Riding with Pinkyracer

Or just not particularly inspired? I did track days 2 weekends in a row, which was AWESOME!!! Then went for a wonderful night ride on Friday with a new friend. That was exciting, especially trying to keep my eyes on the road instead of the fireflies. I love Fireflies. Then Saturday I got to dance to Prince AND Michael Jackson ALL night! OK, well, only until the DJ finally played “Lil’ red corvette” around 1:30 so I could finally go home and sleep.

This coming weekend is Squidfest 2008,aka the R1/R6 convention at Deal’s Gap. Hundreds of lunatics on the fastest sportbikes made will descend on the twistiest, most treacherous stretch of road in the US. I can’t wait! Then 4th of July in NYC, which I miss so bad I kinda want to run up there the weekend before too. Very tempting. But extravagant.

did a Hypercycle track day at Willow Springs today. It was soooooooooooo fun! Even though it hurt like hell going through T2, I put in a few extra laps, suffering the pain for the glory of T8. God, it felt soooo good to do T8 again. I am a T8 junkie. It’s so fun to have a sweeping right hander where you just keep it pinned. Don’t even slow down, just open it up as you exit T7, and keep going faster. It feels amazing to be able to lean it into a turn and not slow down, but actually accelerate. I’m scared to write the speed here, as my mom reads this and it’s bad enough she has to read all my cussin’. Besides, my speedo might be off, and we all know that the speedo errs faster when leaned over, as the sides of the tires are a smaller diameter than the center. The pain in T2 was me not finding a comfortable position. My right leg couldn’t handle it. I’m so out of shape.

But I was kicking ass and taking names just the same! I signed up for intermediate since I’d never ridden with Hypercycle before, and didn’t know how fast their racer group would be. But after 2 sessions of picking my way through traffic and trying to avoid rear-ending people in T8, I moved up to the racer group. In the 1st session, I went out last, and it took a few laps before people started passing me, which was nice, having the track all to myself. The next and last sessions were practically empty, and there were some really slow guys out, who I passed easily. I even got one on video, which will be posted shortly. It was a slow pass because the temptation is to pass riders on the inside of T8, but you have to wait until they pick a line through the turn, cuz some people will surprise you and dive to the inside. Hence the hestitation before my big video moment.

Even the drive home was fun; to avoid Memorial Day traffic, I took the Angeles Forest Highway to Lower Tujunga. It was scenic, peaceful, and traffic/cop-free! Woohoo!