2-3 June, 2001
			     Sears Point

I arrived at the track Saturday morning and pit space was tight. Jack
Walshe (#88) and Charles Statman (#116) were nice enough to let me
shoehorn into their pit space, and it worked out fine.

The track seemed like it was in good shape. I noticed a few bumps I
hadn't noticed before (in turns 7 and 8, mostly), but the traction was
good. In Saturday's first practice session on the little bike I did
mostly 2:03s and 2:04s with a high 2:02 thrown in for fun. It didn't
take long before I had reached my best times on the big bike from last
time at Sears, and I was hoping to knock another chunk off my times on
that bike this weekend.

Practice seemed to be going well in the first few sessions, but for
some reason a bunch of people were crashing. It was a trend that would
continue through the whole weekend. There were supposedly more crashes
in Saturday practice than we had had at all this year's prior events
combined. Unfortunately lots of the crashes involved 250 production
riders.

On both bikes I worked on trying to do the basic technical riding
things the 750 had taught me to do at last month's Thunderhill date,
and I was pretty unsuccessful. I felt like I wasn't hanging off
properly (on either bike) and I was doing evil things with the bars on
the 750 rather than support my weight properly with my legs. It seemed
like my head was never in the right place (literally and
figuratively).

On the 250, Saturday practice went well and uneventfully. I got into
the 2:02s in the first session of the day, and essentially held there
for the whole day. There wasn't enough pressure on me to elicit a
2:01, but 2:02 was near enough to real race pace that it would do for
practice. [This is a joke, BTW; I've only ever done one 2:01 in my
life, so while 2:02 might not be a race-winning pace for much longer
as equipment and riding improve in our class, it's still respectable
for me during practice.] My best EX250 lap of the day was a 2:02.445.

I made a point of trying a few practice starts in the hot pit on the
250, remembering that in May I had completely botched my start and
ruined my race result. My practice starts were acceptable but not
great. After my race start in May, "acceptable" was more than
acceptable.

I felt good about my times on the 250, but I felt like my technique
was sloppy. I tried to work on it with mixed results. I couldn't seem
to consistently hang off the way I wanted in the carousel, and my
riding felt imprecise. A lowlight of Saturday was that among the many
crashers was Joe Pardo (#728) who had nipped me on the final straight
at Thunderhill in May to take second place. He broke his collarbone
when he fell in turn 11, and this meant he wouldn't be racing on
Sunday. This was not the way I had been hoping to beat Joe! Tom Hicks
(#449) also compromised his collarbone on Saturday in a pretty
spectacular practice crash between turns 3a and 4.

On the 750 I felt even more imprecise. In one of the afternoon
sessions I rode with Kelly Winkelbauer (#462), who showed me just how
imprecise my riding was. He said he was having all sorts of trouble
with mistakes, but especially in the first couple of laps I did behind
him, he looked very exact in his bike placement on the track. I felt
all over the place by comparison. Turn after turn, he had his knee
over the curbing paint but his tires on bare asphalt. I, by contrast,
either had my tires on the paint and my knee also on the paint or in
the grass, or both knee and tire out in the middle of the track
nowhere near the curbing. During the couple of laps before he came by
me, he followed me and shot on-board video. I look forward to seeing
it someday and I'm hoping I don't look as sloppy as I felt. I have a
feeling, though, that I'm going to look even more sloppy.

In the last session of practice I rode Saturday on the 750, I felt the
clutch slip once; I think it was exiting turn 11. I took note, but I
figured "What the hell -- maybe this will be like no other problem
I've ever encountered and will magically solve itself." The trouble
didn't happen again in that practice session, so I figured maybe my
ignore-it strategy had worked.

What did happen later in that practice session was that I nearly
highsided at the exit of turn 2. I wound the throttle up too fast, and
spun the rear tire way too much. I guess I was slow enough in my
reactions that I didn't do anything too disruptive to the bike, and
traction came back with a big wiggle. So I was not to join the cast of
thousands in the straw bales outside turn 2, but I did get my
confidence shaken. This incident happened with the track and tires
were warm, and conditions were great. I was pretty sure it was simply
a riding error, and I tried to think of if that way. But I was also
concerned about trying to get a second weekend out of my tires. This
concern came from not thinking clearly about when I had had this set
mounted at Thunderhill: They were new for Sunday morning at
Thunderhill in May, so they should have been fine for all of Saturday
at Sears Point in June. Had I realized this, my confidence would have
been better.

My best times on the 750 on Saturday were low 1:56s, more than a
second improved from April. This was a little disappointing because it
seemed like I hadn't been able to integrate much of my May Thunderhill
improvement into my June riding at Sears Point.

				Sunday

In Sunday morning's practice on the 750, I felt the clutch slip
again. This time it happened several times and was a noticeable
impediment to my riding. My riding also suffered from a lack of
confidence in my tires that came from Saturday's slip-and-grip episode
exiting turn 2, and from my ongoing failure to realize that the tires
were substantially new.

The clutch was a problem, but when I bought the bike I had gotten a
spare clutch pack with it. I figured all I needed to do was swap in
the spare clutch and it should work. Luckily my first race, 750
production, was race 6, which gave me plenty of time to take care of
the trouble. And it turned out I needed most of that time. It took
help from Nick Tenbrink (#809), a tool loan from Dave Rodgers (#48),
advice from Kenyon Kluge (#96), the use of TJ Noto's (#134) and Eric
Welch's (#427)'s generator to run the electric impact driver I
borrowed, and supervision at the end of the job by Mike Sampognaro
(#414) to get it all done and working again. Thanks to every one of
those kind racers for their help! I even had the job done in time to
get out my cooler and eat some lunch.

Race 6 came very quickly after lunch. The time had crept up on me, and
I was sort of surprised when I realized race 5 was about half over and
I was still holding a piece of lunch in my hand. I still had a full
stomach when I put my leathers on for the race. The start was
typically bad for me. I really need to put a little time into learning
how to launch that bike so I'm not such a wimp on the starts. I think
it would help my finishes significantly to get better starts.

I passed a few people and hooked up fairly quickly with Steve Hurtt
(#181) who was ahead of me after I spotted him a whole bunch of places
on the start. For a while it looked like I was going to be able to get
by, but traffic, flags, and one faster lap on his part that I couldn't
copy meant that he prevailed in the end. I had beaten him at all this
year's prior races, so I need to get back to beating him again at the
next event. I did a 1:55.x lap in the race, bringing me to about a
2-second improvement over my last Sears Point times on the 750.
Decent, but sort of disappointing. I have a long way to go on that
bike, and if I only take baby steps from here on out, it's going to be
slow getting there. I still feel very unfamiliar with the bike, and my
lack of confidence in the tires hurts.

The replaced clutch worked great, though! Not a single problem.

The 250 production race was race 9, and keeping in mind May's start, I
headed to the hot pit early to try a few more practice starts. Just
like Saturday's practice starts, none of them were very good, but all
of them were OK. Leaving the hot pit for the warmup lap, I let most of
the field go ahead of me and then took off; I had decided I didn't
want to sit on the grid for a long time.

I guess I've grown more or less used to the awkward view of the
starter's tower that we get from the front row. It's a strange pose we
get into, preparing to launch our bikes as hard as we can, but craning
our necks upward and to the right to see the flag. I was gridded
second, with points leader Paul Somerville (#311) to my left, and
Frank Mazur (#10), Tom Dorsey (#63), and Dan Kimble (#689) to my
right. When the flag flew, I got the best start of my life. I saw
Paul's front wheel begin to come up to my left, and then there was no
one else in my field of view. My front wheel stayed down, my rear
wheel gripped the pavement, and I actually led the race off the line
until after we left the drag strip and got into turn 1!

Once we were in turn 1, Frank came motoring by and pulled a gap of
several bike lengths on me as we headed up the hill. He parked at the
entrance of turn 2, though, and I didn't have enough extra speed to
pass him there. I had to wait until turn 4 to pass him, and then I got
him easily on the brakes. I rode most lap one without looking back,
and because it was early in the race I decided to just try to relax
and do my practice times. If someone came by, I could wick it up
then. I lasted until turn 10 without looking back, and when I turned
around on the straight between ten and eleven, I saw nobody. Past
experience has taught me that when I see nobody, it really means I'm
about to be passed by Joe Pardo or some other rider who feels his or
her own points agenda is more important than mine. But Joe had crashed
in practice and was enjoying pain killers and a collarbone brace
instead of sweaty leathers.

Eventually, after I'd checked over my shoulders several times, it
started to get easier to believe there really was no one there. I kept
doing my practice times for a while, and when I still didn't see
anyone I figured it might be prudent to slow down a bit and make sure
I wouldn't crash. After two post-start laps at 2:02s, I eased off to a
low 2:04 on the fourth lap and then started thinking perhaps I'd
backed off too far. My next two laps were in the 2:03s, and the final
two were in the 2:02s again. I knew my easing off had allowed the gap
to second place to close somewhat because on the last lap or so when I
looked back on the straight after the carousel I saw Tom exiting that
turn. If the race had gone another five or ten laps and I had
continued cruising instead of pushing, Tom and I might have had a good
dice and I would have had to wick it up to keep the win. He did a
2:01.69 while he worked to close the gap; he was riding on GT501
bias-ply tires, and that time is only a few hundredths slower than my
best time from April on the radial tires I use. If I get lucky, the
next few races might give me some interesting dicing with Tom, which I
look forward to. The race didn't go for another five or ten laps,
though, so I took the win with a 7.6-second gap to Tom's second
place. Things had gotten spread out among the other front-runners,
too: Tom was well ahead of Paul who took third place, and Paul had a
good-sized gap on Frank, who took fourth with Dan right on his tail in
fifth. This might be the first time in my memory that the five front
row starters took a clean sweep of the top five finishing spots in 250
production.

I took the checkered flag when I was just about to lap another rider,
so I was in the somewhat surreal (though not rare) position of having
to slow down on the cool-down lap so I would not mingle with this
almost-lapped rider in front of me who was still racing (with no one
in sight to the front, and a cool-down lap in progress in back). It's
a very strange feeling.

This win leaves me 11 points ahead of Paul, and the fact that Joe
missed the race will mean things from third place on down are fairly
scrambled (read: I've been too lazy to do the arithmetic). I think the
top four now are me, Paul, Tom, and Frank, but maybe Dan is in there
somewhere. Next month at Thunderhill promises to be very interesting!
Once again I'll be in the hot seat, trying to do what I have never
done: win from pole position. Joe and all the others who fell this
month will likely be back in time for the next race, since it is seven
weeks away, nominally enough time for a broken collarbone to heal.

So many people crashed this weekend that I dare not try to mention
them all. I wish each of them a speedy recovery and easy bike repairs!

Special thanks to Amy Pfaffman for letting me crash at her place in
the city, sharing her excellent company with me and saving me some
major hotel bucks on Saturday night!