26-28 May, 2000
			     Sears Point

				Friday

I did the dP school on Friday, and noticed after two sessions on the
track that the remote reservoir on the W/X (main) bike's shock was
leaking oil. It turned out the oil was coming from around the
compression damping adjustment knob. I phoned Phil Douglas at
AfterShocks and put in an emergency parts and service request. Phil
said he would be at the track Saturday morning and fix it.

I rode the A/W (spare) bike the rest of the day, and although it felt
fine, it shredded its rear tire in a pattern I haven't seen on K591's
before. Hmm. That was a new tire with only one practice session on it
before Friday, though, and because it felt fine I figured it should
still be good even though it looked strange. I checked the pressure in
the tire just to make sure it seemed reasonable, and it did.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful; Graham Yates crashed his
TZ(r) 250 coming onto the 6-7 straight near the end of the day, and
wasn't moving when I went by, but I guess he was OK. I don't know if
he raced on Sunday.

			       Saturday

Phil had already arrived when I showed up at the track in a panic over
the W/X bike's leaky shock. He had brought plenty of spare parts, but
the assembly we needed to take apart to get the o-ring we needed
wouldn't budge. Unfortunately, he ended up destroying one piece of it
with a hacksaw to get the o-ring. He was great about it, and we got
the problem fixed in time to get my bikes teched and ready for
practice. All day Saturday I saw Phil helping people, fixing things on
people's bikes, offering tuning advice, and generally spending a huge
amount of energy on things other than his own practice and
racing. This was even though he had crashed and had plenty of his own
on his plate. Wow. Huge thanks to Phil, without whom I would have had
to ride the A/W bike on Sunday.

I also owe a big thanks to Guy Hutchison who took one of my bikes
through tech for me when it seemed like I might not have time for that
myself.

Saturday's times were good in the morning; I did some 2:04's which I
had never done in practice before. The afternoon sessions were nearly
a waste of time because they were too crowded with big bikes ridden by
cornering-impaired riders.

At the end of the day on Saturday I swapped wheels between the two
bikes. The tires that had been on the W/X bike had two race weekends
(each consisting of two practice days and one race) plus two sessions
from Friday and all day Saturday on them.

				Sunday

The day started much calmer than Saturday had, since nothing was wrong
with either bike.

In practice my times were just sort of OK, except for one lap where I
did a 2:03.9 with no greater effort than I had been putting into the
others. I'm not sure where that came from. It's far and away the best
lap time I'd done in practice before this weekend, and the ease of
doing it made me feel like my prospects for improving my best times to
2:02's in the race were good.

Our race, 250 production, was eighth. Just before the sixth race, Paul
Somerville pointed out to me that my carbs were disconnected from
their airbox boots. That must have happened when I was messing with
the shock. I took off the fuel tank and reconnected the carbs in
plenty of time for our race.

The warm-up lap went OK until I got to turn four where the bike
stumbled as I got on the gas. It did the same thing entering six
again, and then died completely exiting the corner. It acted like it
was out of fuel. I checked to see that the fuel line was reconnected
since my work on the bike, and indeed it was. But I had forgotten to
reconnect the petcock vacuum line! As everyone else gridded up, I sat
between turns six and seven fixing my bike and restarting it. I
finished my warm-up lap, and had the shortest 2-1-sideways-green
experience of my racing career as soon as I was done.

I felt like I got a good start, but somehow a bunch of people got by
me anyway. I passed a bunch of people in turn one, some more in turn
two, and by the entrance of three I was in third place behind Frank
Mazur (#8) and Kevin Scott (#680). I was right on Kevin's tail as we
crested turn 3A, planning to outbrake him at the entrance of
four. Kevin lost the rear in 3A, though, and I had nowhere to go but
over his arm. I was afraid I had hurt him, but I consoled myself with
the fact that at least it wouldn't be a life-threatening injury. I
couldn't stop to help, so as soon as the headshake caused by Kevin's
arm died down, I kept racing. I made a lot of ground on Frank in turns
four and five, and still more on the entrance of six.  Just after the
bridge, though, I lost the rear myself and lowsided. I guess I was
trying too much too soon.

Did I just screw up and go too fast, or was my shredded tire with only
half a warm-up lap (with only one real left turn) not up to the task?
I'll probably never know. I assumed my tire was warmed up, but maybe
bias-ply tires are sensitive to which side you use them on like
radials. And for left turns, my warm up lap had included turn one
(sort of, not up to speed yet), turn three, coasting through turn six
(nearly stopped), sitting still for a couple of minutes while I
reconnected the hose, and then only turn eight taken at a reasonable
speed before I gridded up. Maybe that wasn't enough? I don't know;
advice appreciated.

For the remainder of the race, I watched Frank walk away from the rest
of the field apparently unchallenged with a best lap of 2:06.0, while
there was some exciting dicing for positions two through five farther
back. Toward the end Frank apparently realized no one was after him
and backed off; his margin of victory was one second according to the
results sheet. Second place went to Alex Torres with a best lap of
2:04.3, and third went to John Rabasa with a best lap of 2:05.1. I
think those are the first trophies for each of them. Congratulations,
guys!

After my crash, the workers and I were unable to find my
transmitter. I talked with the workers about this, and some judicious
probing by one of them on the land line revealed that my transmitter
had been ejected from my seat in turn 3 when I ran over Kevin's arm!

Sitting at the bottom of the Carousel after my crash, I got to see
Mark Foster get shot out of some sort of cannon in turn five (I know
it was a cannon because it made a big BANG) and go flying through the
tire wall outside the entrance to the Carousel. It took a long time
for the turn five workers to get there; so long that the turn six
handlers (who are stationed all the way at the bottom outside exit of
the turn) almost got there first even after standing around for a
while.

As I was packing up to leave the track after the 250 production race,
I learned that Kevin hadn't even realized I ran over his arm, and that
he was OK. He even raced 750 production later in the day, which was a
big relief to me. Pretty amazing. I made a quick stop by the turn 3
worker station to pick up my ejected transmitter, and then moseyed
home.

Hopefully I'll do better next month...