Round 1, HPR, May 7-8

OK, here's the full rundown... A month before the first weekend of the season I decided that I really did need to go through the motor, after being in denial of it all winter. I'm an idiot for not doing it last November, if I had I would not have had such a f-ed up weekend... but anyway. So I spent the money that I didn't have budgeted for and freshened the motor. It promptly sucked a valve on the dyno and blew up less than one week from the opening weekend. Catastrophic failure equalling I now have to find a whole new motor. Lucky for me Fish had to miss the first two rounds so he loaned me his bike. I decided it was better to run just his motor rather than his whole bike, so I got it out and into my bike and all hooked up, finishing this task at like midnight on Thursday night before the Friday practice day. I got to the track late on Friday morning and decided to just run the afternoon session since I was late anyway. First my rear tire warmer didn't work, so I had to borrow a warmer (thanks Tracy and Swift!), then the damn wind picked up and destroyed my canopy. I finally got on track and started making some suspension adjustments to get the bike dialed in for the new fork internals and new Continental tires. By the end of the day Friday the bike felt pretty good even though the lap times were not. Saturday morning came and practice was going ok till the last session and the bike stuttered on my on the the track. I thought it was strange, but it really only did it once or twice. But then in the Middleweight Supersport race it was full on dying on me mid corner and almost dumping me off the bike, so I pulled off track. So, I got a DNF. I thought I'd found and fixed the problem, a loose ground on the battery terminal, before the Heavyweight Supersport race, but I was wrong. Two laps in and it was shutting dying again so I pulled into the pits before it threw me off. Another DNF. What I did find was a loose ground from the main harness to the frame, and that was the problem. Sunday morning I ran the first practice and the bike was fine, no more dying mid corner. While getting ready for the second practice session I ran into some pretty fierce stomach problems and missed the whole session. Thunderbike was at about noon and with very little practice time for Sunday, it was time to just go. This is the class that I wanted to chase points in and run up front. I made my way up to second and that was where I finished. Considering how the weekend had been going, I was happy to be on the podium. I raced Heavyweight Superbike later that afternoon and took a fourth.
So the weekend ended ok after being a complete mess up until Thunderbike.






I'll have Fish's motor for the next round a PPIR and hopefully after that I'll have another motor built and ready to go in.

Here's a few shots of my brother Chris tearing around on his Honda from the weekend too!




Gotta give some thanks:
Th'ink Tank Tattoo, Johnny Burr and the Walnut Room, Illegal Pete's, Kevin, Mike and the guys over at Foothills Triumph, Bart at Faster, Rob at Lithium, Mike at HardCore Racing, Norm at Snug Harbor for the Puma boots, Garry at EBC Brakes, Nick at Woodcraft, Dave, Biff, Rodney and all the SpeedMetal crew, Brad at Von Zipper, Anders at Scull Candy, the whole MRA staff and crew, my very patient wife Lacy, my brother Chris, and the one dude who made me being able to even run this weekend possible- Fish. Thank you brother!

Pictures by John Chadwick