Overheating Problem (apparently) Solved;
		      Crashing Problem Persists
	(warning: this text is too long and too disorganized!)

This past weekend, after years of wanting to and months of trying to,
I finally went motorcycle racing. It was fun, sort of.

First, a bit of background information:

In April, my entree into racing was postponed by a mechanical failure
(my fault) that sent me into the bales outside Sears Point's turn 8,
the day before the first race weekend of the year. I was fine, but I
had weeks of work to do before I had a race bike again. I missed two
race dates as a result.

In late May, I hauled my bike to the track again to take the AFM's new
riders' school. The morning classroom session went without a hitch,
but two laps into the on-track portion in the afternoon, my bike
overheated. Thanks to the graciousness of my friend Tim I was able to
pass the school by borrowing his bike, but I couldn't manage to solve
my cooling problem in time to race the next day. This was just as
well, because the next day I came down with a cold and wasn't up to
getting out of bed, much less racing.

In the days that followed, I disassembled the top end of my Ninja 250
and tried to diagnose the cooling problem. Some of you may remember
the desperate message I posted looking for advice when I couldn't find
any conclusive cause. In the end I think I solved it by removing the
thermostat and replacing the radiator cap, but I don't genuinely know
what the problem was.

So off to the track I went this past weekend with my bike and the rest
of Team Iguana's active members. Except for one aberrent elder, our
active members are all production 250 racers. Eric Bong (VTR250), a
somewhat seasoned veteran of the team; Stan Malyshev (EX250), a
promising upstart novice riding a super-trick bike that he bought from
Iguana elder Erik Astrup; Darren Slawecki (VTR250), another novice
doing well on what used to be his street bike; and me (EX250),
complete racing neophyte on a bike I was given for free, but that's
cost me something like $4000 now in motor rebuilds and crash
repairs. Aberrent Iguana elder Scott Elledge was on the scene as well
this weekend with his even more aberrent SuperDinosaur '85 FZ750.
Racing in itself isn't much of a team sport, but bike transportation,
maintenance, and triage can be; it's nice to have company when you
have to take a bath in fuel. Being on a team also means that you're
never bored in the pits because there's always a bike to work on, even
when yours is set up and running fine. :-)

The first session of practice on Saturday morning was delayed about 40
minutes because a corner worker on the way to his or her appointed
position crashed in turn 7 and apparently required extensive medical
attention.

I haven't been doing much street riding lately and I hadn't been on a
track at speed since my crash in April, so I expected my riding to be
rusty all weekend.

Once practice started, the first session was sort of slow and wobbly
for me. I stumbled around the track, trying to remember where the
track went and testing the limits of traction a little just for fun. I
began the session behind my teammate Darren, and was immediately
impressed with how much he's improved his riding since the start of
the season. I knew he had been doing well, but it was good to see with
my own eyes. His racing experience, though short, is much greater than
mine, and it immediately became clear to me that he brakes quite a bit
better and more confidently than I do. After a few laps, he made some
sort of error on the entrance to the chicane and ended up slowing down
way early, so I went on by to have some time one-on-one with the
track. Even without him in front of me, I was struck by the
inconsistency of my braking, and I did a few laps just feeling things
out. I especially wanted to take it easy, since I was coming off a
long string of unpleasant developments and I didn't want to continue
the trend. Keeping in mind my goal for the weekend of just starting
and finishing a race [I was signed up for four races -- I should have
set a more ambitious goal than starting and finishing *one*], I kept
the speed down and focused on smoothness. It didn't take long before I
started suffering from my poor passing skills. I came upon slower
riders whom I couldn't pass, but who kept me from getting intimate
with the corners the way I wanted to. I had done a couple of laps like
this when going into turn 11, Darren flew by both me and the rider who
was holding me up. He later described the move as "a little risky,"
but to me it looked smooth and confident. At first I thought, "Shit!
Darren's going into the wall!" Then I thought, "Well, maybe he knows
what he's doing..." Finally, "Damn! He *does* know what he's doing!"
He made it look easy to get by this obstacle that I'd been struggling
with for almost a whole lap. Later, it turned out that Darren would be
the obstacle in that rider's place.

My second practice session was somewhat better, but still left me
needing more time to learn what it's like to ride a motorcycle
again. I started trying to go faster during the second session, and
began consciously working on passing people. I know a lot more about
how to ride than I do about how to race: passing another rider who
isn't waving me by is a pretty novel activity, and this weekend taught
me that it's just as hard for me as I expected. I had some success but
not much. At least I started to get an idea of how much speed I needed
on someone to be able to get by, that sort of thing.

We didn't get our third practice session on Saturday because things
had been delayed by the cornerworker's crash and at least one crash in
another practice group took a long time to clean up.

The one-session Sunday-morning practice went pretty smoothly. The
track was cold and the air was cold; my tires didn't warm up during
the whole session, so I just tried to use the time as a reminder of
where the track went. Eric looked pretty confident, easily able to
walk away as I got stuck once again behind riders he and everyone else
were past in a flash.

The start of the races on Sunday was delayed by crashes in practice,
but as far as I know none of the races got shortened. Sunday's first
race for me (indeed *the* first race, ever, for me!) was 500 twins,
the third race of the day. A few minutes prior to the race my SO Lois
and our friend Myk showed up with a big cooler of lunchtime support
goodies for the team and our pit crew. I hastily explained where I
thought they should watch from and headed out for the race.

Yet another skill I completely lack: Starts. Of course I was gridded
at the back since all the other riders already have some points this
season; this was some comfort because I knew I wouldn't get run over
no matter how poorly I got off the line. It would also give me an
opportunity to practice passing. I was a little surprised at how few
250's ran 500 twins -- I thought it was pretty usual to see lots of
4-stroke 250's out there for track time. There were some, but not as
many as I expected. I took off and soon passed one other rider,
whereupon I soon became stuck behind Darren and couldn't get by. The
most promising place to pass him looked to be the Carousel, but he
never seemed to take the turn the same way twice, and that hampered my
passing confidence. Not really knowing what he was going to do, I just
didn't feel right trying anything. This familiar situation persisted
until I came over the hill to enter turn 4 and saw the turn worker
putting away what looked like a partially rolled-up ambulance
flag. Confused, I slowed down. Darren slowed down much more, put his
hand up and started pulling off even though there was no ambulance in
sight. Before I really knew what was going on, I was past him and I
saw the black flag in turn 5. The race was over. Entering turn 6 I saw
a rider on the ground just off the pavement, not moving. I don't know
how s/he was in the end, but it looked pretty bad right then.

Sort of a sad ending, but I had officially finished a race! I was
pretty excited. The race had sucked from a racing perspective, but I
didn't care: I was on my way!

The next race for me was after lunch: 250 Superbike. My main project
for this race was to continue working on getting past Darren, since I
could see he was significantly slower than me, but not slow enough
that I could just blast by at will. This time there was a much larger
contingent of production 250's in the race, and I passed about five of
them on the start. Almost immediately I found myself behind a TZR that
would park in the corners and blast down the straights. No surprise
there... This rider was slow enough that I had a variety of options
for getting by, but unfortunately they were all right before straight
sections where s/he would just come right back around me. I passed
once, and after s/he came back around on the straight I decided it
just wasn't worth the risk to keep passing and getting passed back. I
hung out behind the TZR and tried to figure out what to do. During
this time, four of the five people I'd passed at the start came around
me and the TZR. Obviously my passing skills are lacking. This whole
time, I would catch glimpses of Darren getting farther and farther
ahead.

Finally I got around the TZR rider on the exit of turn 4 when s/he
seemed to get distracted by a *really* slow rider we came upon. This
time the pass stuck, and I started working on the people who had
gotten around us as a pair. One by one I got by them. This was the
funnest part of the race for me, because they were all on bikes just
like mine so all the passes stuck. After working really hard for a
couple of laps to get by those people, I had a clear track to work
with, and several seconds of space between Darren and me. I closed
that gap, and as we neared the end of the race, I was back in my place
right on Darren's tail. We took the white flag that way, and I carried
on trying to figure out how I could get by.

The previous few laps had shown me that Darren's braking into 11 was
still better than mine, so I knew I couldn't get past him there on the
brakes alone. But I also knew I could get better drive out of 10 than
he did, because I was able to corner noticeably faster there. I
formulated a plan: Drop back a little in turn 9 so I didn't let him
regulate my speed, try for the best drive I could manage out of 10 (go
fast in the fast turns, right?), and try to come by on the straight
before 11. I would do my best at braking into 11, and hopefully he
wouldn't be able to re-pass me there.

Everything went according to plan right up until I lost the front
while hard on the gas at the apex of turn 10. I was cornering smoothly
(I think), albeit faster than ever before, when I found myself
suddenly sliding along on the ground. Ugh!

My first thought as I realized I was sliding on my butt at ~100 mph
was, "Not again!" Then I thought, "Argh! Turn 10! I heard this was a
horrible place to crash!" Then, "Here come the haybales. I know what
this is going to feel like..." BLAM! I don't know whether I hit tires
or haybales. I thought they had haybales in front of the tire wall,
but I seem to remember coming to rest against tires.

Actually, I didn't hit as hard as I had in my April crash, in spite of
the higher speed. As I climbed over the wall to get out of the impact
zone where I'd come to a stop, I was greeted by my teammate Stan, who
had had the good grace to get off earlier in the same turn so I
wouldn't feel so bad. Stan's willingness to laugh in the face of our
plight made the whole experience less than half as bad as it would
have been, and I really appreciate this about him. He is so
good-spirited, especially when someone else needs it. It turned out
there was one more of us, too. I was the third rider to crash in
precisely that spot during that race. Luckily, none of the three of us
was really hurt.

The first person to go down there was on a TZR, and he claimed he ran
out of ground clearance. Stan and I both had similar experiences, and
neither of us really knows for sure why we crashed. We know that all
three of us went down in the same spot because Stan's body slid into
the crashed TZR, and then my bike slid into it. We felt a little sorry
for the TZR rider, since the damage to his bike was so slight before
Stan and I got into the act. Even after Stan and I were done working
his bike over, the damage still wasn't too bad -- he got off with the
least damage of all of us. And in keeping with recent trends, my bike
had the worst damage of the three.

I don't think it's as bad as my turn 8 crash in April, though. There's
even a slight chance my fork tubes are straight. I'm planning to
measure them tonight.

So it's back to the garage in an attempt to make it to the next
races. Next time, my goal is to get through the entire weekend without
crashing and without a bike malfunction!

After the crash, I was pretty sure for the rest of the day that I
wasn't going to come back to racing for another year or so. I felt
things had just been too difficult. I'd spent about $4000 on a bike
that should have cost about $1500 (or less), and my ratio of hours
working on the bike to hours spent racing had gone from infinite to a
mere 750:1 or so. :-(

But the next day for some reason, I started looking back on what fun
I'd had right until the time I crashed, and I guess I've decided to
give it another go. I was happy with the times (2:09's) I was doing
before I crashed, and I'm hoping I won't have to battle past too many
demons to get back to them. I took my leathers in to get fixed and
shelled out some cash for what will either be a spare bike or a parts
bike to support my racing effort, so I guess the commitment is still
there. I'm surprised my feelings turned around so quickly, but I'm
definitely looking forward to getting out there again. I think I'll
take it a little slower through turn 10, though! :-)

Big thanks to Wing for giving me the bike, and for showing up to watch
me race, even though he'd just gotten there when the crash truck
carried me back into the pits. Thanks to Stan, Jeff, Patrick, and Rich
for helping me out with parts deals so I could get my bike together
after April. Many thanks to Lois and Myk for showing up, bringing and
preparing food, and taking times for me. HUGE thanks to the AFM turn
workers and crew who set up the haybales, flagged and ran the races,
helped me once I'd crashed, and got me and my wreckage safely back to
our pit area. Thanks to Darren, Stan, Eric, Scott, Lisa, Paul, Wing,
Lois, Myk, and everyone else around who offered moral support, help
loading the bike, and general non-derisiveness in response to my bad
attitude after the crash. Thanks to Eric, Scott, Terri, Erik, Stan,
and everyone else who's helped me diagnose my crash and given advice.

A big thanks also to the people who showed up to support me at the
race date in April when I ended up being unable to ride because I'd
wadded my bike then, too.

And I'm sure there's at least one person I've forgotten to thank. If
that's you, thank you, too!

	-- Robert Kennedy