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Thursday Night- 4/24:
Alex and I get up to the track. We drive around a little bit in the dark to get the lay of the land. We find a nice open spot near T1 and figure its a great spot to camp. Geno comes out to tell us we can't park there (BIG thanks!) because the corner workers need to have line of sight through T1-T2. Geno takes us over to meet Jersey and Heath, buncha good guys. Alex and I go back to set up our tent and Geno offers to let us camp the first night in his heated trailer. That sounded great to us so we accept and try to sleep knowing we have Penguin tomorrow.
Penguin School- Friday 4/25:
Too excited to eat. Get over to the Penguin garage and sign up. Nervous they won't accept our expired tuition certificates. All goes well and we begin what seems like the hours of classroom between us and the first track session of the season. Run back to the pits, gear up, and try to get the bikes running. For once mine is running well but Alex's won't idle without full choke (least its running, it's an EX). Time to get out there for some follow the leader. I forget why but I was late to the follow the leader session and got my own personal instructor! Was pretty sweet, got to follow right behind him for a bunch of laps, no worries about trying to remember the line from seeing it from the back of the train. Back for some classroom and then back on the track for some more follow the leader. Was dumb enough to come on time and get in a large follow the leader group. We stop at T1 nascar to see the line and have a little talk. Was very hot standing there in the sun. Get back on the line and do a few laps to come on some dangerous traffic at T9 right under the tree house. Can't see over the horizon coming out of the bowl and the stock EX breaks damn near result in my hitting the 30 people parking it to "pit in" onto the nascar track to watch and talk about T11-12. Golf cart comes out to tell us we have used our time and need to pit in. Classroom and then finally "semi-"OPEN PRACTICE!
Meet up with BJ(#31). Have to follow him around for a few follow the leader laps until he tells us we have enough of an idea of what we are doing to go out on our own. Was lucky enough to get to follow him around and have him follow me to tell me what I am doing right and wrong. Tells me I am on my way and to not get cocky or be dumb enough to crash in the rookie race.
Some how about half the penguin group gets called for practice during the AM/EXP session. That was fun, few laps of these blurrs wizzing by me until it gets noticed and red flagged...
More classroom that is just basically "DON'T CRASH IN YOUR ROOKIE RACE!" It was not 7:30PM and we were about to die of hunger (didn't really get the time to eat at all through out the day). Hit up tacobell and walmart.
Get back to the infield set up the tent, finally notice my sweet-ass army cot from the 70's won't fit in the tent
Saturday- 4/26:
Tired. Registration, tech, rookie race sign up, PRACTICE, penguin meeting, riders meeting.
ROOKIE RACE: I do what I was told, I pre-grid early, do my practice lap, grid, wait for my wave, rev the sucker to 8k, wait for the flag, ease the clutch out (learned it was hard to do with such a stretched out clutch cable)- HUGE WHEELIE. Who knew my first wheelie would be on an EX let alone an EX could wheelie. Ease off the gas, bang a gear up to get one hell of a hole-shot. Enter T1 in the front of the wave. Have a fairly good lap (1:35.something) was not a perfect line because of all the adrenaline but it was one hell of a line. Lap 2, go to enter T1-feels like I am flying. I flip it over for T1a and do a little of
this:
and this:
then some more of this:
and then finally some of this:
Honestly, it happened so fast I have NO idea what happened. Some say I was pretty close to the 1a curb and probably clipped it while others say they say sloppy bar imputs. I bet it was probably leaning over too far over without having much heat into that area of the tires...
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In the back of my mind I figure I am running out of gas but I just don't do anything about it, not really thinking. On the last lap, going into T9 it gets real bad. I damn near stall out, drift out T10 far to the left and Alex slips by me. I yank the choke to keep it running, flip it to reserve (Derek always told us at VIR to race on the reserve so this didn't happen but I ran out of gas at VIR so many times that I started running it on "On" so I could flip it to make it into the pits. I run it on reserve every time since then.) I twist it wide open to get any juice left in it to start moving... It finally does and I bust the second and biggest wheelie in my life. The front tie was higher than my head. Corner workers in T3 must have thought I was drunk
Originally Posted by Pookie
You are VERY lucky they let you get your license. 
