I wrote this while I was stuck in the truck waiting for the lunch break to end on Sunday. I was waiting to see it the rain sprinkle was going to stop or get heavier. I’ll probably have more to add when I get some time…

After John and Pat said they would not be able to make this weekend, Milletary and I continued to watch the weather. It looked good for both days and then about 6-7 days out, it started to look like it might rain on Sunday.

It was kind of a scramble getting ready for the day. I picked my bike up, from getting tuned up, a week before we were set to leave. I took it for a ride and it was running great but the battery died on me. I figured the battery just needed to be charged because it had sat for a few weeks at the shop. I hooked it up to the tender and got busy changing tires. The next night (after sitting on the tender for 24 + hours) I ran the bike for a while and after I hooked it up it took 35 minutes + for the tender to go green. Something wasn’t right. I ended up taking the bike back to the shop on Tuesday and they quickly figured out the stator was bad. I had them order me one 2nd day air so it would arrive on Thursday and I could be ready for the trip.

The other pre-trip fire-drill was when I checked the requirements for the day and saw that you needed a helmet that is less than 5 years old. I checked all mine the Sat before we were set to leave, and they were all from 2004. I decided to go to Cycle Gear the next day (they’re open on Sunday) to see if I could get a helmet. Jeff said he didn’t need anything, but would go with me. He ended up buying a helmet and a bunch of other stuff ($300+) and I came out with a bottle of brake fluid. He said I could use his old helmet (which was less than 5 years old). So that was that.

For a while The Weather Channel was showing a 30% chance and the other sites were all showing 60% to 70%. Had they all been showing 60% to 70% I would have made up my mind that we were not going, but TWC kept me in the game. One thing I did notice was I started to see differences in the TWC forecast depending on if I accessed it via my Blackberry or the I-Net. From now on I will be looking more closely at the other forecasts and less so at TWC. TWC finally jumped up to 60% - 70% on Thursday and I sent Jeff an email saying we should probably bag the trip. He replied back that he agreed and we started looking at up coming dates. It was apparent that our schedules would not line up again for at least a month.

He sent me an email Thursday night that said he put the wheels back on his bike and really wanted to ride and we should just go down and ride on Saturday. I talked to him on the phone and couldn’t get excited about the idea, but he said to call him in the morning if I changed my mind. I went to bed with every intention of going to work on Friday. I got up and got ready for work, but I really wanted to ride. I called Jeff and he was on the way to work. I asked him if he still wanted to go and he said he was turning around. We got our stuff together and were on our way by noon.

The trip down was surprisingly easy. We found some interesting features on my GPS which tracked our avg moving speed, total avg speed, top speed, etc. We played with that most of the way down. Total driving time was 8 hours, total time was 9 hours (1 hour of stopped time), avg total speed (including stops) was around 60 mph, and top speed (in my Nissan Frontier with 187K miles, my bike in the bed, and his bike in the trailer) was 102 mph. We made it to our hotel by 9 PM and were at the track the next morning by 7 AM.

The start of the day was a comedy of errors. We were messing around getting set up, getting teched, etc. We had the riders meeting and then it was a rush to get into gear and on the track. It was only about 44 degrees and Jeff was piling clothes on under his leathers to keep warm. He couldn’t get his boots zipped up and we ended up busting the zipper trying to get them on. It turned out that he had forgotten about the calf adjustment on the boot, and had it set way too tight. He duct taped it on and I hopped on my bike and headed out.

The track was cold and slippery and I was taking it easy trying to learn the lay out. At the start of my second lap, I tipped into turn #1 and as soon as I rolled the throttle on, I was on the pavement. The rear tire had spun up with absolutely no warning and I had my first ever street bike wreck. As I was sliding along the pavement, I remember thinking “this trip sucks”. I was absolutely un-hurt, jumped up, picked the bike up and rolled it into the grass. I checked it out and the left frame slider was bent, foot peg broken, clutch lever bent, and fairing cracked, but overall it didn’t look too bad. I fired it up and was planning on getting back on the track and riding back to the pits, but every time I put it into gear the motor would die. The crash truck came after the session was over and they had the worst tie downs I have ever seen and were pretty much un-prepared to tie a motorcycle down. I ended up working up a good sweat pushing my bike back to the pits.

It turned out the bent frame slider had pinched my kick start sensor wire. I got that fixed with the help of two of the guys running the track days. They came right over when I got my bike back in the pits, gave me a hard time about crashing in the first session, lent me their tools, and help me get fixed up. I had a spare foot peg and clutch lever and I was back in business before the next session started. This time I actually made some laps and started to learn the track while trying to get confidence back in the amount of grip that was available.

My wreck was definitely a cold tire issue. Although I had my tire warmers on, we had two sets on one extension cord that’s rated at 1500 watts, I didn’t have them on for more than 20 minutes, and the track was really cold. I was going really slow, but obviously not slow / smooth enough.

Jeff accidentally left his key on during lunch and his bike wouldn’t start for the next session. I ended up pushing him around the pits, un-successfully trying to bump start his bike. I made it out for that session, but he didn’t. The sun had come out, the track was warming and I was starting to ride better. When I got back we ended up jump starting his bike with my truck battery and kept it on the battery tender.

We went out the next session and followed one of the control riders and learned a bunch of lines. We should have done that on the first session of the day! We both learned so much. I got down into the mid/low 1:53’s and knew I could go quicker.

The next session I went out and really felt good. I was riding well, having fun and got down into the low 1:52’s. The sun was out and things were good. It turned out to be a really fun day. There were only 10 riders so we had tons of open track. Including Jeff, there were 3 guys besides me that were running a similar pace and the other guys were all faster. There was one guy that was really fast, they said he does some AMA racing, and was lapping down into the 1:34 / 1:35’s. It was a laid back group and everyone was very cool.

After the day was over, we packed up the truck and pigged out on some really, really, good Mexican food!

More to come when I get some time…

Vids

http://www.vimeo.com/8941388

http://www.vimeo.com/8941702

http://www.vimeo.com/8940968

sorry to hear you had an off - glad it did not ruin your day!

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www.WickedRacing.com - Go Fast Parts & Gear for Riders and Their Motorcycles
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wow...doesn't sound like the best weekend for sure. Glad to hear that your okay.

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03' Yamaha R1 - Track Bike - In bits and pieces across the united states - Rest in Pieces
09' Suzuki GSX-R 750 - Street Bike
Nesba #22

It could have been better. It would have been nice if it had been warmer. It would have been nice had I not crashed (a bit warmer weather might have fixed that). It would have been nice if it didn't rain on Sunday. Overall, I had a good time though! It's hard to complain about January track time! It was so good to get back on the bike and knock some rust off!

Continued...

I covered most of the good stuff in the first report but ran out of time, so here's the rest.

We got up Sunday morning and it was cloudy but not raining. We knew it would rain, just not when it would start. The plan was to drive to the track and make a call at the last second. If it started to rain we'd hit the road. Jeff's hand was bugging him for some inexplicable reason. He wasn't sure if it was because his gloves were too tight, his brake lever was in the wrong spot, or a combination of the two, it was a bit swollen and he decided not to ride. The first session was to start around 9:30 and I think signed up around 9 AM. It had sprinkled a little bit but didn't really put any water down. I went out for the first session, started slow, and gradually upped the pace. There were a total of 3 riders and we were all running pretty similar lap times. Kinda funny that we were the only bikes on the track and we were all on top of each other. One of the guys was riding a CBR 1K and blew past me so I hooked onto the back of him and picked up my pace. The next lap, while I was still hanging on to the bike tire of the 1K, the guy pitted next to us on the R6 (Justin) passed me and the ran off the inside of the track in back section they call three-sisters. We swapped around a bit, crossed the track in front of me, ran off on the other side, gathered it up and saved it. The rest of the session went pretty well with the 1K towing me around. I never had any grip issues and we were running 1:55's (about 2 seconds slower than Sat afternoon).

A few laps into the second session it started to sprinkle a bit. I didn't have any slides but I could see the drops on my visor and pulled in to be safe. As I was pulling in the 1K was rolling onto the track. As Jeff and I were putting the warmers on my bike we could hear the 1K crash on the back section of the track. He highsided on sister #1 and his bike looked pretty beat.

It was lunch time and we were down to 2 riders. With the lunch break, we had 90-120 minutes between sessions. I was concerned about baking the tires if I left them on the warmers for that long so I unplugged them and then plugged them back in about 30 minutes before we were to go back out. The rain stopped for the next session. I went out, took it easy and then spun the rear tire up in turn #1 (same place I crashed) on the start of my second lap. I figured the tires might still be a bit cold so I tried to take it easy but I spun the rear up again in sister #1. I was still going to hang in there until I had another slide in the back section. I pulled into the pits and we started packing up to hit the road. It could have been that the track was a bit damp or that my rear tire was starting to go away. I'm thinking that it was probably another cold tire issue and that it was a mistake to unplug the warmers during lunch. With the temps below 60 degrees, I think the warmers were struggling to keep the tires up to temp, and cooking them would not have been an issue. I had a Dunlop Qualifier mounted up to my other rear rim in the truck. I'm wondering if it might have worked better than the 208 GP in those conditions?

Other than driving home in a monsoon, the drive wasn't bad at all. We were basically in SC for an hour, NC for an hour, VA for an hour and then 5 hours from the WV line to home. The WV portion of the trip is by far the roughest. RT 19 is slow going and then I had the poor Frontier floored going up all the hills on RT 79 in WV.

I really do like the CMP track layout. All things being equal, I'd probably rather ride Jennings than CMP, but that's another 6 hours of windshield time - each way! I really want to get back and do a couple dry, sunny, 60 degree, days at CMP. The track felt pretty good, and I had a lot of fun when the sun was out on Saturday.

Lowside aftermath

Things I learned during my CMP trip;

#1 I’m done with swing arm spools. Mine bent during my lowside. The mount on my bike is not very strong and puts the spools in a very vulnerable position. From now on I’m going to use my Pitbull stand in the “no spool” configuration. I’m also buying a set of swingarm axle sliders.

#2 Spare parts are good. The trip would have been a real bummer if I didn’t have a spare clutch lever and foot peg. I keep a spare set of levers, rear sets, and clip-ons in my tool box.

#3 Case covers are a good idea. My stator cover got ground down a bit and I could easily see how this could end a trackday or weekend. I checked out covers by Woodcraft, Vortex, R&G, Moto-R and some Ebay specials. I ordered a set of Moto-R on Friday.

#4 I’m sold on Woodcraft frame sliders. I had a set of no-cut sliders on my bike and they did a pretty good job of protecting my bike, but they got chewed and bent up pretty badly. I believe the Woodcraft design is superior, even though it will require I cut my fairings. I ordered a set on Friday.

#5 I don’t believe you can have tire warmers on for too long when the temp is less than 60 degrees.

#6 Having some one to follow on your first time at a new track is a really, really, good idea.

#7 If I go back to CMP and don’t get a garage, I’ll bring a piece of carpet to keep my bike out of the sand

#8 A separate extension cord for each set of tire warmers

something i heard somewhere is that you should keep your warmers on until you can feel the rim being warm

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LETS GO PRAIRIE DOGGIN!!!!!!!!!YEEE HAWWWW!!!
WERA & NESBA #45

she does not look too bad Matt - glad that's all it was and more importantly you did not get hurt.
i'm hardly the warmers expert but even on a fairly cool day (oct at beaver) after some time i could get my wheels to feel warm like Jr said. i don't think 30 minutes was nearly enough from the way you describe the conditions. when it's cool outside warmers can't really get you up to optimal temps but they give you a "head start" on the process and warm through the layers of the tire as well. Obviously taking it a bit easy the first lap or two out still makes sense.

What tires are you running? BT003?

Definately a good call on spare parts! i have a spare clutch lever and some toe pieces for my rearsets but i'm going to pick up a spare peg or two before we go. probably should pick up a spare brake lever too.

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