Pacific track day with 2Fast

I'm back from the trackday at Pacific Raceways..... Interesting day:

2-FAST is the trackday org out here and they're pretty efficient. They have 42 people on staff including LOTS of instructors for one-on-one time. I took advantage of the "pickup truck ride around" and the chief instructor provided corner by corner information on entry, apex, exit, and speeds. Then I did a follow the leader for part of our first session. It's an interesting track, but it's probably the most dangerous I've ever run. I mean DANGEROUS.

Let's start an R1 lap at the exit of the last corner....their "bus stop". It's a 35mph dogleg. Slow down, flick right, open the throttle and keep the nose down........

Bend right around a concrete wall and slap 2nd gear at the apex. 104 mph and it's blind...... And it's concrete on the other side of the track too.

Onto the front straight and keep banging gears to "the chute". It's so dangerous they don't allow passing in "the chute", so if you're lucky you get a clean lap and you can keep banging gears. Why is the chute so dangerous? Well, it's a chicane with apex marking cones ON TOP OF CONCRETE WALLS. Not a place you wanna stuff some newbie.

So "the chute" can be taken at about a bazillion mph...... like 155 estimated if the walls don't scare you and you can pull on the bars that hard.

Then you head toward a turn-in cone at the left side of the track, again on a concrete wall, and flip the bike hard right toward the apex marker cone on top of a concrete wall...... at a GPS indicated 163 miles an hour. (Speedo would be about 175.)

I should mention that these walls aren't off the side of the track. They ARE the side of the track from the bus-stop to T1. Basically, I spent part of my day aiming the R1 directly at the edge of a concrete wall at 163 miles an hour.

Ok, as soon as you leave the concrete corridor, you're greeted with an open, long, and wide entry into T2, which is a nicely banked 180 degree left hander that's double apexed if you're really hauling (but since I was on old style Michelin street tires (early Pilots), I sorta took most of the cornering kinda timidly until later in the day.)

Exit T2 and bang a gear when it's time, over the top of the blind rise to a downhill that rivals anything except Road Atlanta. Holy Moley!.... and it's decreasing radius! (But it's nicely banked and almost nobody ever crashes there.) Ok, hard right thru T2 down the short straight (about like the straight between T7 and T8 at Oak Hill), then left into T3 which is an increasing radius corner..... so I let the R1 eat..... It loves the fuel/air mixture I was feeding it...

Up the hill, pretty much a straight shot up the winding 'back straight', left, right.... one more gear over the rise and ....... virtually airborn.... the front is up and the rear weighs just about nothin'.... and then you see it..... T5, deceptive as heck...... requires a very wide left hand setup followed by a hard right, left, followed by a psuedo-double apexed T6 to the right. This is followed closely by T7 which is a leftie and then bang a couple of gears on the uphill to T8.

T8 is a very wide and pretty fast corner that enters onto the line up area for the drag track. There's a MONSTER dip on the inside of it, so if you stay wide you can easily set up for another 180 left hander - T9. Run wide at the exit to set up for the bus-stop (T10)...flick right and repeat!

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It's been 2 years, 2 months since I was on a racetrack. My last time was the RS trackday at Hallett in March (I think) of 2005. Yeah, it's been a while.

26 months is a long time. My skillset was absent this morning. Physical skills were gone, and certainly the physical changes brought on by chemotherapy didn't help. (I'll give an example later.) Basically I'd forgotten how to move around on the motorcycle and forgotten what the motorcycle would/could do if I misbehaved.

And so, I rode like a wussy for my first three sessions. And yet, at the end of each of these sessions I was exhausted and really couldn't breathe. I seriously thought I was going to have a heart attack at the end of the first session...... so I relaxed for about 10 minutes and figured out I wasn't gonna inconvenience the guys in the pits around me.....

Session two was much more relaxed.....and I felt better, but still not good. Session three was pretty decent.... and the rest of the day was tiring but not exhausting...... The secret? Relaxation on the track. Speeds went up, lap times went down, and I felt better at the end of each session. Progress.

BUT, here's how I ended my day. Much of the skillset had returned but I discovered I've lost the sensitivity I used to have in my feet/calves......

I came into T8 hotter than I'd ever done before.... and made a pretty bad mistake. I turned left and entered T8 at just under 100mph. Trouble was, I apexed WAY too early.

This single error put me thru the dip at ~100 and pointed me at a vicious looking tire wall. So the bike was horribly upset (the dip is bad) and I'm headed off the pavement, tipped left and freaked out...... and so, just as I used to do if I blew T2 at TWS, I applied a bit of rear brake to make the back end come around and steer the bike left.....

.....and the rear end came around....... A LOT!.....and I'm as sideways as I ever wanna be at just about 90 (I'm on the front brake too, but I'm tipped in.) So I let off and the bike snaps back into line violently..... and I'm still looking at tire wall with a little bit of loose topped hard pack in front of it. Not good. Too much speed, not enough distance.... simple math.

So I do the rear brake thing AGAIN, hoping for less sliding...... and she goes back to the same attitude...... FLOCK! Off the brake again, violent snap again. But I'm pointed at the runoff now, pretty much up-track from where this all started, and I'm down to about 40 so I just surrendered. I ran the R1 into the gravel, checked over my left shoulder for traffic and took the pit exit because I was virtually there.... travelling slowly with seat foam and vinyl sucked up my bum.....

I was DONE. No sense in continuing to ride tired and stupid. It was fun and educational.

I have to accept all of the blame for this incident, but it breaks down to: mental error(s), physical issues, and my choice of tire.... Pacific is a left handed track, I was aimed left and the tire was a street Pilot - pre dual compound.... the surface of the left side was absolutely gooey when I got to the pits. No more street tires on the track unless I'm escorting the Pope. Ed and my oncologist would have killed me if I'd hit that dadgum wall!

Here's something from the day after:

I REALLY lost the back end of the R1 in my last session, last corner of the day. Well, today while I was putting the bike back in street trim, I looked at the tire and realized it still had the slide marks on it...... DUH! So I whipped out my some measuring tools and confirmed what my eyes suggested.

1) The slide marks are about 1 + 1/4 inch wide.

2) The marks go off the left edge of the tire.

3) The marks go all the way around the tire.

4) The marks lie at angles from ~30 to ~45 degrees from the path of travel.

I think that qualifies as a lurid slide.

I guess I have to give credit to Michelin for creating a street tire that returns from a slide in a relatively non-violent manner.But in my mind's eye, I can't imagine what that must have looked like.... (I finally got the vinyl and seat foam out of my puckered arse this morning......)

Now some pics. Click to make larger if you want.

Alaska

It's funny. There's something going on in the foreground of my daily activities but I haven't mentioned it here. It's odd that I've not gone public with this opportunity, primarily because I spend some time every day planning for it or acting on it.

Two friends of mine, Brad and Tim, have planned a trip from Dallas to Prudhoe Bay on the north shore of Alaska. Yeah, that's one hell of a trip in an airplane and these guys are gonna do it on motorcycles!

Don't bother to map it. Yahoo says it's 10,400 miles round trip. Yup, TEN THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED MILES. Nuts! (Actually, I admire their moxie.)

So here's the deal. They're going to use my house in Seattle as a way-station. They'll ride their motorcycles up here from Dallas, fly back to Dallas and return here two weeks later to "re-start" from here. On their return, they'll pass thru here again and continue the next day on their way back to Dallas. The Prudhoe Bay to Dallas leg is gonna be 5200 miles with nothing more than overnight stops. Ride, sleep, ride, sleep, repeat.

Of course, since they're friends, they've asked me to come along. Ed was stupid enough to say I could go. (Yes, I asked him when he wasn't really paying attention and he consented. "Sure dear, sounds like it would be fun for you.)

So I have permission, but my adult side says "No Freaking Way". I'm not prepared to do eleven days on the road and 6200 miles round trip. The physical burden, not to mention the financial burden would be insane to tackle at this juncture. It would be an adventure and a feather in my cap, but the potential for misery and catastrophe looms large. I'm gonna be as smart as I can while still being a participant.

So, I'm gonna do about 1600 miles round-trip. I'll ride from Seattle to the beginning of the ALCAN Highway in a nice little place called Dawson Creek in British Columbia, Canada. I'll stay overnight with the guys, and then come back home. Total trip, just under 4 days. I think it'll be a good way to get back to being a real motorcyclist.

The casting couch.

Ok, so I went to read for the movie part. Two pages, about 10 lines read. Did it twice.

They picked NONE of us. AHAHhahahahahahahaha!

It's OK, there's not much return in doing movies for free.

The Seattle 100

I signed up to participate in the Seattle 100. http://www.2-fast.org/seattle-100.html

Then I sent out some donation solicitations to a few of the motorcycle organizations I belong to. Lo-and-behold, I got the basic $500 obligation for the event sponsored within two days.

On Friday, I opened a special account just for the event and I'm asking people to provide their donations now. I hope to avoid the "PBS Donation Syndrome" by doing this. Essentially, if people aren't able to meet their comittments to me, I'll have additional time to solicit other parties prior to the event.

I have other donation requests out there. Hopefully some of them will come thru.

Addendum: I've been lucky enough to receive full tire sponsorship for the event from SB Motorsports in Puyallup, WA. Michelin's RULE!

Newspaper interview and an audition.

Odd weekend for me. I was interviewed (2.5 hours) for the Seattle University school paper on Sat. We'll see how that comes out. I did a favor for a young motorcyclist one day some time ago and he contacted me about the interview last week. It's sorta odd how little things like that happen.

On another completely odd subject, I sent a headshot to an ad on craigslist to audition for a part in a student movie.... No big deal, it's a freebie for them and a lark for me..... but they DO wanna audition me today. Will advise.

House progress

Ed and I made good progress on the house this weekend. We finished the fan installation and lighting in the new bathroom. All the ceiling work required that required that we paint the ceiling after the holes were cut and prior to final installation.

So, the room is going to be "Guacamole" green with oak cabinets and dark countertops. Yeah, the name "Guacamole" is probably making some of you wonder about our sanity, but the color really works in this room.

Pics will follow when we finish. I wanna be done by the end of the month.