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Track day at Thunderhill -- the track is really fun, and I had a great time until 4PM
Guggenheim's The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition -- awesome
Freddie Spencer's High Performance Riding School -- very good, but still can't believe how much it costs
I got an FZR 400 race bike for XMas, and wanted to get some seat time on it.
Jim Kennedy (an FZR 400 rider who helped convince me that I wanted an FZR) found out that there was a track day at Thunderhill on Feb 3rd, so he & I signed up in early Jan.
A week or so later, my wife (Julie) was talking to an old friend from Denver. They wanted to meet up in Las Vegas to do some gambling. I'm not a big gambler, but Julie knew that the Freddie Spencer riding school is in Vegas, so she called them up. There was a 2-day Pro school on the 7th & 8th, but it was full with one person on the waiting list. She put me on the list and, a week later, I was signed up for the "Fast Freddie" school. Of course, the "Art of the Motorcycle" show is in Vegas, too, and Julie didn't even know it. All of a sudden, we were going to Las Vegas!
Willows, CA is about 200 miles south of the Oregon border on I-5. In Jim's mighty F-350 crew cab with a big trailer, that's about 8 hours from Portland. The Best Western in Willow has unremarkable rooms, but the "Santa Fe Grill" connected to the hotel is good.
35 deg. F and mostly clear at 7:30 when Jim & Stella (Jim's SO) & I headed out to the track. It was quite chilly while we unloaded the bikes, but slowly warmed up. Thunderhill is located in some rolling hills in the Sacramento River Valley. Once we got out onto the track, the rolling hills made it clear that a track map is no preparation for what the track actually does -- wow!
Turn 3 goes around a hill, and it is off-camber, with the track following the slope. Then turn 5 (The "Cyclone") is a sharp left right at the crest of another hill. I eventually got the approach more-or-less right, but I could never get the exit... the track continues into a right-hand sweeper immediately after the left -- every time I would make the left-to-right switch I felt like I was going to fly off the bike since this is right where the track slopes down.
Turn 9 is another interesting one -- this left turn is just before the crest of yet another hill. It looks sharp, but turns out to be a 4th gear turn. The exit disappears over the hill with a gentle bend to the right. But you can never see over the hill, and if you're accelerating like you should be, the front end of the bike seems to always come off the ground right around the time that you want to be turning it in for the right-hand bend. It didn't help that Jim took an off-road excursion there in the morning while trying to remember what the waving black flag meant...
So, twice each lap I would be a little freaked out! Gotta keep that adrenaline level up :-)
I was really glad that I had brought my Gerbings electric jacket liner. I looked a little goofy with the Heat-troller duct-taped to my chest (one-piece racing leathers don't match up well with the jacket liner's waist-level plug), but I was warm!
The track day organizer (Ted Steinhausen) was only going to allow 45 riders, but I only saw about 25 or 30. There were no "fast" or "slow" sessions, it was just an open track from 9 - noon and from 1 - 5. My first thought was, "How will I know when to quit?" I didn't have to worry, though, there were at least 6 crashes before lunch... The track was cold, but dry and plenty grippy. I'm not sure what the cause of most of the crashes was, but Vernon Chang did have a brake failure going into the Cyclone -- yikes! Fortunately, no-one was injured in any lasting way.
By lunch time I was starting to figure out turns 1 and 2 and feel better about the "back half" of the track. At lunch, a guy named Gary with an RVF400 (I think) offered to lead Jim & I around, and gave us a few tips. After being led around, some things started coming together better, especially the off-camber turn 3.
Julie showed up in the car just before lunch. Stella had clocked Jim for a few lap times early in the day, but started feeling sick and stayed in the truck. Now Julie could get some times for us. Jim got tired and was having cramping problems and gave up around 2. I started getting sore and tired, but I was having too much fun to stop. I was slowly chipping away at lap times when... my entire exhaust system fell off!
I had just made the first up-shift on the back straight when the motor started sounding really wrong. I put my hand up and moved over and started slowing down. It sounded like the muffler had fallen off. I looked down and could see the can sort of swinging around. So I kept the hand up and puttered down the straight at 50 or so. When I slowed down and turned in to the U-turn back to the front straight and the pit exit, I got a big surprise as I ran over the exhaust and bounced the rear of the bike out about a foot. Oh -- it was not just the muffler, was it? Ironically, my "oil-retaining belly pan" bodywork was going to arrive at my house a few days later... if I'd had the bodywork on, this would have been a much safer experience. Plus, while it might have melted part of the belly pan, I wouldn't have a big chunk of tail section bodywork ripped off :-)
Anyway, I made it back to the pits. More than a few people were surprised to see that all the bolts at the header were still on and tight. Now that I'm back home and have had some time to examine things, it turns out that the collars on this V&H system are supposed to have springs holding the header pipes on, but the bike didn't come with them.
So my track day came to an abrupt end around 4PM. I had taken about 13 seconds off my times in the morning, but still had another 6 or so to get down to what I think would be a competitive time. With the bikes back in the trailer, we headed to the Santa Fe Grill again for margaritas and dinner.
Driving to Las Vegas from Willow is fairly boring. The Sacramento River Valley is very big, and pretty flat. There is an interesting wind farm near the pass where we climbed out of the valley. And Primm, NV puts the casinos about 10 feet from the state line...
We checked in to the Mandalay Bay casino/hotel and met our friends from Denver for dinner.
Julie & I went to the Art of the Motorcycle. This really is worth going to see if you have any interest in motorcycles. What an amazing range of motorcycles have been made!
People who think that riding "murdercycles" is unsafe were arguably right until 30 or 40 years ago... No suspension, dodgy brakes, lights? what lights?
The bikes are displayed beautifully, and are amazing.
A few things detracted: there's no re-entry into the display, and there is not even a water fountain. Even the sinks in the bathroom are pre-set to "warm" water... I got pretty parched because I wasn't willing to drink out of the toilet. Also, there is a 15 or 20-minute long music track that is continually repeated -- it's nice for the first half-hour, but grates after a couple hours.
I caught up with work email and worked for a while, then went to some casinos and lost $50. Julie & I moved from the Mandalay Bay to The Orleans.
I went down to the main hotel entrance to look for the shuttle to the Freddie Spencer riding school. I saw a guy walking ahead with a big gear bag that said "Joe Rocket" and "Nicky" on it -- I figured "I'll follow this Nicky Hayden fan". He knew where he was going. When I caught up and got on the bus, I realized it was Nicky Hayden.
A few minutes later, I recognized some other racers who boarded the bus: Briggs Willoughby, Scott Avery, Jim Engel, and John Jennings from Seattle. Josh Bryant from Portland was also there.
The bus was full by the time Nicky's little brother, Roger Lee showed up. A few people had to get a taxi to the track.
Jeff Haney (one of the instructors) rode the bus to the track with us. He had the bus driver take us on a couple of slow laps around the track so he could introduce us all to the corners. The track used in the school is in the "infield" of the Las Vegas Speedway. There is a substantial motorsports complex there, with another road course across the street, and Freddie's classroom/garage located amongst a variety of other driving schools and performance shops. The track we used is a bit over a mile long with 9 corners.
At Freddie's place, we met the other instructors: Nick Ienatsch, Dale Kieffer, and Freddie. We got a lecture from Nick, then suited up and rode the school's CBR600F4i's over to the track (except Roger Lee Hayden, who had shipped his own bike there) and started some exercises. We did exercises until lunch, had a lecture from Freddie, more exercises and some demonstrations by the instructors (and some by Nicky H), a lecture in one of the pit garages at the track, a few more exercises, then some open track time in 2 different groups. After that, back to the classroom where we watched videos of ourselves which were taken during the last set of exercises.
Nicky seemed to be there mostly to get some seat time and some refreshers and critiques from the instructors. He'd obviously been through the class a few times before. Roger Lee seemed to be there for the first time, and was mostly treated as just another student.
The curriculum can be summed up as: be smooth, plan ahead, and get the details right every time/develop good habits. Of course, they have 2 days worth of ways to tell you this -- there is a lot of information.
I felt that the videos were probably the most powerful teaching technique. One of the instructors followed you around for a lap with a camera on his bike. But he doesn't follow behind you, he paces you but drives on the "ideal" line through the corners. When you watch the video, if you're moving across the screen or out of the picture, you know you ran wide or turned too tightly.
The video also shows you that when the instructors keep telling you to "drop your shoulders," and you feel like you were dropping your shoulders, you weren't. It was a great way to see if you had poor body position, or if you were rough with the bike.
I was tired and somewhat sore at the end of the day, but still had some pep left for a dinner with our friends from Denver.
We spent the morning playing in the mud. We rode XR100's dirt-track style through the sandy dirt inside the track after a water truck had sprayed it down.
This was fun, but a _lot_ of work (I'm sure it's easier when you know what you're doing :-). Unfortunately, I didn't realize that the 2-day Pro school included this, so I didn't bring any dirt gear, and my leathers got really muddy.
The point of this exercise was not to teach us all how to "back it in" to corners like Kurtis Roberts, but to show what a big difference careful brake and throttle control can make. Once you use the rear brake to get the bike sliding a little, a big handful of mighty XR100 throttle will cause an instant donut, or a low-side. Nicky raced around with the instructors, but Roger Lee didn't actually seem to want to do the exercise, which I thought was strange since he's been dirt tracking since he was 9. A couple other students were pretty good at this, too.
After lunch it was back to the CBR's and good old pavement. We watched Freddie demonstrate some stuff, then did some exercises. They videotaped us during those exercises, and we went to the pit garage to watch the tape right afterward. I improved my body position and had pretty good lines, I just need to ride faster :-)
After that, we ran the course backwards. First we did almost 20 laps in "follow the instructor" mode. I was in the group that followed Nicky. Yes, there I was, following Nicky Hayden around the track and having no trouble keeping up... that factory race team position can't be too far away now... heh heh heh.
Then we had some open track time in 2 different groups again. I was getting tired because of the dirt tracking in the morning, but I had an absolute blast riding around the track "right-handed." The curriculum was starting to sink in, or else I was just relaxing on the bike because that's the only way to ride when you get tired, or a little bit of both, because I turned a few pretty competitive laps and had fun doing it.
Then the day was over after a handshake and certificate ceremony with Freddie.
Back to the hotel, another dinner with our friends from Denver, then some much-needed sleep.
I could barely walk in the morning, but I had to get up early and catch a flight back to Portland. Vacation over for me, but Julie continued to drive on to New Mexico to go to her mother's 60th birthday party.
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