Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Sun, 09 Aug 2009
I had a really good time at the race this weekend, although I seem to have plateaued at 2:14 as my fastest time. There were a bunch of folks up from California, and Aaron Frank, a staff writer for Motorcyclist magazine, was there to do an article on 160 racing. He was a really nice guy, and a fast rider. I'm glad I got to hang out with him over the weekend.
I ended up actually getting to race, with some of the Californians. It was cool having other people around who are about my speed, although my lap times suffered from it -- I couldn't concentrate purely on doing it exactly right, and had to split my attention to also figuring out how to get around the guy in front of me. A new wrinkle, but a welcome one, and if not getting my time down a second or two is the price, I'll take it.
There was also a day at the kart track on Friday, and there's nothing quite like a go-kart track on a 160 to produce the following effects: incredibly sore legs; painful wrists; face-splitting grins. Since there's no possible way to ride more than 10-15 minutes at a time on the kart track, I ended up spending a lot of time photographing as well. I kind of wished I had brought my SLR, but the G10 put in a good showing for itself:
Aaron Frank (of Motorcyclist magazine) showing us how it's
done on one of the hairpins at the kart track -- click for gallery
I also took pictures over the weekend, but not very many, and none of people racing -- if they were racing, I was out there, too! Marcia (I think that's her name, in any case, Tim O's girlfriend) put on an amazing spread on Saturday night, after the Sounds of the Past races. It was a real blow-out, and garnered universal praise. There's nothing better than being served a feast, unless it's being served a feast for free.
My riding was alright, but nothing too special. I switched main jets on Saturday night, and ran with the new jets on Sunday. They should have made a noticeable difference, but I didn't notice anything, so who knows what happened. I did get an opportunity to ride the bike Tim prepared for Aaron, and it was a real eye-opener. My bike is a dog. That thing is fast, and I'm making it my project this winter to build a motor to Tim's plan. He did it in three weeks, a winter's probably enough time for me to try the same thing! I seriously think I'd pick up 3-5 seconds just by having a bike that performed that well, without changing anything else.
I also had a couple friends come down for Saturday, which was a really cool surprise. Andre showed up, and was my assistant for the Le Mans start race (on which, duh, the camera completely failed to work, I swear I'm about to give up on the whole video thing); he held the bike ready to go, so I could sprint to it once the cannon went off. Jeniffer also showed up, and the money quote from her was, "I swear, coming down here is like crack," as she looked at all the vintage race bikes, obviously lusting after at least half of them. Andre (who you should vote for as Seattle Public Schools board member) also took video and pictures of me riding, which he said he'd post later, and I'll include a link here when he gets those things up.
For the pictures I took of the non-kart-track portion of the weekend, click here:
Aaron Frank (of Motorcyclist magazine) proudly wearing his
second place trophy; did I mention he was fast? -- click for gallery
There's my quickie report. If you weren't there, you should have been. This was a really fun weekend, and I'm glad I got myself down there despite schedule entanglements. Next, of course, I dive into tech week for my next show, Penguins, which is a delightfully sacriligeous romp of a latenight at Annex, but also means that I don't actually get any breathing room until next weekend. And next weekend, I'm going to sleep for 17 hours straight.
Posted at 21:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater