Just a quick note to all the friends out there-Happy New Year’s and I look forward to riding with y’all in 2010!

PB

BRAVERY or STUPIDITY? We perform, you decide!

So, 25 degrees? Wintry Mix? No fear, time for a polar bear trackday. Saturday night I decided we were going to go minimalist and loaded the pickup with bike and various necessary implements of destruction such as EZ-up, leathers, tools, gas, etc and managed to make a tidy load instead of hooking up the trailer and bringing Every Last Thing I Could Think Of. Trusty Paula arrived with guard dog Toffee and hopped in. Almost forgot the antifreeze but no worries remembered at the last moment. We were cozy but not overloaded. Still managed to get the table in.

This was the first real outing for the new bike, we did one day at Barber last year but the guessing I did on the setup made the bike unrideable (Vic, take note) even at my limited velocity potential. However, an adjustment session promised big benefits for the winter outing. The advance party with those lucky enough not to have jobs necessitating Saturday employment were already enduring near-record lows at Talladega GP Raceway under the watchful eye of the Ed Bargy Racing School squad. We proceeded towards the track under the dulcet tones of the radio soothing us with the account of the Crimson Tide football team rolling over #1 ranked Florida in the SEC championship. People in the South take their football as seriously as any Manchester United fan.

We checked in to the hotel in Anniston, ironically enough no ice in the machine, guess they saved it for the parking lot. In the morning the Weather Channel’s talking head informed us that it was 25 degrees, so we did what any enthusiast would do, we went to the Waffle House and drank coffee. Anniston has an excellent Waffle House by the way, top marks.

We rolled into the track at 0830 local time, with the worst of the frost melted off the bike and most of the riders thawed out. After unloading and solving some issues for friends, I returned to the truck for long johns and another layer on top. The only problem teching the bike was that Tony was a little astonished that my bike looked so sanitary and well-setup. He’s used to my 750 which has 5 different colors of bodywork, a few crashes, and many many miles on it and I think he was suffering a little shock from the Sport’s shiny paint and high state of rightness. I quickly pointed out the one scratch to reassure him.

We visited with friends and got the ice out of Mark’s 848, and talked with the some of the guys who were of limited experience and generally hung out til the first session after lunch and then tried to stay warm while riding 120 miles an hour in the sub-50 degree weather. Surprisingly, once it warmed up little and especially when the sun came out around two o’clock we managed pretty well. Tally is a small track in northern Alabama that is great fun, www.tgprace.com Close to North Georgia and the Atlanta Area and convenient.

It’s wide, mostly grippy, and pretty smooth. only one slow right-hander and all the rest a bunch of various lefts and more lefts. Moderate brakes and moderate speed straights, no elevation to speak of but the nice thing is there’s lots and lots of grassy runout with no hard barriers close to the track. The owners, Dave and Mike Upchurch have been involved in racing for a long time, and are good folks. The track is “technical” although there are some parts that can be a bit eye-opening for the new rider. The first session was a re-acquaintance with the place, since the last time there was March, when we took the DucTruck to Tally and did Demo rides there. No worries, tires started to work a little after a few laps and then came in and tried to stretch my left leg and hip out. (Remember all those lefts?) The funny thing was it felt fine when I had the bike on my knee but I had to sort of work myself back up into the fairing on the straights. Little flexing and walking around and we were good to go. Next session was a little better, tried to get a little smoother and figure out where all my turn-in points went. Took it easy in the right-hander, a very slow corner with a narrow exit-first corner where I ever dragged a knee-wondering about ground clearance. We had dropped the front end a little and raised the rear looking for better turning and it had whacked hard at Barber in T12, which is bloody fast. Wasn’t looking to repeat that. No worries, didn’t touch even when when an old friend tried to sneak up the inside and had to gas it a little.It’s a wide turn that isn’t particularly creepy but if you have large anatomical devices you can stuff it in super-narrow and block the exit for the other guy and ruin his drive. I once learned not to do that to a motard there. That time, the corner worker radioed to the course marshall that “the girl with the Ducati just went off in the grass going like hell!” We had a good laugh about it later in the pits, but I wasn’t laughing while trying to get slowed down in the grass on a bike with hot slicks with the cheesegrater up ahead.

Next session I went to go chase the kid on the Moriwaki 250, which is a tiny 250cc single four-stroke purpose-built wunderbike meant to replace the 125cc two-stroke screamers for the USGPRU series that the hot kids race in training for professional careers in roadracing. He’d gone under me three session in a row and though no one was passing me I wondered if I could learn anything from riding around watching him. No luck there, he would run through the corners and gap me enough to make it hard to see him and then I’d get a bunch back on two of the straightaways. He started to go into the last corner which is  a left chicane with a bumpy exit really really narrow, and my closing speed was pretty good so I wanted to make sure he had all the room he needed with the strange line he was running, and gave it a little more braking than previous laps. In retrospect I should’ve just gone and passed him since he probably was doing just fine without my paternalistic over-simplification and I was now riding a 100+ mph lockedslidingfront tireandthebarswerebeginningtoturneversoslightly and boy sure seems like you accelerate with the tire locked where before you were slowing rapidly at max braking and golly that corner ends pretty quick…I’m sure the words in my helmet were not “boy” and “golly” but you get the general impression. Friend Don was right behind, I learned later, also with the front locked and his little Yamaha doing a killer stoppie. He was sure there was oil on the track, or something, but I feel just as sure there was just water on my brain. Zipped around behind Pete on his 848-those things sure look cool from behind. He went straight in the same corner, and I thought about that a little. Pete’s not a bad rider and if three of us were having little issues there I’d like to know what can be done to correct them.

Next session I worked a little on that last corner, as it seems I do every trackday at Tally. I remembered to start braking at the 2 mark and downshift right away so that the bike was settled and slowed enough that I could start turning after the patch instead of all this coasting nonsense, and get the damn thing accelerating again over the left side alligator bumps while staying a little more off the bike and got some good speed into the front straight, passing a guy on the inside when I got particularly hard shift into fourth when things went all funny and the bike was trying to whip the bars out of my hands, full lock left and right for about 50 yards. Even though I was at full throttle in fourth gear at over 100 mph, it was really quiet except for the blood pounding in my ears and the clacking of the bars as they double-timed back and forth. I was talking my way through it as the wheel being disconnected from the road isn’t that big of a deal normally but it just kept going and I was telling myself don’t let go of the throttle, don’t you close that thing, don’t do it mfer! and the bike settled back down on the both wheels and the front stopped the oscillation and we were balling along the front straight with an extra 10 mph over normal. Cool! After I stopped panting…

An old friend who was a pretty good AMA racer and a great smartass in the proud southern tradition that I worked for once gave me a funny look-not that he wasn’t always giving me funny looks-when I asked him what to do when the bike went crazy while accelerating. He was wiping a wrench clean and closing the toolbox very gently and he quickly looked at me very seriously and said “Nothing, you do nothing”. I opened my mouth for more details, and shut it again (for once). Good advice, and thank you.

The lap after that I pulled in and readjusted my shorts. Then I went out again for one more good session, and called it a day as the sun was getting low.

Everyone had a good time and no one used the ambulance or the toolbox, so we’d have to consider it a good day. We’re all looking forward to another day at the track with a bit more ambient thrown in:)

PB

Here’s some videos a friend made from his on-board camera if you’ve never been to the racetrack you can get a general idea what it looks like-http://www.georgiasportbike.com/showthread.php?t=26354 Come out and join us next time!

Pics to follow. Shameless plug-the Ed Bargy practice days (he also has a race school) are a great value if you’re looking for track time. There never more than 20 people on the track at one time, 135 bucks if you preregister, and the crew is experienced and efficient. It’s not particularly well-known, and the squid coefficient is almost always low. It’s nice to ride with (mostly) racers and people that have a lot of time on the track as they do a lot fewer Stupid Things, and generally the sessions go more smoothly. Disclaimer: They Don’t pay me, this is just a a Thing I Think is Good. (Ed-you could pay me though, I wouldn’t complain.)