Roebling Road 3-24 (on the box! no soap)

Hey all short form...

fri night/sat: spent most of the weekend working on the bike, did not get any practice before the MW solo 20 so that became practice...

Sunday: better but bike still felt flat. managed 3rd (yes my first 600 expert podium! ) in C Superstock, and 5th in C Superbike.

more details about pipes, tires, travel and breakdowns later.

 

So here’s the long form….

Melissa and I load up for the drive to Roebling Road. We just barely made it before the gate closed. I had a pipe delivered by a friend and began installing it that night. I finally joined Mel in the trailer about 1:30am. I got up early to finish the bike and missed the first round of practice getting the bike ready and through tech. I went out for the second round of practice and the bike’s clutch was slipping. So I limped the bike around to turn 4 and pulled in, not even one lap. I fixed the clutch and talked Dave Harmon (the WERA riders school instructor) into letting me teat the bike for a few laps on the riders school practice. I rode around at the back of the group and gave one of the students some extra lessons. (I hope it helps.) The bike was working fine so I got everything ready for the Middleweight Solo 20. Since I missed practice and don’t have a huge tire budget I decided to ride around and feel out the bike and the track. The tires I used had already been through 4 sprints at the GNF and a Solo 20 and two practices this year at TGP. Everything worked fine and I began to feel good and have some fun playing with Ceasar and Critter. I did not even bother to see how I finished, I was just having fun. For kicks I decided to run the race with my Polar heart rate monitor on. I’ve been running on a treadmill and checking my heart rate. The highest I saw on the monitor was 150bpm and the average was 137. I noticed that the monitor showed 00 once so I know it wasn’t getting a reading the whole time so my average was probably a little higher.

Saturday morning the person pitted beside us drove up and it was some friends from Raleigh. Ennis & Elaine Pleasants. This was Ennis’s first race weekend and it was fun to have them around. My mother and Dennis (step-dad) were also there for support. Dennis took care of my crashtruck duties so I could concentrate on the bike and riding. That evening we all went to River Street for dinner and benchracing.

Sunday morning things went much smoother. I got my practice session in fine and changed my tires for the races. I started the C Superstock on the front row but got passed on the start by several people. I railed into T1 and squeezed back into 4th place. I passed Chuck Ivey and Paul Alderks into T1 on the next lap and got right on the tail of Jim Stroud. I actually drafted and outbraked him into T1 a few laps later for the lead. Two laps later he got me back with a draft pass. Then on the last lap Steve Breckenridge squeezed me with a draft pass in T1 and I settled for 3rd. I was really pretty happy about this because its my first expert podium since the TL-R. In the C-Superbike race I had another front row start and still got beat into T1 by Chuck Ivey. I guess his moto-x experience is really paying off on the start. Jim Stroud lead us and we pretty much stayed in that order. Giovanni Rojas and Jeff Belue got by us all and opened up a little gap. I gathered myself up for a push and began to set-up Chuck and Jim for a pass but Chuck almost high-sided on the exit of T4 and killed my drive out that lap then did it again a lap later on the exit of T7 and I rolled in holding on to 5th.

I’m pretty happy with the weekend’s results but exhausted from it all, but I wasn’t done with the wrenches. Dennis had to jump start the truck that afternoon and we had to do it again after packing everything up. I pulled into the gas station in Columbia, SC to gas up and accidentally turned the truck off. It would not restart even with a jump. I made some calls and got a taxi to a 24hr Wal-Mart 4 miles away, bought a new battery and went back to the truck, installed it and the truck started right up. I guess the original battery had finally given up. The funny part is I found out later I was less than 1.5 miles from Stickboy’s house.

Well that about sums up the whole thing, tune in next week for the story on the Grand Bayou.