Another great day at the track with NESBA, TrackWhores and SCPMC crews!
Pics in are here:
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=202So the weather was looking iffy at best so I decided to keep the Corsa III's on the Gix and just head out to Ohio on a hope and a prayer that this would not be a Summit June 5th redux. It was nice driving out there the whole way, just muggy as all hell. Driving the whole way via 422 is for the birds. I probably should have looked at a map instead of having faith in navigation but oh well.
When you get to Nelson the first impression is that someone decided to set up a road course in the middle of a Kentucky trailer court. Actually, a very low rent Kentucky trailer court, complete with pink flamingos. The sign for the track is one of those replaceable letter back lit jobs with the big light bulb arrow on top. The sort of thing you see at middle of nowhere pizza shops. Missing letters and burned out bulbs complete the aesthetic.
Driveway is gravel and the first thing you see pulling in are a bunch of cars in various states of disassembly and disrepair. This view is quickly followed by an expense of eroding and apparently abandoned trailers and pull behind campers.
You have to cross the track to get to the infield unless you're willing to risk the over track bridge. As you cross the track you start to get a feel for the level of thought that went into the design of Nelson Ledges, particularly the state of the art tire walls (actually just thousands of take offs tossed in front of concrete barriers). The dirt road winds past the aforementioned trailers to a very small paddock and a world class bathroom facility. I found my own little spot of Nelson paradise since I was the first one of us to get there and started to set up. I think I was one of less than half a dozen people there at 7PM. The tires also add to propagation of insect borne diseases by proving thousands of little pools of water for mosquitoes to call home.
Zedpilot called to let me know that he and the ball'n'chain had checked into their bed and breakfast and would be on their way to the track to drop off his bike, etc.
Silv and Paul rolled in about an hour later and we set up all the canopies, unloaded the bikes, etc. Zed, wife and I decided to roll into "town" for some dinner and Silv and his dad stayed at the track in order to set up my accommodations for the night.
A bridge on the way to Garrettsville is out so you have to go like 30 minutes out of the way to get to any semblance of civilizations. We found a nice little restaurant slash brewery and had some grub and shot the shit till about 11:30.
Got back to the paddock and realized that I forgot to bring a pillow which meant that I had to use a fleece to rest my weary head which sort of sucked but big props to Silv for giving me a place to crash. His redneck engineered air conditioning solution was sweet as well.
Weather turned to shit overnight and the rain came down in buckets. We got up to a dreary, drizzling mess ala Summit a few weeks ago. Spirits were low across the paddock but being the hardy track types we had faith in the NASA quality facility, our tires and our fearless leaders.
Since only 1 A guy signed up Buck decided that we would run 2 session format with 30 minutes sessions per group. Todd ran a good meeting doings some attempts at a resurrection of Dutch's humor and Tom ran the B torture chat. We did have a slight mishap in tech when Zed's bike decided it would rather lay down than wait in line like all the other good motorcycles. A few scratches but no serious damage, character I say.
Paul, the gent on the white R6 we usually see at Beaver pitted with us in the AM and we were set for Game On. There were probably only 25 riders in the B group and about the same for the combined I/A groups. With a 2 miles track that left tons of room.
Since it was still pouring the first session did not roll till 9:20 and they looked pretty sketchy out on the track. B group rolled at 9:40 and I came close to losing my ass end a couple of times coming out of T9 and it was a bit slippy coming off T5 too.
Next set of sessions had some rain and some sunshine but the track was starting to dry out and a race line was forming. Speeds started to pick up and by the third series of sessions we had a good line to run at speed.
People say a lot of things about Nelson. Some are probably true but much of it seems to be in the realm of myth and exaggeration. There are said to be 3 stages of Nelson: 1. I hate this place, 2. hm-mmm this is not so bad, 3. damn this place is GREAT! I would agree with this whole heartedly. The track is patched about as much as Summit. T4 is BUMPY, there is the "Dip" in the last kink BUT the sealer here actually has good grip, in places better than the pavement itself and certainly better than Summit. The bumps are there but they seem to flow fine if you let the bike glide and don't upset the chassis much. Sort of add a bit of excitement as you're leaned over into the T4 lefthander and you're getting bounced off your pegs
Back to the chronology, lunch came and the weather was glorious and there was not a food vendor to be found. The wind was destroying our canopies but it was also keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Luckily Zed's better half ran to a convenience store and got us some sandwiches and drinks. Mad props for taking care of us!
We got back to riding at 1 and continued with the 30 minute sessions. Rob, the CR on the red R1, spent a lot of time working with my dumb ass and really gave great feedback. I was running with probably the 3 or 4 faster guys in my group. Played tag, etc. There were so really slow people there. A guy on a big BMW put me in the grass off T13 when he could not figure out that line he was going to take to pit in. I ran out of room since I was trying to set him up to pass down the straight and ended up running about 100 feet through the grass. No harm no foul and the Nelson employees in the start/finish tower all gave me big thumbs ups for my Rossi like save
Paul (on the R6) had an interesting off. His handle bar snapped while he was braking into T12 - the think just snapped right off the bike. He had an oh shit moment but he was lucky that it was in the slowest part of the track and he was able to stop in the grass without dropping the bike. Unfortunately no one had a bar for his bike so it ended his day after only 3 sessions.
Speed really started to pick up after lunch and I really started to enjoy Nelson. For all its flaws it's a blast to ride. Silv had his 675 out for its maiden track voyage and after getting acquainted seemed happy with his choice. His dad rode great and it's cool to see the huge difference a few track days have made in his riding. Zed was moving pretty damn good and he and Silv chased each other around in I.
Unfortunately the day was not incident free and a guy I was chasing around all day went off in T1 hitting the tire wall. Luckily he was in pretty good shape after the off with a bit of a tweaked ankle but his bike did not fare nearly as well as he did. I did not see him go off since I was stuck in traffic a bit back but he told me later that he was trying to get someone going into T1 and just ran it wide.
Dave (the CR, "Slow Honda") had a bit of an off too. I think also in T1 but I'm not sure what happened. He hurt his shoulder pretty good apparently but the bike did not look that bad. He looked like he was in a good bit of pain. I stopped by just to see how he was doing and he did not really look like a happy camper at all so I did not want to bug him other than a few pleasantries. Once of the B group guys is an MD so that worked out. Dave if you read this, I hope that nothing's broken and that you're out there pulling slow old bastards like me around the track soon!
There were a few other uneventful agricultural expeditions but without much carnage.
Lenny was there but not in an "official" capacity. Lenny, being well Lenny, is always awesome to have in the paddock. Though he was "just" another A rider he helped me with some suspension adjustments over lunch which made a good difference for keeping my front end planted on turn exits.
Running the 2 group format was sort of a mixed blessing. I rode a bit over 190 miles but it beat the living shit out of me to the point that I was planning to just run parade laps for the last session. Of course as luck would have it like 2 laps in Rob comes flying up and taps his helmet so game on. I followed him around for 2 laps and then he waved me by. Of course I thought that he wanted to follow me so I ran like mad trying to look good and shit. He tells me later that he had to go take a piss so he waved me by. I'm out there cranking my ass and he wasn't even there, lol.
Then Lenny comes flying up beside me about 6 laps later and motions for me to follow him. Ran around with him for 3 or 4 laps. he towed me around at some pretty good pace. Totally beat, I got stuck in traffic and decided to just sort of parade it out from there. Talked to a CR after the last session and he was like, "you looked like shit at the end there, hardly getting off the bike at all - completely different than the rest of the day" - I was just so damn beat that I'm surprised that I made it back to the pits
So with the day over everyone packed up and got ready to roll home.
All in all a great track day. Nelson rocks. I like it a hell of a lot more than I like Summit. Not that my track (or skill) resume is all that and a bag of chips but I will be glad to go out there again.
It was great be out there with the guys again, wish a few more would have made it. I have some pics I took in T12 & 13 of the I group guys and the CR's. I need to process them and I'll post them up when I get a chance.
