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Came up Friday morning. Tires were there Thursday but not Friday as it turns out. No big deal, relax all day in the sun, enjoy the weather.
Saturday morning, got the new tires mounted. Thanks to Johnny Valvestem for mixing me quite the EX parts cocktail! He set me up with a set of tires that should last me well into next season for sure.
It was raining, so no practice since I had no rains.
Went out for LWSM. Track was wet, I had race tires so I decided just to finish the race. Got a great start and found myself in 3rd nearly 3/4 of the way through the race. I shoulda just eased off and let the guys with rains take the race. Came up on some lap traffic in 3 that was much slower than I thought and had to brake too much for my tires/wet track. Down I went taking the lapped rider with me. I was "that" guy. Banged my knee down pretty hard and left most of the skin on the inside of my leathers. When I stopped tumbling/sliding, I look up to see KB with his eyes wide open heading towards me. He did what he was supposed to and went right around without an issue. Bike had a broken front brake master cylinder, broken front fairing and bent rear brake lever. The forks were also tweaked. Coulda been worse! Bob mentioned as he gave me my bike that John went down in 4 right after me with a nasty highside. He was ok though, good thing!
Went back, Nurse Nancy got me some bandaids to pull the hair off my legs and felt like an idiot for taking someone else out. I know it's racing and all but you never want to ruin someone else's day.
Dinner at OG with Rob, Kiera, Niel (congrats on your 1st place man!!!!), JohnnyVS, Oreo, Jeffle and Jes. Came home and went to bed. Tried to sleep but couldn't with what shopping cart luges were occuring. Got to bed with a stiff knee and slept decent.
7AM, up and fixing the bike. Toss the number plate on minus front fairing, new master cylinder via Tom Joyce and Brenden. Got it teched fine and hit practice, first one of the week. Felt good but the front brake was junk, all mushy (bled it plenty) and vauge. Brended warned me that it was so, but at least I'm out racing.
Rained in the afternoon but as I hoped it dried by my race. Threw the tire warmers on nice and early per Dan's advice and ran race 14 on nice sticky decent tires on a dry track. Wheelied on the start and drifted in front of Conner killing his drive (sorry man, just hit me next time, I won't be pissed). Passed Stupidhawk along with a bunch of others on the first lap and started to do what I do. Front end felt horrible due to the brakes and I kept loosing clutch to the point where the lever was nearly resting against the grip by mid race. So I would adjust the adjuster every lap more and more while cresting the hill in 5. Turns out my adjustment on the engine case was loose. Odd clutch position resulted....and that's why I wheelied on the start....damn thing. On lap 7 Chris caught me along with a 250. At that point I was just on cruise control and didn't want to try to retake positions that didn't matter for my class. Conner wasn't in sight behind me so I took it easy from lap 2 on and watched some motards battle in front of me. Kept my distance and didn't bother trying to pass. Sometimes it's nice not going 100% out there, kinda relaxing....
Got a 1st in Ptwins. No complaints. Had I gotten a better start I probably would have been in the top 3 entering turn 1. No big deal though, there was only two people in my class.
For next week?
Fix front brake.
Put in Fox rear shock. It WILL fit as Jack's 1999 EX 500proves.
Tighten adjuster nuts on clutch cable.
Bring JohnnyVS tons of beer since he was beyond helpful this weekend.
Thanks for need4speed, legalspeed, KB, Jay, Heath, and Jim for you guys' help getting things operating smoothly post crash weather you know you helped or not.
I haven't told my woman about the crash yet but she's lookin for nookie right now and wants me to stop typing and come to bed. Hopefully she won't notice the gimpiness!
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