For someone with a personality
like mine, riding sport bikes is not just a good fit, but more like destiny or
fate. I have always been drawn to speed, I can't remember ever operating any type
of vehicle, motorized, self propelled, or otherwise, at anything less than as
fast as I could make it go. How fast can I pedal my bike down this hill, how
fast can I get this sled to go, how fast can I bomb down this hill on my
snowboard? My friends were on the terrain park learning how to do tail grabs,
while I was on the black diamonds outrunning the skiers. When my brother and I
got dirt bikes when we were 14 it was the same story. I don't care about jumps,
how fast can this thing go? And I bent more than a few handle bars figuring out
what was possible. I was an absolute idiot in a car in my high school days,
going as fast as my little 89 civic could go wherever I went. So it's probably
a good thing I didn't buy my first street bike until I was 20. But once I did,
it was a game changer.
I have never felt more at home
than I do on a sport bike. I wasn't instantly fast, I spent a lot of time
following faster rider and learning the right way to take a corner. But I was a
quick learner and I could hear the track calling my name. The move to doing
track days was just the next inevitable step in my riding career. Once I put
rubber down on the track I knew that this was where I belonged, this was a
place where I could truly unleash my raw desire for speed. It was a place to
learn and grow, and continue to raise the bar on what was possible for me to do
on a bike. Three sessions into my first track day they bumped me up from the
beginner group to the intermediate group; I was lapping the slowest riders
after four laps, every session. In the intermediate group I had faster riders
to follow, and by the end of the day I knew I was going to need better gear.
I soon sold my KX250F to buy a
one piece race suit and a better helmet; my old leathers were too restrictive
and my helmet was too loose. An accident on the street totaled my bike, an 03
Kawasaki 636, but the damage was only cosmetic. With insurance money I bought a
new street bike and set about making the 636 into a track only bike. It is
amazing how big of a difference all those things made at my next track day.
Gone were all the physical limitations of my old leathers, and the mental limitations
of riding your primary mode of transport around a race track. If I crashed this
bike, baring major physical injury, I had another bike I could ride to work the
next day. My lap times tumbled. Halfway through the day I had to flip my knee
sliders because they were completely worn down on the top portion; the toe
sliders on my boots were almost worn through as well. Again I found the limit
of my equipment, my street tires were getting greasy, I was pushing them so
hard that they were getting hotter than what they were designed to handle. My
pegs were too long, they weren’t giving me the lean angle I needed to take the
corners any faster. And I was outrunning the control riders for the
intermediate group.
My lap times were good enough to
put me into the advanced group for my next track day, but first I needed to
make some more changes. I cut an inch off my foot pegs to give me more lean
angle, switched my shift linkage to reverse shifting so I didn’t have to take
my foot of the peg to upshift while in a full tuck, and picked up a set of used
race tires from a friend. A month later I was back out at the track to see what
I could do. It was a little intimidating going into the advanced group. I was
still relatively new to track riding, I’d only done it twice, and I didn’t want
to be the squid who got in the way of the fast guys because he thought he was
faster than he really was. Turns out my fears were unfounded, with the new
tires and modifications I could already keep up with the average advanced
riders. I was still getting dusted by some of the racers who were out there,
but they were dusting everyone, so it was ok.
In the third session I latched
onto the back of a group of four riders putting down a good pace, following
them, watching their lines, their breaking points, where they apexed the
corners and their corner exit paths. After a lap and a half I knew where I
could improve on their route, and the corner to pass them in was one of my
favorites, an off camber, 3rd gear, near 180 degree right hander.
This corner was preceded by a mini straight and a slight hill that you had to
brake up, turning in just after the crest. I had been working on pushing my
braking point deeper and deeper into this corner. This group I had been
following wasn’t braking as deeply as I knew I could and they did stay all the
way to the left of the track. I took two of them on the entry, zipping up the
very edge of the track, late on the brakes and threw it into the corner. Since
it was off camber it meant that you quickly ran out of lean angle, knee on the
ground, toe scraping the pavement, minimum contact patch on your rear tire. I
was even with the second rider in the group, trying to carry more corner speed
by taking a wider line through the corner instead of hugging the rumble strip
like he was doing. I needed more lean, so I scooted my foot back to give myself
another inch of lean, and brought the bike down more, giving it a hair more
throttle as I did.
That day I learned that if your
peg hits when you’re in an off camber turn, then you’re going to lose traction
at the rear tire and end up sliding off the track into the gravel. Moral of the
story for me was: Yes I’m fast enough to
run with the big boys, but if my toe is on the ground, then I better try
something else besides trying to lean the bike over more. After fixing the
minor damage to the bike I spent the next few years doing track days anytime it
was financially viable; always looking for the fast guys to follow and learn
from. Always learning, always pushing the limits and raising the bar for
myself. I had always wanted to race but I kept making excuses; “it’s too expensive,”
“I’m not fast enough yet,” etc. But my competitive side was begging for the
challenge.
At the end of May of this year I
was in Pahrump, NV at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch, riding with the
advanced group like always. There were quite a few club and pro racers out
there that weekend, getting ready for the coming rounds of their respective
organizations. And I had a revelation; all of the experts were running in
advanced group, and they were all faster than me yes, but not outrageously so,
and all the amateur racers were in the intermediate group, running times slower
than mine. I thought to myself what the
hell am I waiting for? Upon getting home that Sunday I immediately signed
up for the New Racer School with CVMA which happened to be the very next
weekend. It was time to stop dragging my feet, get out there, get licensed and
see what I could accomplish in the wonder world of road racing.
The first weekend of June I went out to Chuckwalla and earnd my amateur racing license with flying colors. I posted a best lap time that was 113% off the lap record, which was set by a MotoGP CRT bike with Steve Rapp at the bars, and held a pace that would have put me in contention for top five with last year’s field of amateurs. Needless to say, I am quite excited for the CVMA winter series to start on Sept 21st. I will finally be realizing my dream to compete in the sport that has enveloped every aspect of my life.
