After two race events of good luck and happiness, I suppose it was
time for my fortunes to turn somewhat sour this past weekend at
Thunderhill.

Mike McNiel, Adam Klnger, Chris McGrail, and I planned to do the
annual 4-hour endurance race on Mike's bike, but in Friday practice we
couldn't get the bike to handle well enough for Mike to feel like
racing it. We decided not to race and I made a hasty phone call to my
friend Jon who was planning on coming up to the track to help the team
out during the race. Luckily I caught Jon before he left home so he
didn't make the trip needlessly. I felt OK about not running the
4-hour because I have suddenly run very low on money, and saving the
expense of that race will be a big help.

Saturday morning practice for Sunday's sprints went somewhat
uneventfully for me, unless you count a get-off in which nothing was
damaged except my pride. I'm not sure why I fell, but my best theory
is that when I ran into turn 10 too deep on the brakes, I picked up
something on my rear tire while I was getting the bike turned out in
the marbles. The next corner is where I fell when I leaned over and
lost the rear. I wasn't going fast, so there was definitely some sort
of abnormal traction going on. Like all EX250 crashes, this one bent
my fork tubes and triple clamps. The forks weren't binding, so I
decided to ignore the bars pointing in a funny direction and carry
on. The handling of the bike didn't seem to suffer much.

There wasn't much track time on Saturday because of the added
endurance practice group. After practice I learned the Brian Bartlow
had blown not one but two motors during practice, and after the
endurance race he was headed home to swap a stock motor into his race
bike chassis. Bad news for Brian, but I thought it improved my chances
of doing well in Sunday's 250 production race.

I have thought for a long time it would be nice to do some corner
working, and since I was now free for the endurance race, I
volunteered. I got placed as the handler in turn 1, and when they
assigned me to that spot I thought I would be busy. Turns out nearly
nothing happened in turn 1 for the whole race, which came as a
surprise to me.

Sunday morning practice started out well, but quickly degenerated as I
pulled a hairball move in turn 13. There were about four bikes there,
and I decided to pass two of them on the brakes. John Rabasa was
passing someone else at the entrance, and I decided to pass them
both. John made his pass, and I passed the person he passed. I
underestimated John's speed, though, and we touched lightly at the
apex of the corner. Thanks to his calmness, John didn't fall down, and
I gave him a wave of apology (which I augmented with a face-to-face
apology later). The contact somehow jammed my shift lever, so I spent
a lap or so riding around in fourth(?) gear trying to free things
up. Finally the shifter started working again and I carried on with
practice. I passed back a bunch of people who had come by when I
played bumper-cars with John and during the single-gear lap, and
caught up to Brian Bartlow whose speed definitely seemed to be
suffering from the low performance of his motor. I had never caught up
to him like that in practice before.

Just a few corners after I caught Brian, though, my motor let go with
a loud POP and a sudden loss of power. This happened at the exit of
turn 11, so I pulled into the emergency pit entrance after the chicane
to avoid oiling the track.

I definitely didn't have time to swap a running motor into the Flying
W's chassis, so I figured maybe I could salvage some of the W's nice
handling for the race by swapping as many suspension bits as possible
onto the A bike, which I would have to ride in the race. Paul
Somerville pitched in with a valiant effort to free the rear shock
from the W while I swapped the forks. The bend in the W's forks from
the previous day's crash made it difficult to get the tubes into the
straight triple clamps on the A bike, but with some coaxing they went
in. I was too short on time and energy to swap the bent triple clamps
from the W to the A in an attempt to keep the forks from binding. It
soon became clear that the shock swap was too big a job for the amount
of time left before our race, since 250 production was scheduled as
the first race of the day. I settled for just the bent forks, which in
retrospect probably was a waste of time; the A bike's straight forks
probably would have worked just as well and wouldn't have cost nearly
as much sweat. Oh well. I thought there was a chance of getting the A
bike to handle well by putting the W's forks on it.

Paul's helping me deserves special saintly mention because he had
blown his motor on Saturday (are we seeing a pattern here?) and had
already spent considerable time rush-prepping a spare bike loaned to
him by his co-worker Emily for Sunday's race. Big thanks, Paul!

The fork-swap on my bike didn't work. I ended the race back down to my
normal 6th place, doing ~2:21's behind John Rabasa who was riding very
well in spite of a crash in turn 3 that morning and my attempt to play
pinball with him in practice. When John came by me I felt there was
little to be gained by pressing my luck; I just wanted to finish the
race, so I didn't challenge him any further and he opened a gap of
several bike lengths by the end of the race. The A bike felt as bad as
ever, handling-wise, and of course its motor was as slow as it's
always been. But at least I'm lucky enough to have a spare bike, and I
did finish the race upright and without nurfing anyone into the weeds.

Brian won the race by a hair on his good-handling bike with a slow
motor in it. He, Frank, Darren, and Chris (in that order) were all
within a few seconds of each other at the end of the
race. Congratulations to Darren for bringing home another trophy for
Team Iguana!

Scott Elledge added to the Team Iguana wood collection in his Super
Dinosaur race as well, and I congratulate him too.

Anybody got some Leak-Ender 2000 I can spray on my crankcases? That
should just fix my blown motor right up, and I'll be back out there
for Buttonwillow in October. :-(

If I had any money, I would hire a fancy suspension consultant to
figure out what's wrong with the A bike's handling and fix it. Now
that I know how bad it is, it bugs me.

	-- Robert