MotoGP 2007
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.