I’m doing my happy dance today. I finally got my little Honda 55 running properly! It could probably do with a new carburetor and there are lots of details left go get it looking good. I also need a new headlight bulb, but the idle problem I was having is fixed. With the carb tuned properly it’s so easy to ride. I love it! All 220MPG of it!
The most recent track day was at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. I’ve been having such a great time riding at the track. I’ve been up to Buttonwillow several times in the last couple of months. A few days at Streets of Willow and this latest day @ Fontucky.
I’ve decided to keep the SV650 and turn it into a track bike, too. I got a GSX-R 1000 front end on there a while back. I picked up a set of track fairings for it, along with a Leo Vince full system, Gilles rearsets, etc. I think I’m going to paint it to look like the Suzuki MotoGP bike, the GSV-R.
So, it looks like my days of riding on the street are over. A few weeks ago Cooper had a mishap on his bike and got pitched over the front of it. The bike landed on him and he wound up with a badly broken collar bone, some broken ribs and some road rash. He had to have a surgery on the collar bone in order to prevent it from punching through the skin.
Then, a couple weeks after that I had a small incident. I was at a track day at the Streets of Willow Springs.
After lunch - probably the fourth or fifth session of the day, I crashed. In and of itself, not such a big deal. I was headed to the left turn at the end of the chicane, a couple of turns before the start finish and I lost the front tire through the corner. It was really a minor get off.
The problem was that I somehow hit my thumb on something hard. When the bike came to rest on its left side, my left leg was trapped under it and I couldn’t get out of the way. I stuck my hand up to make sure the corner worker saw me and got the red flag out. That was when I started to feel that me left hand was throbbing a bit. Kind of like when you smack a finger with a hammer…
I saw a tiny pinprick of blood on the thumb of the glove. I thought, “Hmmm, I should see if I’m bleeding”, and removed my glove. What I saw made me go cold in that 90 degree desert heat. The tip of my thumb, from the nail to the tip, was hanging down near my palm. There was a stringy bloody strand holding it on and blood dripping everywhere.
Awesome. I guess I won’t be going back out on the track in the next session.
So, it’s off to the hospital in the ambulance for me. Miranda (who was wonderful the entire time) drove out to meet me and several hours later I was sent home with my thumb held together with a couple of stitches, “because it makes a better bandage than just removing it and wrapping it”. The following Monday I went to a hand specialist in Beverly Hills. He told me that essentially, I’m going to lose the tip of my thumb, it’s unlikely that the nail plate survived so I probably won’t regrow the nail, and that he just wants to wait for the dead flesh to separate from the living and see how much survived. That was three weeks ago and yesterday he started cutting away the dead stuff.
So, at this point, I’m waiting for the dead parts finish separating. Once they do I’m looking at a minor surgery to kind of put things back together. If the bone is too close to the tip of my thumb it will get trimmed down a bit.
And before you ask, no, this doesn’t mean I’m going to stop riding motorcycles. It did make me realize that I really don’t want to ride on the street at all anymore. If I’d had to wait long for treatment it would have been a whole lot more stressful. If I’d actually hit something hard when I went down, I would have been immeasurably worse off. I’m comfortable with the risk at the race track where everybody there is focused and the environment is one that puts safety first. It’s not worth the risk to me to have to contend with SUV’s, cellphones and fast food on the road when you’re as vulnerable as you are on a motorcycle.
They’re not that horrible, but if you’re easily grossed out, don’t click on these links.
Here are links to some of my favorite pictures of it all. I’ve got a bunch of photos in my gallery.
So, I just couldn’t do the metallic blue motorcycle thing. Not happening. So… I blacked out the bodywork, stripped the gas tank and clear coated it.
Before:
After:
I feel much better now!
Well, we’re getting better at doing this every time. The first year we stayed with some of Aaron’s friends in Santa Cruz and drove in to the track every day with just General Admission tickets. Six hours to get out of the parking lot seemed a bit excessive, so for 2006 we bought camping passes in order to cut down on the travel issues. What we really hadn’t thought about was the fact that we’d be sharing porta-johns with thousands of people during the worst heat wave in Northern California in decades…
This year, we had it much more dialed in. Seven guys, two motel rooms in Monterey, four motorcycles to get to and from the track, grandstand seating, paddock passes, backpacks full of beer. It was great. Next year, EVERYBODY BRINGS THEIR OWN BIKE. Not that Dan made a bad passenger, but it’s a whole lot more fun to ride a bike without a extra 170lbs or so on the back. I think we’ll also forgo the trailers, take some extra time to ride up, and stay an extra night in Monterey so we can ride home in peace on Monday.
Cannery Row was a sight to see. Thousands of people and bikes making for a hell of a scene.
It’s kind of a bummer that they’ve pared it down to just three races - AMA Supersport & Superbike and the premiere MotoGP class. I’d love to see some World Superbike in there too. The GP race was great from my perspective. It’s cool to see Ducati win. Vermeulen ran an impressive race, Rossi was solid as ever, and Melandri was great. It was a real bummer to see Hopkins get knocked out. He ran lap times closer to Stoner than anybody else and should have been on that podium, I think.
Here’s the start of the race.
This is Stoner racing down the Start / Finish straight just about to end the race.
The big bummer of the weekend came on Sunday, as the GP race was about to start. Tony realized that he had lost his motorcycle key! We had seven guys on four bikes. One of the bikes didn’t have a passenger seat setup so there was no way to get everybody (except Tony) back to the cars. Aaron, Dan and I waited while Tony rode my bike back into Monterey to go get his truck. He then had to wait until traffic back into Laguna Seca was opened up - it was all one way for a couple hours to try and get everybody out. He rolled back into the parking lot at about 7:30pm. Since he had locked the steering lock, we couldn’t steer the bike. Luckily, a tow truck driver was there and was happy to strap the bike to his crane and lift it into the back of the trailer for us!
Ultimately, we got the bikes loaded, drove Dan and Aaron back into town, turned around and got out of town. At around 9.00. We spent the night in San Louis Obispo and made it home around lunchtime today.
