bike, and I could do make it do more than I had ever attempted before. It might not have been the most fun Ive ever had with my clothes on, but it was not any lower than 4th. By the end of our half-day session, I had put my knee sliders down on the asphalt and on a tire barrier, I had not, however gone faster than Bozeman. I was ecstatic. I was alive. I was exhausted.
Lesson Three: It may not seem like much at the time, six or eight laps at a time, 2:15 seconds per lap, but after seven sessions on the track, you are simply drained. I think its the concentration, the thinking, the constant shifting of your body, but I was ready to stop and go take a nap. After doing this, you being to realize just how good the pros and endurance racers really are.
When you first get out on the track, it seems like its everything you can do to keep the bike on the road, to shift gears, to brake before dying. However, after a few sessions, you find out youre not thinking as much, that you can actually limit the areas of concentration. You become smoother and you become faster, you get braver. Just getting around the track isnt enough. Getting around the track faster than anyone else is what you want to do. You realize that using the stopwatch on your timex isnt good enough any more. Say Cha-Ching! with me now brothers and sisters! Because once you get your bike on the track, and you come back into the pits, and your friends are smiling and yelling and giving you complements and good-natured ribbing, you realize that somewhere, somehow, you can buy speed. Or power. Or less weight. And that will make you faster.
Like I said before, even though it isnt about how fast you can go, its all about how fast you can go. Its all about how much better of a rider you feel like youre becoming. Its knowing that after 4 hours on a track in 10 minute intervals that you can go out to your favorite twisty highway and you know that you can be faster and smoother and lean over farther and react better and not even think about it. Knowing that your safety limits have been raised because you have become a more capable rider and that is the best feeling you can have. That, and beating someone elses time who is on a bigger, lighter, newer, more powerful bike. Because you will!!!. You might or might not give them a hard time that day at the track, but you know. You know and your other friends know because youre gonna tell them. Thats just the way we are.
