AFM Round 1 2011: Buttonwillow

I’ll admit it…I wasn’t enthusiastic about racing this round. Motorcycle racing is dangerous, and after three full years of racing two series without serious injury, I feel like I’m up five hundred bucks at the blackjack table and should probably just walk away. I also miss spending money at the mall; I have a garage filled with bikes, tires and fuel cans, and a sad closet filled with trends from four years ago.

And I really struggled at Vegas. Late January, freezing cold temperatures, wind, a bike that didn’t want to go fast, and a rider that didn’t know how to go fast, and a stomach bug on top of that. It was all I could do to eke out a win in Womens’ Superstock, and match my best laptimes for only a mediocre finish in B Superstock. Blah. On the way home I wished I could stay at the Wynn for a night and enjoy a warm, cozy spa day; pedicure, massage, facial, and a deep conditioning hair treatment.

I went through the motions to prepare myself and my bike for Buttonwillow. I tore a hole in the sole of yet another pair of racing boots, but Geri Tinagero at G&B Cycle Pro up in Santa Rosa was able to hook me up with a sweet new pair of my favorite “snow camo” boots. I got a trick, super light battery. Alex at Fastline Cycles in Fremont, California, re-tuned my motor; apparently my O2 sensor is on the fritz, because through all my trackside Bazzaz tuning which usually works out so nicely, I’d managed to deaden the poor motor down to a pathetic 95 hp. Maybe that’s why it felt so hard to go fast around that little Vegas track. Hot on the inside, my bike also had a hot new outfit, a sweet black, pink and white paint job with pink pin striping and cheetah print on the tank cover.

Cheetah Power

But I also wasn’t stoked to spend another weekend at a cold, windy racetrack. I was excited to cheer on my pretty blonde mechanic, Nikki Nienow, as she went about her first ever race weekend as a novice. And I was looking forward to seeing how our new mechanic would work out. He’s not pretty, he’s not blonde, but he is a rocket scientist who loves motorcycles and trackside cooking, so I was excited to have him on board, if a bit nervous about the change.

My first session on track was filled with excruciating pain. Not what I was expecting. About three weeks before Buttonwillow, I crashed my bicycle and landed on my hipbone, elbow and shoulder, probably the way you want to crash, but I had some sort of lingering issue inside my right hip bone. Bone chips? A hematoma? I wasn’t sure but it hurt like hell. Any time someone or something accidentally bumped gently into my hip, the pain sent me through the ceiling.

The sexy ACT suit is normally extremely comfortable, but something in the hip area was creating a hard crease directly over the sensitive spot on my hip bone, and every time I assumed the position and leaned into a turn, I screamed and wanted to jump off my bike. Left turn, right turn, it didn’t matter. I completely freaked out, whined about it to anyone who’d listen, and then begrudgingly tried my old Helimot suit to see if things would be different.

They were. No pain. Next subject…

I had low expectations for my laptimes on Friday, and I exceeded them. I was hoping for something under 2:04. My ass was sore from going over the bumps in Turn 3 and in Riverside, so we played some with the suspension to try to soften things up, but my fork springs are stiff to begin with and we’d turned all the clickers out as far as we could. Then we talked about softer seats. Velvet covered, down filled, heated, massaging seats. Not possible. So I’ll try a Tech Spec seat at Infineon, perhaps that will be better.

I was curious on Friday how my friend Jenn was doing; we’ve talked from time to time about Buttonwillow, and the issues she says she has with it. I saw her on the track a few times and she looked good, and confident. I was bummed out when I saw her standing next to her fallen steed over in the dirt near the entrance of the star mazda turn, but then seriously impressed when she was out there rocking it on her B bike the next session. Right on.

Friday night we had dinner at Macaroni Grill in Bakersfield, me, James, Thermos Man, Ross the Rocket Scientist, Lenny and Gabe. Lenny told an interesting story about a car accident he had near the track one time, and we all ate pasta and were merry.

We arrived at our hotel in Bakersfield in the big orange van. James waited while I went inside to check in. There was a Sweet Adelines competition going on at the hotel this weekend; they’re all female barbershop quartets, and there were about seven or eight quartets in line to check in ahead of me. Thirty minutes later I got my cookies and room keys and went back to the van. James turned the key and the battery was dead! This has happened once or twice in the past six months, and yet I still don’t have any jumper cables in there. So we approached a bunch of random people who were checking into the hotel, after ten at night, and I kind of felt like I was begging for change. Plus, I discovered that people don’t really carry jumper cables anymore. Finally we found a really nice group of buddies who were down there for drag races who actually had cables, and off we went to our room. Super late, with an early day ahead…and I need my beauty sleep.

Saturday’s skies looked ominous. We were constantly checking our weather apps on our phones.

We got through a few rounds of practice, and as we know, the AFM voted spontaneously to move as many Sunday races as they could to Saturday, since the rain predictions for Sunday were nearly 100%. That meant that there wouldn’t be a Formula AFemme race, my favorite race, and that I would instead be racing 750 Superbike.

The change honestly didn’t bother me. If you let emotions get involved when the unpredictable happens, you don’t have as many resources as you could have when it’s time to prepare and get ready for the new world order. Because, well, you’re spending time and energy being stressed out, nervous, worried. You need to just understand the situation, figure out what needs to happen to get yourself prepared, and then execute quickly and accurately. Then you’ll be at your best. Plus, I feel like any time cold weather or unpredictable things happen in racing, I tend to do a little better than I normally do against my peers. It’s the mental game, and I’ve studied it ever since I was a little 14 year old tennis player. Now if only I were more courageous, and could spend more time braking on the side of the tire, and getting on the gas harder coming off of turns, I’d be all set!

Ross the rocket scientist was turning out to be a worthy mechanic. We had to make some quick tire and fuel changes to the day and he handled it all swimmingly, and had even brought healthy snacks for his girl racers to munch on. Yummy treats like cut up bell peppers and hummus dip, pasta salad with kalamata olives, and toasted Israeli couscous.

I remember there being a few rain delays. I was pretty cold and miserable, and just wanted to be on track where I’d be warm and focused.

S-s-s-s-o-o-o-o COLD!

Finally it was time to race. I wasn’t sure I loved racing anymore, but once the green flag dropped, and after I mentally moved past my miserable start (I blame this bad start on Glenn, the crash truck driver, who was giving me the evil eye as I was rolling my wheel onto the chalked grid position), and then also after I recovered from DFG barreling through us all like a bowling ball into Turn 2, running off track, hitting people and creating a ruckus, I remembered that…I love racing.

I spent the rest of the race chasing down the people I wanted to beat, and could have been ahead of from the start had I not let Glenn’s evil eye shake me. I was delighted to see that DFG had crashed going into Riverside. He was fine, so I felt fine about enjoying this fact. I was catching Joy, Ugo, Brian and Greg on the last lap, and thought I could make a push into the last turn and get some people at the line. Then I saw Joy and Ugo check up, and they were watching Brian and Greg create billows of dust on the exit of Sunset Turn, and I forced my attention back to passing them, hoping they’d have rubbernecked just enough to give me the edge.

They didn’t. Boo. I finished 17th out of 28, a few spots away from my desired top ten finishes.

The best part was that I remembered that I do love racing. I put forth my best effort despite some pretty unpredictable conditions. And I can’t wait until Infineon, where I’ll be sporting even more cheetah power!

Vrooooom!