This one is long, so if you don't have time or interest, you know what to do.
Today was the second of two trackdays in less than a week. Pure indulgence, really. Jake and I both took the day off from work, and since I never converted the bike back to street trim after Sunday, getting ready was very easy. Jake came Thursday evening, and we loaded his bike and all the gear. A couple other friends dropped off chairs, food, water, and that kind of thing, since they were going to ride to the track.
Friday morning, I picked Jake up a little before 6 AM, and the bozo with the super sensitive car alarm had to come down to see what was going on again. He looked just as bleary eyed as on Sunday. Things like that make me want to ride a Ducati past his car at 5 AM every morning until he figures out that it is obnoxious and tones it down.
We got to the track in time to set up the canopy and unload everything before tech inspection. After tech, we pulled Jakes wheels, since his tires had a couple trackdays on them already, and he rides all the time. With two trackdays and almost 4K miles on them, they were getting a bit hard. He really didn't like the idea of pushing it and crashing. Besides, tires are typically discounted pretty well at the track, since we all go through so many of them. Our other friends got there shortly after we did and we settled into our home at the track. Paul set up with us, so there were three 675s, an RC51 and a CBR600RR.
This trackday was run by a different organizer, so the rules were a little different from Sunday. That took some getting used to for me. Jake was moving up from the beginning group to the intermediate group, called group 2 today. The last trackday I did with this organizer was the one that the TT600 blew up. I was sure hoping he didn't remember that too well, even though I helped clean up the mess and bought a case of beer for him for fouling up his day.
After the riders meeting, the track went hot for the racers, and us mere mortals went back to get ready for our first session. The track was still cold, since it has been getting down into the 50s for the last week or two. It may get good and hot, for Seattle that is, in the afternoon, but it is chilly in the morning. A combination of cold tires and cold track bit Paul really hard early in the day. He may also have found some debris or something on the track, since a later session was redflagged due to a three bike incident in the same corner. One of the bikes that went down was a rider who is usually a control rider. I was very surprised to see her bike on the ground, so I suspect that something really odd happened. Fortunately, none of the rest of us had so much as a twitch in that part of the track.
As the morning progressed, the track got a lot warmer, and we all started going a whole lot faster. My top speed indicator says I hit 165 during the day, and the fuel economy meter says I got 22 mpg (imperial!) for the day. At one point, the fuel economy was well below 20, but I kept hitting traffic that slowed me down and forced a bit more circumspection with the throttle. I finally got up the nerve to keep the throttle completely pinned all the way through turn 1, and also to go good and deep into turn 3. I still have a lot of room for improvement, especially going through turn 4 and at that turn's exit, but very few people were passing me. That is the bike's doing- I am just not that good! It let me pass people on the outside of corners, 250 style, on the brakes going into corners, and on the throttle coming out of corners. It can't out power a liter bike, but it can get past nearly everything else. It can outpower a liter bike if that rider doesn't set up the corner exit just right. The bike is that good.
By mid afternoon, I felt very relaxed on the bike in a way that had been elusive for the whole summer. It became easy to just sink to the inside of the bike, hook over the frame, and let the bike and physics do all the work. Maybe it was the perfect combination of just enough fatigue and just little enough mental fatigue. That blissful state lasted for a couple of sessions, then I started getting really tired. A sane person would have called it a day, but I kept going back out for a while each session. I finally let common sense have its way and cut the last session short by a couple of laps. A couple more laps would have been fun, but it would have been awful to have two 675s trashed in one trackday.
Jake's confidence was really soaring, and he got some great feedback from Brandon Bones, the photographer who works nearly all trackdays and race weekends here in Washington. He is a great photographer, a great guy, and has a great name. You can see his work on his
Website- Studio 819. He is also a very good observer of track riding and has great comments. He gave Jake all kinds of information about what he was seeing and how Jake could improve his riding. Jake started to incorporate some of those comments, and it really paid off. Thanks Brandon!
In the mean time, the serious crashing was over after the first couple of sessions. A Ducati rider went down in front of me in turn 4, but he slid far enough off the track that it wasn't a problem. In addition, he somehow got his bike back up and got back onto the track almost immediately with very little damage except to his pride. His buddies were teasing him about having got the scratches out of the way. I guess it was a fairly new bike, at least for him. One of those buddies was riding a black 999, and I had a great time chasing him around late in the day. I couldn't quite catch him, but it sure was a lot of fun trying.
Throughout the day, we all drank lots of water and ate things like fruit and potato chips with lots of salt and carbohydrates. We were avoiding anything heavy, since low mass is its own reward, especially on a trackday. We were all tired at the end of the day, but none of us felt as wrung out as if we had eaten too much or drunk too little water.
It didn't take long to take down the canopy and pack everything up with four of us doing the work. Since tomorrow is Saturday, the bikes and all the gear are still locked up in the van, waiting for a more leisurely unpacking and reconversion tomorrow sometime. I could really get used to living like this! The first beer tastes great. The second beer will knock me right out. :razz:
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