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Friday night we had a peaceful plate of Enchiladas Suizas at the Golden Cantina. I bought some water, nail clippers, leg cramp pills, and a shower pouf at the drugstore.

Saturday morning was race tech, followed by a pretty full day of practice. I was having trouble figuring out what gearing I liked for this track. The gearing is changed easily, and affects when you have to shift, as well as how much oomph you have getting off certain turns in certain gears. So we tried a 45, and a 46. I wasn’t super thrilled with either one. I didn’t want to have to shift a lot, because my left toe and top of foot was bruised and bothering me, and that’s what does the shifting.

Around 11:30 a.m., I was braking down the hill into turn 5, tipped it in, and mid-corner heard what sounded like a footpeg dragging along the ground for about a half a second or more. I wasn’t anywhere near leaned over enough to be dragging hard parts, so I let off the throttle and put my hand up to let riders around me know I was doing something unusual and unexpected (it’s expected that after the middle of the corner, you get on the gas and go, and if you don’t and someone’s following you, it can cause problems).

A man in a black suit on a red bike went immediately whizzing past me on my right. He started waving his left arm and pointing off the track. He seemed upset.

Whatever, I exited the track, shut my motor off as soon as I could and coasted back to my pit. I probably had broken another motor. Nikki and I tried starting the bike again and it made a bad sound. We had Louie from L&L Motorsports come over and listen to the bad sound. He concurred that my motor was broken.

Super.

Fortunately, we had Nikki’s race bike with us as well. She has a strong running 2007 R6 that used to be raced by a friend of ours. Our fast friends told us that it pulled on the straights better than their bikes did. Ross, the rocket scientist mechanic, rode her bike once and was delighted by how well it ran and turned. While I was disappointed that my bike had broken, I was feeling pretty grateful that I had a good friend who could loan me her good running race bike.

I was also feeling grateful that:

1. I didn’t crash while my motor was breaking; crashing can definitely occur
2. The guy behind me actually did almost hit me when I rolled off the gas; he thought I was being an idiot, but understood when he found out I’d likely dropped a valve into a cylinder
3. Louie, a motor builder and a friend of Fastline Alex’s, was leaving the track at noon; my motor broke at 11:30 and he took it home with him to diagnose and possibly repair

Really, I couldn’t have broken my motor in a more advantageous way.

We pulled Nikki’s bike out of the Sprinter van and started getting it ready. Louie trucked my bike away. We had to cover Nikki’s yellow novice number plates with white duck tape to indicate expert status and pass tech inspection.

I rode it around in practice that afternoon and I liked it. The brakes came on sharper and harder, which I liked. Other than that it felt pretty good, and more planted and soft through the bumps. I still wasn’t happy with the gearing, so we changed it again. Eugene came to visit, and helped with the gearing change:

I wasn’t unhappy about the motor situation. I mean, how could I be? It happens. We had a plan B, I was feeling really gosh darned thankful that I have good friends with race bikes, but really, what more can you do? It’s just time to get down to business, and figure out what needs to happen to get the team’s racer as comfortable and safe on the new bike as possible, so that the race can be finished, finished well, and the championship won. Being irritated or anxious about the broken motor, or the new bike, well, that would just be a waste of time and energy.

I was more anxious about my leg cramping, and how many girls were going to be in the race, where I needed to finish, and not wanting anything to happen to Nikki’s bike.

I only got one session in on Nikki’s bike, then we had to pack things up and have another quiet evening. Only it ended up at the Golden Cantina, with margaritas and a big group of AFM racers who were all down here competing in the CSC: Martin Szwarc, James Randolph, Steve Metz, and their respective crews of Mike Canfield, Drew, Nikki, and Gene. It was a typically fun racer dinner, but I had two large margaritas and it made me really talkative. This interfered with my plans to go to bed early, but I got enough sleep.

Sunday’s mission: don’t crash Nikki’s bike, finish the race, do as well as I could against Krystyna “The Queen of Willow Springs” Kubran, and hopefully place first or second.

There’s a place downtown,
Where the freaks all come around.
It’s a hole in the wall.
It’s a dirty free for all.

Ke$ha, Take it Off

This song always reminds me of Willow Springs International Raceway, and some of the scenery in the video reminds me of it too. Racetracks are notorious for being in god awful places. So called “normal” humans don’t want to listen to the glorious sounds of an inline four motor screaming at 16,000 RPM, so they put racetracks in places where people don’t live. Hot, ugly places. Bad places.

Places like Rosamond, California.

So not only is Willow Springs in a typically awful, unglamorous place, it’s a gnarly, mean racetrack. “The fastest road in the west,” with the fastest turn on a road course west of the Mississippi, turn 8. Imagine being on a motorcycle with the throttle turned all the way around to where it won’t turn anymore. In fifth gear. And then, don’t brake, just lean the motorcycle over, put your knee on the ground and look ahead for the next corner.

If you’ve never ridden a motorcycle before, it’s kind of like flooring the accelerator. Not so scary in a Toyota Tercel, but imagine flooring a Ferrari. Or your boyfriend’s M5. I can’t even do it in my Toyota Tundra, a huge, V8 truck with a beast of a motor.

So you’re on a motorcycle that’s like the speed equivalent of a Ferrari, flooring it into a turn at well over 100 miles per hour. A funny thing about crashing a motorcycle, it’s not always such a big deal at the racetrack, at least it hasn’t been for me. I take crashing extremely seriously, but the times I actually have crashed, it’s almost always been a non-issue. I slide, or I bounce, and then I get up and collect myself and my motorcycle.

But, every time I’ve seen someone crash at Willow Springs, it’s like, once you and your predictably sliding motorcycle leave the racetrack and hit the dirt, you fall into this evil blender that twists frames, breaks ribs, and does other very bad things.

The turn after turn 8 is turn 9, also a very fast turn, but it’s really just turn 8 tightening up. Then you’re on the straightaway, crossing the finish line, and looking for turn 1 again.

My best laptime at Willow Springs was a 1:30. It’s a 2.5 mile course. That’s an average speed of 100 miles per hour. See all those turns? A freaking HUNDRED miles an hour.

But I’m just trying to scare you, and maybe scare myself a little bit too. It really doesn’t seem that fast when you’re out there in it, and race bikes don’t usually have working or accurate speedometers. But turn 8 seemed as fast as it was, and trust me, it was very scary. Friday practice, my first day there in about a year, I either moaned a little bit or maybe even said “oh god” every time I tipped my R6 into that huge, sweeping right.

The California State Championship was created by Shandra Crawford, and her vision was to encourage western U.S. road racers to travel outside their comfort zones and try racing at some new tracks. There are a handful of race clubs out here, and kind of like clubs, people tend to just stick to their own. So the CSC races one round with WERA at Buttonwillow, one round with the AFM at Infineon in Sonoma, and one round with WSMC at Willow Springs.

Infineon and Willow Springs are like polar opposites. Willow Springs is fast, and Infineon is tight and technical. To do well at all three tracks, and in the overall California State Championship, isn’t really easy. People who race at Willow Springs typically only race there, and they are very good at racing there, but then they come to Infineon, my home track, and they struggle. And vice versa.

I was struggling with the speed, for sure, but it was mostly the fearsome nature of what lies beyond the racetrack edges should I venture off course. I was also exhausted. The night before, Nikki and I were woken up at our Holiday Inn Express in Lancaster by a high volume, shrieking sound. Disoriented, we both strangely first thought it was our air conditioner, or a computer, making the noise, but once we woke up a little more we realized it was a fire alarm.

We efficiently threw on some clothes and hustled outside. 2:30 a.m. A bunch of creepy dudes hanging around, and one was sitting his huge ass on the bench, smoking a cigarette. We sat quietly on the edge of the curb. After a few minutes, Nikki spoke. “No fire truck, no fire men, no fire. I’m about ready to burn this shit down.”

Eventually a truck actually came. And we eventually solved the mystery. A lovely lady who was clearly under the influence of a mind altering substance had pulled the fire alarm, convinced that her nephews were dying because of the drugs she was doing in front of them in their hotel room. At one point she started scaling the wall of the hotel to get back up to the fourth floor where they were, she said. Oh, and there was no fourth floor.

It really kind of set the tone for Willow Springs. It’s not a place a girl goes alone with her motorcycle; I had my mechanic, bestie and racing teammate there so we could look after each other. I was hoping to win the California State Championship Formula Femme, and finishing first or second in the women’s race would seal the deal. But to finish first…you must first finish.

This was a pretty unusual weekend. I’m trying to win three women’s roadracing championships, because it would be rad. There are a lot of women racing on the west coast in regional series, so to do so would be quite an accomplishment.

Anyway, points are accumulated each time a race is completed, and you win more points for a higher finish. To complicate matters, there were some scheduling changes with the AFM, and some scheduling changes with WERA, that resulted in some obnoxious overlap.

What isn’t obnoxious, however, is that the AFM runs their women’s race Saturday. WERA runs Women’s Superstock Sunday. Five races at two tracks on different sides of one of the larger states in the union? If I could win Formula AFemme on Saturday, I could skip the last AFM round, allowing me to make the last WERA round in Vegas (one of my favorites, as the season ender in Sin City allows for some epic Sunday night partying with my crew). And if I could place well in Women’s Superstock on Sunday, I’d be in better contention for that championship going into said last round.

Let’s do this.

Friday afternoon I rolled into the Thunderhill paddock and began setting up. Nikki, the pretty blonde mechanic, and Ross, came in a half hour later. We were eagerly awaiting Nikki’s freshly repaired and painted bodywork, which AFM racer Tim Scarrott was working on. Once we could get our literally hot (it was a scorcher that day) little hands on her plastics and mount ’em up, we could go back to our room at the Holiday Inn Express, relax, and prepare.

After we got set up, we socialized a little bit. We admired Jennifer Lauritzen’s absolutely rad new Specialized Ruby bicycle:

Jenn & Ruby 4EVA

We had amazing Thai food in Lenny Hale’s motorhome, with Lenny, Gabe and their OMRRA crew. Apparently, on their way up, Lenny called Nikki to ask if she’d buy and bring organic coconut milk. “Preferably from Whole Foods, but Safeway has something that’ll work too. Oh, P.S., I don’t have a mustache.” As proclaimed, he was clean shaven and barely recognizable when we saw him.

The bodywork got there a little late. But it was beautiful. I helped my team mount it on, and wore the sexy headlamp:

Headlamps are HOT.

Finally we got to our room. I showered, and we spent two minutes choreographing our early morning route, who would shower when, alarm clock setting and whatnot. I went to bed much later than I preferred.

Saturday morning was brutally hot, and windy. We tried all day long to avoid bringing out the big ass canopy, but it just got too hot. I was unremarkable in practice, hovering somewhere around 2:00. I just have such a hard time getting my motivation up for practice. I like to race.

I’d had plenty of practice time at T-hill, so we didn’t have to do anything to the bike. We were all in energy conservation mode, moving around slowly, sitting quietly between sessions.

Finally AFemme was up. It would suck really bad if I crashed, so I was going to take it kind of easy and work on lines and such. Also, Jenn was still not giving me any reason to be concerned, so I was not concerned. Well maybe I was slightly. I’m always slightly concerned. Okay, who’s kidding who, I’m always flat out paranoid. I know she did a 2:01 here last year when pushed by Zoe Rem, so I know she can do it. I just didn’t know when she’d bring it.

I didn’t get a warmup lap because I let too much time pass after “third and final call.” I was pretty surprised that I was late, and flustered by the whole thing, especially since I had a brand new rear tire that I wanted to scrub in. But I shot out to the lead, and kept the lead, the whole race.

What I didn’t know was that I only got Jenn by a few bike lengths at the line. It didn’t seem, from Ross’s signals, that I had much to be concerned about, but I definitely did. Jenn brought it and was right on my ass at the finish. Ross and I will be discussing hand signals and what they mean. But I was really happy for Jenn, she finally rediscovered her mojo. I was also really happy that I’d still managed to finish ahead of her.

I was back in my pit by 4, and by 5, thanks to the help of Joel at Pirelli, Greg McCullough, Kyle Schirrmacher, Ross and Nikki, Ross and I were in the loaded van at 5. We even changed gearing and oil on the race bike. I drove the first leg, down to Panoche Road, then made some calls and texts as Ross drove the rest of the way. I slept fitfully in the cubby behind the seats for a couple hours, all through Bakersfield, the Grapevine and partway through Pasadena. Occasionally I would open my eyes and see lightning outside the window.

Got to our hotel in Fontana at 12:45. Washed my hair, shaved my legs (I hate the way even two day growth feels under Under Armour), fell asleep around a quarter to two.

Sunday morning was a blur of adrenaline. Four practice sessions, then four races. The weather was deliciously cool in Fontana, compared to the stifling mugginess of Willows. I hit the track with 37s my first session and felt like an animal. I was sure I could get down to 34s by the end of the day. I was kind of high from the drive, the weekend, all the mayhem.

I won Women’s Superstock Expert, and had a best new laptime of 1:35. Forward progress, despite a near highside in the horse shoe that bucked me out of my seat. If you’ll note my excessive lean angle and poor body positioning there, you’ll understand why:

Christie Cooley and Dani Taylor

C Superstock immediately followed and was filled with nutty riders riding off the track and all sorts of nonsense. Melissa Paris had a problem on the start, and was wobbling around as the rest of the angry grid went buzzing by her, and I was praying I wouldn’t see a red flag at the first corner. Fortunately, she passed me a couple laps later, working her way back up through the grid. But all sorts of riders were going off track and making stupid moves that I kind of chickened out and ended up not going as fast as I would have liked.

Race 7 was red flagged before I got to the crossed flags signaling the halfway point of the race but the leaders had passed start/finish, so the race was called. I had a good starting grid position, but there were all kinds of fast boys behind me and I just spent the race having it handed to me. That pretty much sucked. I tried so hard to hang on to each guy that passed me, only to find them just out of my reach.

I got pretty sleepy after that and thought about not racing race 12. But I figured, hey, I came all this way, might as well get another race in. I did, and it was also filled with hooligans, but otherwise unremarkable.

Cal Speedway is a tough track for me. There’s lots of odd things you can hit. Joe Lopez, a novice racer, died after getting a tank slapper that sent him out of control and into the bridge over the back straight. There’s also the wall that you ride by at 150 mph going into turn 1. The rubber mats outlining the course going into the infield. The bumps going into the back straight. Haybales. Cones. A slippery horse shoe. But, I keep improving each time I go there. Not by much, but enough.

Mercifully, our Sunday night drive from Los Angeles to the bay area was extremely smooth, on the gas the whole way. We got to Nikki’s around 11 p.m. Three days later, I’m still exhausted. But maybe trying to climb Bohlman Road on my bicycle on Monday, and then mountain biking yesterday, also has something to do with it…

Thank you to the special people who helped make this nonsense possible:

Ross Embertson
Hilton Garden Inn, Fontana, CA
Alex Torres of Fastline Cycles
Chris Maguire, Joel, Frankie, Wes, and Corey Neuer of CT Racing/Pirelli Tires
Louie of L&L Motorsports
ACT Racing
G&B Cycle Pro
Mission City Signs
John Della Penna
Leo Vince USA
Nikki Nienow
WERA West
The ‘rents
My neighbors Carol and Chandran, who watch my cats while I’m away