momentile

I started a momentile account...
sheispoison

Continuing winter project

The motor is all torn down. Hillbilly and I did the bottom end over at his place, got it all cleaned out and put back together with new connecting rods. Now I have to wait for Dave at Arvada Bikes to get the rest of the parts/nuts/bolts/etc in to finish putting it back together. I'm learning a shit load...

winter project

Thanksgiving day before the feast of fried turkey, ham and all the fixings I was able to get the motor out of my 1955 Triumph Thunderbird. It runs really good, but leaks like a diseased skank. The plan is to tear it down do all new gaskets and replace anything else in there that needs it. We'll see how it goes...

I'm not the only one...

So, I found this while searching for pics of old Triumphs. So it came off the Cycle World Staff Blog from 2007 and I read and thought it was the coolest thing I've read in quite a while. This article totally sums up how the racing and my old ass 69 Chevy van make me feel. It's exactly what I'm after every time I load it up and drive out to the track and live in it for the weekend. I hope no one gets pissed that I posted it here, but then again, no ones probably reading this anyway...

ROAD TALES

02.06.2007

Horse owners spend more time feeding, leading, currying and blanketing their animals than they do riding them. Motorcycle racers spend more time traveling to and from the races than they ever do on the bike with the engine running. In living this life in the 1970s, I often found myself in a van, on the road, unable to sleep while another person drove, but knowing that my next five-hour trick at the wheel was coming up fast. Sixty hours of this, coast-to-coast, seemed a fair trade for racing's moments of intensity.

For some, the track is a short drive—maybe 100 miles or less. Hardly worth thinking about. For others, it's a long grind and there is plenty to consider.

The three-dollar styrofoam cooler looked like a steal in the supermarket—stuff it with cold drinks and sandwiches, then dine like kings all the way to Mosport or VIR or Indianapolis Raceway Park. Plans fail. Styrofoam squeaks unstoppably. And someone will see it as a handy footrest, or even a place to sit. The steady vibration of travel causes rearrangements. That is, the sandwiches are rearranged downward, into the water melting from the ice so providently bought and packed. This is the true meaning of “submarine sandwich.” This is why I preferred to trot into the restaurant while the van was being tanked up, to see what's on offer. No earnestly homemade but soggy sandwiches.

The first van I endured was an English Thames Freighter with 50-hp engine. Its front wheels wobbled at 40 mph like a major-brand luxo-tourer ridden hands-off at the same speed, and for the same reason—that's the classic wheel-rotation speed for wobble. Because as in the motorcycle case, wobble damping increases with speed, we could bust through the wobble by “accelerating” (the quotes are because 50 hp provides only the most gradual acceleration). The strain finally caused the Thames to spin a rod bearing somewhere in Connecticut and it was replaced by a new car with a trailer. This would be travel in style—seats for all, no more roasting/freezing on a pressed-steel engine cover, and no sleeping under bikes in the back. Civilization triumphant.

But there are reasons so few trailer their racebikes. Trailer wheel bearings have secrets. They know when it is least convenient for them to melt out their grease, overheat and then seize dark blue so that no known force available at roadside can pull the inner race from the axle. Trailer lighting technology economically routes plastic-insulated wires through hastily drilled holes in the metal structure, shrewdly saving the nickel cost of a rubber grommet at each point. Rough edges saw through the insulation, causing the lights to wink at patrolling policemen.

Why do trailer tie-downs loosen mainly in tunnels? This allows one or more bikes to slump over against a trailer tire, which then friction-saws a crescent-shaped hole in your fairing or tank.

The outcome of the car experiment was that we all bought vans and shunned styrofoam coolers.

At its best, the van becomes a machine of social transition between your “cosmetic life” of job, home and responsible adulthood, and your real life. As the song says, “I'm not the man they think I am back home.” Somehow, falling endlessly into the blackness beyond the headlight cones, or wrestling on the bunk with a flood of edgy, coffee-derived ideas that prohibit sleep, one being is transformed into the other. In the early morning, shaving in a rearview mirror or eating bad things from the concession, you have become a RACER. Now stand in line, pay $156, pour fuel, air up tires, start and warm up. This is it.

Going the other way, you greet the dawn and home with the edge of a sore throat, find coffee, shower and struggle off to work, hoping your exhaustion won't morph into unemployment. Soon you're fine, doing whatever it is you're paid to do, a working stiff once more. You can do it. It's easy, because it's not real.

One friend of mine kept his life together this way, using the all-night solo driving time to sort and order his chaotic thoughts. The restoring realities of racing became an essential buffer against the strains of his high-technology job, a blond wife with associated mortgage and mysterious child, and the awful lightness of being.

Non-solo van travel requires trust. What if your partner falls asleep at the wheel? On one trip, he did. I awakened on the bunk, feeling vibration. Grass out the left window, grass out the right. Quicker than I thought I could move, I had the wheel. This was the classic prelude to eternity—crossing the median on a long diagonal at 70 mph. I did all the rest of the driving on that trip, and I was never the least bit sleepy.

—Kevin Cameron

Privateer days, 1966: An early reality, with the van serving as fairing holder and the corner of a tent just showing. KC's friend Beecher Wooding did not waste money on undue replacement of T-shirts.

Bending to the task: A man, a van and a Kawasaki H2-R at Laguna Seca, 1973.

Pics and everything came from Cycle World Staff Blog, 2007.

2010 MRA race schedual

So, here's the dates for the 2010 MRA season. So basically if you schedule anything on these weekends, I won't be attending...

May 1/2 - Race #1 at High Plains Raceway
May 22/23 - Race #2 at Pikes Peak International Raceway
June 12/13 - Race #3 at High Plains Raceway
July 10/11 - Race #4 at Pueblo Motorsports Park
July 31/August 1 - Race #5 at High Plains Raceway
August 28/29 - Race #6 at High Plains Raceway
September 18/10 - Race #7 at Pueblo Motorsports Park
October 9/10 - Race #8 at High Plains Raceway

Off season...

Well, the off season is pretty much in full swing, and it pretty much sucks. I want to get on the track, but not when it's 45 deg. outside. My bank account is pretty happy it's the off season though. I have a project lined up for the winter, but haven't started it yet. I'm going to tear down and rebuild the motor in my 1955 Triumph Thunderbird. I'll post some pics when I get it started. As for the race bike, I'm planning on just doing some new race valves in the forks and a re-paint. That'll all come after the first of the year. For now it's back to Sons of Anarchy and Californication. The only good thing about fall is a couple of good TV series started up again.

Fuck.

Few pics from the Saturday races Aug. 29 2009

Few pics from the Saturday races...

Into turn 2.

Round the outside???

Holding off Mr. Snyder.

He chased me down the whole heavyweight supersport race, made one pass, but I got him back in turn 8 and he was on my ass the whole rest of the race but somehow I managed to hold him off. He pushed me into the 1:58s so I was stoked. It was a super fun race! Hard work, he's fast!

Thanks to my buddy from work who would like to remain nameless for the pics!

Pics from the trackday Aug 9, 2009. The whole brigade!

The whole fucking wolf brigade!

The wife helping out.

Hot laps

2009 season recap...

Ok, so 2009 was kind of a shit storm...

First race of the season in heavyweight endurance I get plowed into and eat total shit at the top of third gear coming out of turn 3. I go down and slide and roll for what seamed like forever and when I finally stop I get up to walk and my ankle is killing me... that's because it's broken. Then to top it all off my left thumb wont stay in place because all the ligaments in the bottom joint are torn... awesome.

So miss 3 rounds, the double header at Hastings and the first round ever at High Planes. Anyway, I come back to race the next race at Pueblo, enter a bunch of different classes because hey, my points chase is now long gone! So I pretty much spend the rest of the season just having fun and working on my riding. The best finish I had all year (after starting in the back row from a second wave) was a 7th in AmU at Pueblo. I got to ride High Planes a bunch and watch my lap times steadily come down, so I'm pretty happy about that. All in all it was fun and sucked all in the same season. Here's a few more pics from the remainder of the season, most from HPR. Dig the sick western stache I grew for my brothers wedding and kept for a little while....

I'll have some more pics from the last round coming... Thanks to everyone who helped me out this season on and off the track, you know who you are...