Had a pretty rad day at Thunderhill today with Pacific Track Time. I was riding my race bike, the 2009 Fastline Cycles R6, and Ross, the rocket scientist mechanic, was riding his surprisingly beautiful salvaged R6, resurrected from an abusive past with loving care and used parts off of eBay. It looked much, much better than I had anticipated. The RSM brought along a friend, the TPFA (Tall Pretty Flight Attendant), Tammy, and she busied herself with swatting away flies, taking photos of the on track activity, and reading Thoreau. Yes, Thoreau.
I was just trying to stop being so scared on track. During my last race weekend, I was still really sore in the hip area from my cycling injury, and I was also completely freaked out in every turn, looking at the ground with my knee on it going, “you know what, I could just…CRASH…right now.” It had been a few years since I’d ridden like such a scared little girl, and my race times reflected it. I think after having dealt with the ordeal of an ambulance ride and a hospital stay, you realize just how quickly things can go south on these two wheeled torture devices.
Why not just give up? Pack up my stuff, go home, and take a nap? Plan a little weekend trip to the farmer’s market? I don’t know. I just keep at it. I have goals, plans, things to see, people to do. This season, I’m leading a few women’s motorcycle racing championships, and like someone who can’t put a good book down, I have to just read the next chapter. Do the next race. Pass the next level. Win. Duh.
To achieve my goals, I must rid myself of this scared business. So I rode around and got reacquainted with my old friend Thunderhill. I’ve really only done ten laps on it so far this year; ten laps in at my first track day this year, I had a mechanical and crashed in Turn 1, one of the fastest turns on the track. We reassembled my bike, but then the rest of the weekend was rained out. I rode around and tried to work on the fundamentals, lines, smoothness, taking away brake pressure while adding lean angle, adding throttle while taking away lean angle, and going fast. I didn’t go particularly fast. But I was having fun and feeling more comfortable.
I thought my bike felt pretty good, but I was looking forward to having Jason Hauns, of JPH Suspension Services, do some suspension work with me the next day. It held its lines well, and it seemed to turn in quite well into slower turns. As usual. The faster turns, harder turn ins.
At the end of the warm day Nikki, the PBM (pretty blonde mechanic) showed up in a pretty dress and proceeded to change her rear wheel. When she finished, we popped upon a bottle of Willows vintage sparkling wine and tottered around to say hi to some friends. After a fine meal at Casa Ramos, we hit the sack early and did what best friends do. No, we didn’t talk about boys, or have a lingerie pillow fight and then make out. Using our little smart phones, we scoped out some girl racers we heard would be visiting us at the next race round and wondered how fast they’d be, and if we would beat them. We concluded that we should focus our efforts on making ourselves faster; then there will be fewer questions.
Okay, maybe we talked about boys too.
