Buttonwillow,
			 October 20-22, 2000

I've been pretty busy with work, music, and cat stuff since I got back
from the races on Sunday, so more time than usual has passed before I
sit down to write this report. As a result you can expect to see more
details left out because they're forgotten. This is undoubtedly a boon
to you, the reader.

I went into the weekend with a tiny points lead in the class. I was
only two points ahead of Frank Mazur (#8) and eight points ahead of
Nick Tenbrink (#809). If Frank beat me in the race on Sunday the
championship would be his. If Nick beat me on Sunday he would need to
put at least one person between him and me in order to take the
championship. The nightmare scenario for my championship fantasy was
that Nick would win the race, Frank would take second, and I would get
third or worse. If that happened, Nick would win the points race for
the year, Frank would be second, and I would get third or worse, going
backwards in season ranking for the first time in my racing
career. Knowing how well those two are capable of riding, this
sequence of events seemed like a very real possibility. So I didn't
need to win the race, but I needed to beat Frank and not get trounced
too badly by Nick.

I have always felt slow at Buttonwillow, in spite of winning the last
three 250 production races the AFM has held there. The turns where I
have trouble and know I'm screwing up outnumber the ones I think I do
reasonably well, and just to prove it I'll list the problem turns and
what the problem mostly is:

Turn 1:		braking too early, entering too slow, underestimating
		the amount of room at the exit
Turn 2:		entering too tight, getting on the gas too late
Turn 3 exit:	rolling off sometimes; stay wide open into 4! I used
		to do this one better than I do now
Turn 5:		entering the left-hand bus-stop exit too slowly,
		giving bad drive onto the banking
Turn 8:		just plain too slow; never got completely used to
		where the track goes after you come over the hill, nor
		am I completely comfortable with how light the bike
		gets at the crest
Turn 9:		tendency to enter too slow, although I'm not as bad
		here as in some places
Turn 11 (aka
Turn 47):	braking too early, cornering too slowly except when I
		corner too fast and crash

So these were the problems I should have worked on during the
weekend's practice sessions. It turned out I was horrible at focusing
on the issues, though. I just couldn't pick something and work on
it. My mental approach was foggy and touchy-feely, instead of
aggressive and analytical.

I was preoccupied with a new toy, my My-Chron lap timer. I had gotten
this thing in hopes that it would keep me from slacking
inappropriately during the race. Last month at Thunderhill, my times
were very inconsistent for most of the race because I hung out in
second place behind Paul Somerville (#311) rather than pass him and
run away. I have always had consistency trouble at Thunderhill, and
when I picked up my lap times after last month's race I saw that I
hadn't improved. Most of the times were in the 2:16 range, which is
not (or shouldn't be) a race-winning pace. I didn't realize during the
race that we were going so slowly; if I had known, my strategy might
have been different. It was with this sort of stuff in mind that I
bought the on-board timer that would give me my times as they happened
during the race. I felt the input would be valuable.

My bike was still sporting the GT501 110/90-16 front that was mounted
on Saturday morning at Thunderhill last month, and the GT501 120/80-16
front tire mounted backwards on the rear that was put on for the 500
twins race on Sunday at Thunderhill. So on the front I had a tire with
three races and three practice sessions on it, and on the rear I had a
front tire with one race on it.

				Friday

Friday practice is a day put on by the track. It's an opportunity for
all and sundry to go to the track a day early and, by doing an extra
day of riding, increase the chances of crashing on worn out tires at
some point in the weekend.

I improved my personal best times by getting into the 2:11s, but Paul
kept me from feeling too confident by going a second faster.

The 120/80 tire on the rear of my bike was showing pretty noticeable
tread wear by the end of the day and I figured I would need to replace
it for Sunday's race.

There's not much else to say about Friday because I basically just
rode around without consistently working on anything in particular. I
did a little thinking about what I was doing, but not enough, nor even
the usual amount. My body position was all over the place and my times
were decent but inconsistent. Steve Chan said my bike still looked
very slow compared to his and others.

Brian Bartlow (#29), the 1998 250 production class champion, returned
this weekend to racing for the first time since he broke his wrist
riding his 600 at Buttonwillow late last year. He was struggling with
the handling of his EX250, and he asked me to ride it to see how I
thought it felt. It seemed basically good, but the rear ride height
seemed a little low, with the result that the bike would wag its head
on corner exits if I got even a little stiff on the bars. Not a major
problem, but a noticeable one, and I suggested that he raise the rear
a bit to see if that helped. Another thing I noticed about the bike
was that it made quite a bit of intake noise. Does the airbox in that
thing have a lid on it? Sounds like it might not. Supposedly nothing
had changed on the bike since Brian raced it last, so I was not
surprised that the handling seemed generally good.

I later found out that Wink (Brian's tuner) had *lowered* the rear
ride height after I suggested raising it, and Brian liked the feel of
the bike better. I was surprised he felt that was an improvement, but
things are strange sometimes. He never got the handling sorted out to
his satisfaction, and ended up deciding against running the race on
Sunday.

			       Saturday

I could tell Frank Mazur (#8) was very aware of our points situation
going into this race, and it was clear he wanted to fight hard for the
championship. What made this so obvious? He showed up for Saturday
practice! He NEVER shows up for Saturday practice, preferring to save
his tires, his entry fees, and his energy and just ride on Sunday. But
there he was. First time in years that I remember seeing him do
Saturday practice when he wasn't teaching the new riders' school.

Paul continued to go really fast, and I continued not to go that
fast. I bettered my times slightly, doing one or two high 2:10s and
several low and middle 2:11s. Paul did a couple of high 2:09s.

I timed Frank during one practice session in the middle of the day and
he was doing 2:16s, which made me worry about him less. He always
speeds up quite a bit in the race, but it seemed like he probably
hadn't gotten substantially faster since last time at Buttonwillow,
and I had beaten him there consistently in the past.

Nick was having bike trouble. His engine seemed to be really down on
power, way worse than mine. He and his tuner/sponsor Alex Torres
(#105) ran the bike on the L&L Motorsports Dynojet dyno just to put a
load on it, and Alex said it felt fine. Why they didn't actually get a
dyno curve printed out I don't understand, but they didn't. It didn't
look like they took the bike apart to try to find the problem.
Instead, they put Nick on Alex's bike which had been brought just in
case. Alex already knew he wouldn't be racing since he got sidelined
for the season for crashing too many times on race days. It was very
cool of Alex to come to the track anyway to help out his riders and
customers, and to let Nick use his bike when the need arose.

Seeing all this going on, I couldn't help but wonder what was up: Nick
felt at Thunderhill that his bike was having power problems, and he
had had a month to do something about it if he'd wanted to. He was in
a points chase for the championship, and I could make a case for him
being the most talented rider in the class. With a reasonable bike, it
seemed to me he would still have a chance of grabbing the championship
so I wonder... Did he figure the points margin was too big to recover
after Thunderhill? I don't know.

My rear tire was showing quite a bit of visible wear, and I decided I
would definitely change at least the rear for Sunday.  Saturday's
final practice confirmed that my tires were finished when they started
sliding around. I had never slid the 501s before, and I knew I wasn't
pushing them hard so the only logical conclusion was that it was time
to change them. Knowing this, I got myself into a cat-and-mouse
situation where I really wanted to chase Paul and ... who else? Was it
Steve? I can't remember who else, but there was some sort of
three-bike freight train going on. To catch up to the train, I tried
to make ground in turn 47, the final corner leading onto the
straight. I've fallen in that corner before and gotten myself a trip
to the hospital and a lot of inconvenience for several of my friends
who had to figure out how to get a drugged Robert and his car and
bikes home. My attempt to make up time in that corner put me on the
fast line into the dirt AGAIN. The front let go on the gas just after
the apex, and just pushed and pushed and never came back. Like Anthony
Gobert crashing his superbike in Laguna's turn 11, I worked the
throttle trying to save it long after there was no real chance. I
could tell I wasn't going to save it when I heard the engine spin up
easily with the goosing I was giving the throttle, telling me the rear
wheel had left the ground and I was now trying to steer with the left
muffler.

Luckily nothing major happened to me, and it seemed like the bike had
been just as lucky. The crash had felt pretty mild. Joe Pardo (#728)
generously loaned me YET ANOTHER crash repair part, this time a clutch
lever. I put the bike back together, got new tires, and marveled at
my idiocy.

At this point I felt the times I had been doing on Saturday, while not
good enough to win, were good enough to finish ahead of Nick and
Frank, provided I could stay upright in the race. But now I had
crashed with no practice time left to get back on the horse, and it's
always a challenge to crash and not be slowed down. Would I be able to
do the times I needed to do on Sunday? Was the bike even straight
enough to handle properly? It looked straight, but there was no
telling what I might have bent in the crash.

				Sunday

I checked out the bike's handling in the first practice session;
something was obviously different since the crash, but it didn't seem
crippling. The front chattered in turn 1 where it hadn't before.

I decided to do the 500 twins race (first race of the day) to get
additional practice since I had fallen so late on Saturday and still
felt like I didn't really have my head together. In the 500 twins race
I placed pretty badly but I got my times down into a semi-acceptable
range. In spite of my lack of focus in practice and my Saturday crash,
I felt reasonably ready for the production race.

The 250 production race came after lunch. I got one of my best starts
ever, but Frank and Paul both had too much motor to stay behind me so
I was third into turn 1. The two of them were slow in turns 1 and 2,
but not slow enough for me to get by. Frank led to turn 3, where I
think Paul passed him on the brakes at the entrance. I carried on
being unable to pass Frank until the second mountain, turn 8, where he
slowed too much for the entrance and I just rode past. After that I
made some ground on Paul, but only very briefly. Paul switched on and
started doing his times and I just tried to think about how important
it was to stay upright. I didn't need to beat Paul; I would take the
win if he made it easy, but judging from his practice times he wasn't
going to do that. It was clear he wanted the win, and it was also
clear from his times in practice that he had the equipment and the
skills to get it, unless I *REALLY* hung it out. Maybe even then; he
was hauling ass.

As long as Frank and Nick stayed behind me, I wasn't going to hang it
out. I would have loved to keep my Buttonwillow winning streak alive,
but I've wanted a season championship and wondered if I could get one
from well before the time I started racing, and if I could help it, I
wasn't going to be as stupid in this race as I had been in Saturday's
practice. Staying upright was the order of the day. After a couple of
laps I took two or three long, careful looks behind me and saw nothing
but empty track. I was surprised Frank hadn't glued himself to my tail
section like he did at the first race this year, but there was no one
there. Even though it's been a mistake in the past to do this, I
slowed down and tried to play it safe. My times went from 2:10 and
2:11 to 2:14s.

Near the end of the race (last lap, or second-last?) I encountered
Julia Green (#659), but just as I was about to lap her we came to the
exit of the bus stop, which had been showing a yellow flag for a lap
or so because two riders had come together there and crashed. I had to
slow way down to stay legal and avoid passing Julia. As I passed her
and tried to recover my drive onto the banking, Dan Baldini (#151)
came past, having caught up and gotten good drive out of the bus stop
(and, it turns out, also having an illegal motor, with cylinder bores
said to be more than 2mm over the class displacement limit).

I passed Dan back immediately going into turn 8, and either he
couldn't get back by or he let me stay in front of him. He had made a
comment in the pits earlier about blocking Frank for me, so maybe he
just didn't try to get me back.

I took second behind Paul who had kept riding hard right up to the end
of the race. Paul's best lap was a 2:09.3x, a second and a half better
than my best. Third was Dan Baldini (who said on the cool-down lap
that he would have let me by even if I hadn't passed him back), fourth
was Frank, fifth was Steve Chan (#808), sixth was Dan Kimble (#689)
who is the class's fastest novice this year, seventh was Joe Pardo
(#728), eighth was Kevin Scott (#680), ninth was Nick, and tenth was
Phil Douglas (#695).

I had done what I needed to do, and my years-old dream of winning the
250 production class championship had come true! There is much I
didn't do right this year, but I had done enough. I really have to
think back carefully to the time when I started racing and remember
how much I looked up to the people riding at the front of the pack to
realize how far I've come. I've learned so much about riding and
racing, and I don't even know what some of that knowledge is. A lot of
it is unexplainable, inexpressible.

At the end of the season's last race day, after all the races are
decided, Terry Newby gets together all the new class champions who won
on Dunlop tires to take group pictures. Terry asked me to stay around
for that, and I was happy to have a reason not to load up my stuff in
a hurry and rush home. As the afternoon wore on I had plenty of time
to watch a few races, shoot the breeze with some other racers, and
mull over the oft-repeated words of an announcement our race director
Barbara Smith makes on the PA system every race weekend. It goes
something like: "Any time you are riding a race bike under power in
the pits, you must be wearing helmet, gloves, and boots. Clothing is
optional in the AFM, but if you do ride with only helmet, gloves, and
boots, make sure you ride past me so I get to see you."

Many times it had struck me as sad that no one in the whole AFM (to my
knowledge, anyway) had ever taken Barbara up on her challenge. This
day I had time, I had to stay at the track until the races were over,
the weather was warm enough, and I had just won my class championship.
There would never be a better opportunity. I discussed the
possibilities with Paul Reynen (#947) and he agreed to make sure the
situation got documented on film.

I waited until after the last race because I didn't want to catch
Barbara when she was too busy, and then, wearing helmet, gloves, and
boots, I rode my race bike down to the track entry. As I rode, the
pits erupted in a round of cheering and noise that went way beyond
what I had expected. To whip people into an even greater frenzy, John
Fosgate (#11) got on the PA and made sure everyone knew what was
happening. It was most excellent! When I got to the track entry
someone got Barbara's attention and made her turn around to face me. I
was pretty amazed at how red she turned... she seemed genuinely
surprised, which sort of surprised me. And she couldn't stop
laughing. I thanked Barbara for a very well-run season and asked her
to pass along my thanks to all the rest of the workers. At that point
she seemed to be a woman of few words, and I needed to get over to the
Dunlop truck for pictures so I turned around (nearly dropping my
bike!) and rode back through the paddock to my pit.

It turned out there were plenty of people around with cameras, both
film and digital, so Paul needn't have worried. Mike Solis's (#907)
site at http://afm.wserv.com shows me and Barbara in one of the many
pictures I didn't even know were being taken...

After I got home, I noticed that the steering head bearings on my bike
were loose (clunk clunk), and the fork brace upper plate bolts were
*very* loose. One of them had backed almost all the way out and was
dangling by a thread. These things explain at least part of the
chattering and handling weirdness I'd noticed. And of course it makes
me wonder whether I might have gone faster than I did if my bike
hadn't had these problems, but of course that doesn't matter much now.

So the season ends after many ups and downs. When I crashed in May I
was certain I would never be able to work my way back to the front of
the points, and the struggle intensified in August when I finished the
race but my finishing position paid a price for my riding badly. I
just kept trying to do my best, though, and it turned out that by
staying near the front and being there to take advantage of whatever
opportunities came my way, I landed on top.

There are so many people to thank for their parts in giving me a
wonderful season that I don't know where to begin and I'm sure I'll
leave out someone important. I'm gonna give it a shot, though, and I
apologize in advance to those people I omit through my carelessness.

First the sponsor thanks: I was sponsored this year by Redwood City
all-but-yamaha and by my employer, Tensilica. I was sponsored at the
October race event by Pinky's Pizza.

For their friendship, support, and excellent attitudes this year, I'd
like to thank all my 250 production competitors, but especially Nick
Tenbrink and Paul Somerville. Nick and Paul raced against me on the
track and shared valuable information very openly off the track when
they must have been tempted to keep things to themselves. Letting the
racing take place on the track is one of the things I think is the
greatest about the prevailing attitude in our class, and these two men
are excellent examples.

I have special admiration for people who show tenacity, since I think
tenacity is the single biggest and most difficult ingredient in
racing. For teaching me lessons in tenacity by example, I thank Jerri
Grindle, John Rabasa, and Chris McGrail. John and Chris both returned
to racing after a crash that broke a wrist each and toasted both their
bikes pretty heavily. Jerri came back after a very debilitating crash
that had her working hard for many months to recover. And even before
they were recovered enough to get back on the track, John and Jerri
contributed by working turns at AFM events!

In addition to all the other stuff that matters about racing, you have
to be able to ride well to race well. Each of the following people has
taught me really critical pieces of riding skill, and without knowing
any one of them I would be a lesser rider than I am. Some of them knew
they were teaching me when they did it, and some just rode, taught by
example, and let me watch: Jim Franklin, Lisa Sieverts, Chris
Steinbroner, Noemi Berry, Tom Dorsey, Terri Vogel, Frank Mazur, Nick
Tenbrink, Brian Bartlow, Eric Bong, Darren Slawecki, Joanne Ferreira,
Bruce Gutman.

Still others played very important roles in getting me into
racing. Wing Keong Loo deserves special mention for being exceedingly
generous to me at a time that was very difficult for him. Eric Bong
and Scott Elledge deserve mention for their roles in easing me into
racing and being there to answer all sorts of stupid questions in the
beginning. Tim Moore let me borrow his bike to get through the new
riders' school when mine was overheating like crazy.

I've probably omitted more people than I've mentioned, and I don't
mean to slight anybody. When I first raced and fantasized that I might
win a class championship someday, I figured it really was just a
fantasy. To have it come true counts as a testament to what can happen
if you have the right teachers and supportive friends.