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 Exiting turn nine at PIR |
| June
25-26 USGPRU, Portland International Raceway After crashing at Willow on Sunday, I had surgery Wednesday, and I was pretty sure on Thursday I wouldn't be able to ride. By Friday I felt surprisingly better by about 50% so I took the sling off. I flew to Portland that afternoon with a long layover in San Jose. I arrived around 9:30 in Portland and our friend Galen Drake picked me up and let me stay at his place all weekend. Next morning we arrived before the gates opened, coffee in hand. After a half hour or so, the gates opened and we went onto the race grounds to find the bike I would be riding and my spares that were transported along with it. Earlier in the week, JM had taken my wheels, bodywork, suspension and spares up to LA and put them on the bike. They DID forget to put the pipe back on the bike, so I needed to borrow one from Carlos Neves. The pits were all set up so I registered, teched my bike and gear and strangely had to show an oil catch can when I teched my gear, changed my tires and changed. Putting leathers on was a little painful until I got into them. I went out in the slow group first, to break in a top end and to see if I could even ride. I ran out of gas on my last lap, so rolled into the grass and waited for the crash truck right next to the corner worker station. The next session went out and came in. The session after that went out - I was still waiting out there in the grass. Then someone oiled turn one badly. The crash truck finally came for me and they asked if I wanted to ride my bike and hold the brake, rather than tying it down. I declined and said I had a hurt shoulder. 15 minutes later someone came looking for the number 82 who crashed and hurt her shoulder. I was a little bewildered since the corner workers watched me roll off the track and onto the grass and sit there. All weekend people kept asking me if I was ok, and I never knew if they meant because they thought I crashed that weekend, or if they had talked to JM or read my race report earlier or what. After the next session was red flagged immediately due to Simple Green all over turn one, we had our second practice session after lunch and I joined the other 125s. I changed my main jet one leaner and otherwise didn't do any tuning. We had qualifying at then end of the day. I qualified 9th with a 1:18.386. The other 1:18s in front of me were: Jeff Lim 1:18.36, Phil Krenn: 1:18.368, and Tommy Aquino:1:18.377. We went to a party that night and turned in a little later than expected. Sunday morning practice felt great, but practice times were not being posted so I don't know my times. We had a four lap heat race for the OMRRA 125GP race. Grids for the heat race were not posted so we went into the announce tower to find our grids. After the warm up lap, there was mass confusion on the grid because there was another heat race on the grid in front of us, but those were the positions they showed us for this race! (I found out later they showed us the USGPRU grid positions). |
 Still broken, but all held together  Turn nine entrance  Those leathers are starting to look a little ragged.... |
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<> The first wave went and we were still looking around, backing into positions sideways when they waved the green flag! I was still in neutral backing up! I jammed my bike into gear as fast as I could and took off. The heat race was fun, I watched Marcus Hendersen out brake me into turn one and seven a few times, until I finally out braked him in 7 and kept a gap. At one point Phil Krenn pulled beside me on the straight trying to draft past me. I looked over at him until he looked back and then tucked as tight as I could and pulled away. This bike of Joel's was fast! I placed 4th in the heat race according to OMRRA.
I waited for the crash
truck and a OMRRA worker came up to me and asked if I ran out of gas. I
just about ripped the poor guys head off! I apologized and explained I
came a long way for this race, even having surgery so I could run it,
just to have a bike die at the beginning of the race. Why didn't this
happen yesterday? Or in the heat race? I went back to the pits and
started tearing the bike down to find out what went wrong. The
piston was fine. The plug looked great. Coil wasn't loose. Ring wasn't
stuck. Reeds didn't look great but were fine. I finally had a closer
look at the coil and saw thin a crack all the way around one end of the
thing. Dang! I even had a spare coil! I decided to race the OMRRA club
race at the very end of the day and began to put the motor back
together. Then it started to rain. I watched the 250 race and then
joined the USGPRU awards ceremony in the pouring rain. At some point
during swapping my slicks for rains and giving the pipe back to Carlos,
I decided not to run the club race at all. Things kept going wrong, I
was rushing and there was too much to do. I LOVE racing in the rain,
but something was going to be forgotten in the rush and that is when
crashes happen for stupid reasons. So I packed up, went
out to dinner with friends and flew back to San Diego the next day. Thank you Galen, for
the chauffeuring around, the place to stay, the photographs (he
took all the riding photos on this page!) and being pit bitch all
weekend. Thank you Matthew for the pit help and for
dealing with the tire changing fiasco, thank you Carlos Neves for the
loan of the pipe, and thank you Kirk Snell for torquing down all my
engine bolts after I took the bike apart. Very special thanks to Joel Manes for the loan
and transport of the bike, and the transport of my spares to Portland. |
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