When my boys would complain about school, a "bad" teacher or a subject they didn't like, I would tell them, "ya, sometimes school sucks, but that's not the point. The point is you're going to school, your teacher isn't going anywhere, and you need to figure out how to make it work, learn the material, get a good grade, take the good, brush off the bad and move on, no excuses!" You know, it's the "world isn't always fair" kinda lesson.

Well, this last weekend I had to face up to my own advice! With Ken, Scott, Lucy and myself all set for an important two days of testing in preparation for our first AMA race here in less than a month, things didn't quite go according to plan.

1. Cold, windy, and rain on day 2.
2. Both A and B bike motors were way underpowered, not revving out, just "off"
3. Bent front rotor on B bike
4. B bike ate 4th gear on day 1 and parked.
5. A bike kept "dislocating" its pipe at the joint from shifting back pressure
6. Rear tires went off in 3 sessions on day 1
7. Transponder wasn't working which distorted new data logging system
8. Quick shifter issues
9. Clutch Fshop
10. Typical socal track day bullshit with countless red flags

It just seemed we could never get our game on. After the first session both Ken and I looked at each other and asked, "what's up with the motor?" Goin down the straight we could only pull 145mph, barely got the rpms to 12k, flat spots, sluggish and fat....certainly not the fire breathing over revving monster that is the norm with these bikes. Was it the weather, the fuel, the mapping, the hex of a FTR track day in socal?? WTF?! We are so used to the potency of these motors that when they're "off" it's disorienting! We taped the radiator to get the temp up, made numerous mapping changes, etc., and although it got better it never got back to that angry, pissed off, jealous Italian supermodel we played with just 7 days prior at Buttonwillow. Strange....and when Scott is perplexed, something is wierd.

Half way through day one, I was chasing Ken around, carving through traffic, working on lines and testing some suspension changes when a few puffs of white smoke blew from the tail of the B bike and Ken pulled off line in turn 5 as 4th gear was gone. We shifted our attention to the A bike, continued to try to solve the mysteriously ill performing motor, made some tire pressure changes (which solved our tire problems), struggled with the transponder and data collection, put in some laps and salvaged what we could from the day.

We came up with a plan for the next day over a nice pasta dinner in the random and characterless strip mall wasteland of Rancho Cucamonga (what a great name for a city!) The next day brought more cold, wind and even a light rain. We headed to the track where we huddled in the garage trying to stay warm and waited until late morning when it finally started to clear up. We got the motor working a bit better but it was still way off from last weekend, put on new rubber and I was ready to throw down a few quick laps. Problem was, every time I started ringing my girls neck she back fired and dislocated the pipe connection which robbed power, burned the belly pan and sounded like a motogp bike forcing me to pit in. We did that a few times until it became pointless. We ended up lapping at the race pace from January's WERA race so we took some comfort that once we sort out these issues and get on track with the fast guys at the end of the month we should be able to drop our times and have little trouble qualifying for FX (knock wood!).

Bikes back to Scott to sort out as we are trying to "sneak" in a day at Miller on the 11th. It will be the only chance to check out the track before we go to race in May. Scott is a busy man!

As I drove the 8 hours home, I had plenty of time to mull over the two days and concluded we were lucky. Lucky that we uncovered these issues on a track day and not on a race weekend. Lessons were learned, and that's not all bad.

Next stop, Miller, UT on the 11th.

c'ya

-m