Friday morning we met up with Mookie and GLantern, from suspectsunlimited.com as well as some DESMOites at the Lightning course of the New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, NJ.
Roy from Absolute ran a great day, as usual, and had a green track at 8:30am!
He had a crew of 30 control riders/coaches, and wasn't bullshitting when he said he hand picked his control riders for personality and skill. They were all great (except for the one that decided to take me off-roadin' with him). At any one time there were at least 7-8 control riders out on track helping and coaching riders. They all made an effort to coach on track and give us feedback during and after sessions.
First session out was the Advanced group at 8:30am. Some young racer who assumes the group is filled with some old slouches and doesn't realize that in the advanced group there's several ex-racers quickly gets in over his head and crashes. The crash closes the track while the one ambulance took him to the hospital. Turns out he suffered a high femur break and broken hip...ouch! After the ambulance comes back to grounds the day was great, I don't think there was another red flag the whole day.
Friday, May 8, 2009 PM:
The offroad incident:
During an afternoon session I was out with Terry in the Intermediate group and a control rider signals to tow me around. I follow him around when in the exit of turn 5 he took me tight to the inside (off the line everyone else is taking) I'm right on his tail when he turns to look where I am and runs into and across some wet sand/dirt and of course I follow him. He turns around and takes off.. lol I'm laughing in my helmet thinking "why the hell would he want to show me that line?" Terry was behind me videoing me, and is laughing at the same time, after seeing that I was fine.
In the afternoon we bumped down to beginner group to video Mookie and GLantern and had some fun.
All in all, it was an awesome day the weather was great as well as the company.
Saturday, May 9, 2009 AM
The weather was once again awesome! Very sunny with a high in the mid 80's with a nice breeze all day. We both showed up early with our sunburned faces from the previous day. We set up with more DESMOites that showed up for the day. This day was run with 4 groups (the 4th being Racer). Again we had a green track by 8:30am. This day had a few red flags, and a full intermediate group. So I decided since the beginner group look less crowded I would bump down. First session out I had a great time. I had several laps with a clear run ahead of me and the few riders I came up upon were easy to pass.
Terry @ Turn 7
PM
Unfortunately the heat got to Speedy (pit chief) and people were bumping themselves from advanced to intermediate to beginner to get in as much riding as they wanted, which pissed me off in the afternoon because the "advanced" riders weren't following the rules of the group they bumped down into and were running crappy and inconsistent lines. I spoke to Roy about it, the offender that pissed me off the most was on a sweetly painted red Monster. >:(
There were alot of red flags and crashes in the afternoon, but we still managed to have a good time.
Roy later came and hung out with us, and I told him how it was Terry and I that convinced DESMO to him to organize our trackday. That should be a great day as there's only going to be about 85 riders for day.
It was nice hanging with friends again in between sessions.
During lunch our friend Alan asks me if I have a sister for him, but I'm an only child. lol.
Right before the second to last session of the day and I ask Terry if I can ride the ZX-6R, (which I know made him happy). The bike is super smooth! I only had one mis-shift as it was set up standard, and my bikes are both set up GP (reverse), but the gear indicator helps me here. The bike is so freakin' easy to ride, I can instantly feel my body position improve as it's almost impossible to me to set into a turn and not have my head to the inside of the windscreen, where it belongs. The bike just fits me so well, which is why we choose it. It's still too tall for me to feel comfortable on the street as I can't really reach the kickstand, but for the track it's what I want. I come in after the session, and I tell everyone hanging with us, how I want to sell the SV. Terry and I start discussing selling both of the SVs so I can get a new ZX-6R for me! I've decided that once my monster is set and reliable, my SV is for sale!
Saturday evening:
I'm laying in bed watching the AMA races. I don't normally watch AMA races as I can't get "into" them, I feel like the TV coverage is boring to watch, and the commentary sucks.
It's about 11pm when I hear a ruckus outside. I get up walk to the door, peek out and see about 30 guys yelling and arguing, and some of them running to their cars. I instantly get a bad vibe about the scene and call 911. Police cars arrive in less that 2 minutes. Of course the people all took off by the time the cops arrive, but the woman running the motel's front desk came out to say she had received many complaints from other people staying at the motel starting at 7:30pm! Anyway, so I'm standing in the parking lot talking to a police officer telling him I was the one that called and why, when another cop walks up to me and says "I guess the fun and games are over." I look at him, not understanding what he had said so he repeats himself. Terry looks at me and points to my T-shirt, which I forgot I was wearing, and I bust out laughing.
BTW, if you didn't catch Jamie Hacking's crash and subsequent save during that race, I STRONGLY suggest watching it, as it was an amazing event to be seen!!!!!!!! He ended up on the podium after that!
Sunday, May 10, 2009 AM:
We have the day off so I wanted to do something that involved something other than just motorcycles. It's not that I don't like/love bikes anymore, but I decided this year to do more of the other things I used to be interested in as well. We quickly prep the bikes for the street and take them off the trailer and ride down to Cape May. The ride down is uneventful, the roads were pretty boring as expected, and I could probably count the turns on my fingers.
We get into Cape May and stop at Capt Mike's pancake house for some breakfast. We then board the "Twilight" for a 3-hour dolphin watching cruise.
Terry
The first large pod of dolphins we come upon have several mother's with calves. Happy Mother's Day. In another small pod of dolphins later we caught some dolphins mating which was a treat.
The first large pod of dolphins we come upon have several mother's with calves. Happy Mother's Day. In another small pod of dolphins later we caught some dolphins mating which was a treat.
PM:
Afterwards we rode to the lighthouse and then had dinner at The Lobster House.
During the ride back to the motel, We're behind some cars and I know we're coming up upon a section of road that has a few curves that could be fun, so I signal to Terry to come up closer to me and I decide to pass a few cars. I then feel something heavy hit the inside of my arm and bounce off. I instanly know it's my Garmin GPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FAWK!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We turn around and pull over. Terry finds the antenna in the road. Then he finds the main unit off the side of the road near the woods. The unit was trashed! I thought that I could at least salvage the memory stick, but when I opened the compartment for it, it was gone!! FAWK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The rest of the ride to the motel I hung my head low :(
Monday, May 11, 2009 AM
California Superbike School @ NJMP Thunderbolt Course
I use Terry's ZX-6R for the school, he's my personal umbrella boy and helper, as I'm too short to reach the kickstand on the bike.
A few months back I bought 8 DESMO raffle tickets for a CSS day, and I won. I had already completed Levels 1-3 so they put me into Level 4 for the day, which is great. Level 4 is personalized. It's when you finally get more feedback and personal attention. I ran into several riders that I completed Level 3 with last year at Lightning, 2 of them are in my group. My on-track coach was Cobie Fair, and he gave me very helpful feedback during the day. My off track coach was James Toohey who also helped as well. At the end of the day Cobie told me I did very well, and that every session he could tell I was actually working on what we had discussed and that I "would get it", and that I had a good pace in improving through out the day. This made me very happy, as in trackdays I usually loose focus easily and get sucked into just trying to go faster than other riders. This time I stuck to just working on things. Even though after the 3rd session we were allowed full use of all gears and bikes, I stuck to the basics of 2nd through 4th gear and no brakes to very little brakes. The no use of brakes helped me tremendously on staying focused on what I was working on. Mission accomplished!
Following my coach, Cobie
In my group, I had a (very small) 11 year old, [url=http://www.peterlenz.com]Peter Lenz[/url] who was riding his race prepped 125. He was riding between us all like we would all zip through manhattan traffic. lol. He was fun to watch, and several times we were all laughing in our helmets when he would come up on traffic and get through so easily. I'm told he has broken lap records in his class and is someone to watch for.
I had an awesome long weekend, weather was great and ran into many friends, made some new ones as well!!!!!!!!!
May 12, 2009
first day back to work.... I'm glad to have my job, even though at this time it's $3,000 less than what I was making.
