Martinsville - August 11, 2013

Team Disaster made it to Martinsville with very little drama.  Given the past experiences, this was a welcome event; however, that early success turned out to belie the future prospects.

As you can see from the terrain map, it's hilly.

On the drive down, we stopped at a mom-n-pop Mexican place.  The Margaritas were acceptable, and the food was surprisingly good.  We'll definitely hit that place again next year.

Parking at this track is pretty limited, and even though we were reasonably early, we still drove around a bit trying to suss out the best spot from what was available.  We settled on an only mildly unlevel piece of ground next to an RV.

TedG needed gas, and his sexxxy hot race bike uses premium gas, so we asked our neighbors to hold our spot, and headed out to find gas. 
The tow truck needed fuel, too, but it runs on 87, so we stopped at the nearest gas station.  Their selection of gas cans was rather limited, so we got directions to the Wal...  they turned out to be inscrutable and unfollowable. It didn't take long, however, to find it using the cellphone and GPS.  Seriously...  what'd we do before that?


With fuel and food sorted, it was back to the track to settle in for the night.

One of the things that I love about VCHSS is the company and camaraderie.  Saturday night is lots of catching up with friends, laughing, and maybe even an adult beverage or two.

What I *hate* is that everyone brings 5000 watt generators, and runs them all night long.  It's ridiculous, annoying, and against most of the sites' stated rules.  I've yet to see "quiet time" enforced....   and so I have to sleep with ear plugs in.  Maybe it's the universe getting even with me for my snoring keeping people awake.

We got up in the morning and headed up to registration.  I like to get to registration before it opens, because at two races (Central VA at Dillwyn, and the Aprils Fool's race at OakRidge) I didn't do that, and I ended up waiting in line for an hour. 

We waited around, ate some bananas, and finally it was time to gear up and head to the start.

The start at Martinsville is unique.  You're at the foot of a steep, wooded hill.  You put your front wheel in a ditch, they drop the hat, and off you go, up the hill.  the first turn is at the top of the hill. 

I got an ok start...  I stuck behind a fast guy to the first turn, and got through it with no trouble.  I settled in and was feeling pretty good, as opposed the cracked-out, amped up, heart pounding fool I usually am.

As I mentioned before, it's hilly.  Ridiculously hilly.  but I was doing ok, staying on the gas and keeping my wheels turning.  I got around a couple folks that had crashed, until I became one of them.  at the bottom of one of the hills was an off camber right turn.  I lost the front end and went down hard, hitting my head on a tree.  It rang my bell pretty good, and after I got the bike off the course, i decided to take a minute to assess my condition.  Nothing hurt more than normal, my vision seemed OK, so I saddled up and got back at it.

I got to a bottleneck at the bottom of a hill.  it was a moderately narrow, reasonably long hill climb.  The soil was moist, and there wasn't a ton of traction.  The two strokes were worst off, it seemed - they spin the wheel so violently that if you aren't paying attention, it's easy to lose what little traction there is.  There were already some folks down or bull-dogging their bikes back down it, so there was nothing to do but wait.  My turn came, and I got at it, trying to pick the best line for traction.  that worked, and I got up with no issue.  Once on top of the hill, I went through timing and scoring, across the top of the ridge and down into the woods again...  down a hill steeper than the one I'd come up.

I screwed up, and didn't keep my wheels turning.  Once that happened, the rear was trying to race the front down the hill, and by the time I got off the brakes, I was sideways on a V rut.  I gave her some gas, trying to get pointed straight, but lost the front again.  This time, I went down on the left hand side, hard enough to rotate my bark buster out of the way and break the clutch lever.

I picked the bike up, and thought about going on, but decided that on this track, I'd definitely need my clutch, and where I was was close to a way out - though I'd have to ride the track backwards to do it.

My race was done.

I cheered on the other half of Team Disaster when he came by on the first lap.  Turned out he didn't finish the first lap, the rest of the track was so hard, so staying put may have been the best decision I made that day.


Time for some better bark busters...  

Crosstrails - September 8, 2013

1/2 of Team Disaster decided that instead of going racing, it would be easier to fly to Washington and walk around Mt Rainier.

And by "walk around" I mean all the way around. 93 miles, with about 3,000 feet of vertical every day.


I'm not that smart, so I went racing.





  
As you may recall, in my last race, I went down hard on the left side and pushed the bark buster out of the way so that I could break the clutch lever. What I then discovered is that there aren't any clutch levers for the 07 KLX 250. And by "aren't" I mean that there are 6 levers in the country. I ordered an aftermarket replacement from a stealer, which arrived in a week. I figured for $5, how can I go wrong?

Feeling smug, I waited until 2 days before the race to discover that they'd ordered the wrong lever.

In my calls around the tri-state area, one guy suggested a universal lever and perch.
With nothing to lose, I bought it on the way to the track, figuring that it would inevitably be One-size-fits-none.

Shockingly, it worked fine!

But let's back up to the lever breaking crash...

When the bark buster rotated out of the way, it made sense to me to tighten it up. really tight. the right side had been moving in my crashes also, so I cranked that bar end down *hard*.

It wasn't until I got to the starting line that I discovered that I couldn't rotate the throttle. I mean, I could get about 1/8 turn, and after that, it was really stiff. (TWSS)
I theorized that I'd cranked the bar end down so hard that I'd expanded the handlebar, and the throttle was binding.

But there was no time, so I figured I'd just deal with it.

There was a bit of a MX track that we ran. On the first lap, I went over a table top, and then in to a *big* berm, which I railed pretty well (for me).
Coming out of that turn, I discovered, was a double jump.

I had enough speed to make it about halfway.

Looking at the video, it doesn't appear that I hit anything, but it sure felt like I whacked my chest and face.

Somehow, in that 'incident' I bent my shifter and only had first gear for the rest of the race, so it turned out that not being able to twist the throttle wasn't as big of a deal.


I finished 3 of the 5 laps, and only *crashed* 2 or 3 times...


looking forward to the next race.

62P

80P

Disaster Racing at Ivor

Here is 80P taking some test laps at Johnny's farm. 9/15/2013