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First off big thanks to Christian (csmutty) for offering to let me borrow his bike for my RR and a couple others and when it became pretty clear it wouldn't be sorted in time asked DanK if I could borrow the 319 machine. Unfortunately I was unable to get any practice sessions in so my RR was the first chance I got to ride the lil EX 500 and wow is it different from my 636. So different in fact I could barely ride the thing and posted a super fast best lap of 1:49.xx so needless to say I was pretty bummed at the thought of not really racing at all. It looked as though I was going to be a rear stand/tire warmer bitch for the rest of the weekend.
Sunday afternoon rolled around and I was already signed up for race 11 LW sportsman and with a little help from DanK and Chip I decided what the hell, after all the grid consisted of 3 classes 2 bikes per. Grabbed the EX and headed to pre-grid in pos 2b next to Chip and behind Chuck and headed out for a warm up lap only to find Chip not passing me because he was told to shut his bike off and he couldn't get it to fire.
So I'm on the grid watching the numbers drop, holding steady at 7k with my weight forward getting ready to launch in my first real race. Well the EX's clutch doesn't engage until it is pretty much all the way out and it was a bit of a reach for me so apparently I may have rolled on the throttle too soon and dumped the clutch at about 9-10k. Unfortunately for me EX's have banana seats and so there I am full on supermaning the thing holding on for dear life looking at the sky barely even on the thing. Well the race gods took pity on me and I was somehow able to recover and put my head down and looked for an up shift. And when I say looked I mean there was no gear selector WTF! Well there was a gear selector but since my 636 has Gilles rear sets set all the way up and back I had my toes on the exhaust. So needless to say I was not off to a very good start but what the hell I paid for track time and dammit i was going to get some and I pretty much just putted around the track for 8 laps and had a best lap time of 1:37.1 and to be honest I was pretty happy with that as I decided to up shift into 3 and 11 a few times (ex is standard shift, 636 is GP). Luckily for me DanK gave me a few tips on how to ride an EX and that helped out a lot, but I will say knee down in 1 on an EX was a bit sketchy. In the end I did my RR and thanks to Chip actually won my class and had a blast. I'm very much looking forward to racing with all of you next year but this time I'll be on a 600 (unless I can find a 636
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LRRS NV # 791
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Originally Posted by csmutty
I just heard you were out of a ride due to his brakes so I offered it up.
...you're last!
