huevos
Tue 12/20/05, 12:24PM
DISCLAIMER: As usual my race reports are not for the ADHD challenged as I tend towards a more holistic approach (ok, maybe a little tangential) than a simple lap by lap replay and include all sorts of interesting things like belligerent blind guys and rude 16 year old pimps. Feel free to click the back button at any time. No hurt feelings. Read it in parts if you have to, it gets sorta good towards the middle.
SO...I finally decided to make it back out to the races. It had been a full year since my last race and about 5 months of meaning to but never really getting to race due to any number of different reasons: son got sick, son had birthday party, had to work, got accidentally deported...you know, the usual stuff.
WELL...got me a little red trailer from harbor freight and put it together. No more U-haul for me. Also, finally got rid of my pissachet (that’s spanglish for ‘worthless‘) 1994 mazda B2300 that used to get passed going up the 14 by hippie laden volkswagen buses and got me a brand new pissachet in the form of a massive f350 4x4 crew cab, circa 1994 and gettin’ ‘round 10 inches to the gallon. About a month after I bought it I realized it came with two free pretty pink glittery cowboy hats behind the seat and a sticker that said, “My other ride is a cowboy,” and a pack of condoms (unused). That really sweetened the deal. Get to go nice and fast now with my big ass tank and my silly little red trailer.
I felt pretty mellow about the whole weekend so I didn’t get up super early on Saturday and didn’t get to the track until around 10.
The drama started around 11.
After doing some safety wiring in a wreckless fashion I put a couple of nasty little gashes in my fingers. But the real trouble started when my bike wouldn’t. Totally dead. No problem I thought. Hooked it up to my big strong cowboy truck and jump started it. It died over and over. And I continued to repeat the same process over and over expecting something different to happen. After about half an hour a few kind people suggested that I try to actually figure out what was wrong with the bike. Thank god for that because I was pretty locked in. So I did something smarter... I charged it a little longer, jumped it, got on the bike real quick like, and rode off into the surrounding desert.
ABOUT a mile and a half away from the track, somewhere out past the little hillbilly oval my little SV started talking to me and said, “vrroooom, vrrooooom ,vrrooooom,...you’re stupid...vrroom, vrroom, vrroom...you’re gonna pay for being so dumb...vroom, vrom, ppphtt, phphtttt...get ready to walk...pphttt, phhhfttt...fart.”
NOW...just about then I realized that my bike wasn’t trying to be mean or insensitive but that it was just speaking the truth. Boy, was I dumb. Boy, was I far away from the pits. Boy, was it going to be a long ass walk. I panicked and got the sudden urge to let out a little yelp and start crying but I figured it wouldn’t help my situation otherwise I would’ve, swear to God.
I started revving the thing like crazy, slipping the clutch, revving again while simultaneously belting out a continuous loop of , “please God...just a little closer...pretty please...no more porn...I promise... PLEASE ,” in rapid succession .
WELL...it worked although I must admit I must have looked...no...scratch that...I must have sounded pretty stupid going through the pits at 15 mph whilst bouncing off the rev limiter and lurching forward with each slip of the clutch. The porn collection is now property of the local Gooodwill Industries franchise by the way.
As soon as I got back to my pit area I meekly got off my bike, played dumb for a few minutes, then walked over to Tom and asked for a multimeter.
10.5 VOLTS was what it said. I revved the engine. It went down to 9. Hmmmm. That was unexpected. Hmmmm. Probably the stator or the rectifier. Hmmmm. Now what? Hmmmm. Maybe I’ll connect it to the truck again, see if that works. Hmmmm. Then I had a little spasm of meaningful brain activity and exclaimed, “Kelly Baker...he’ll save me!”
For those of you that don’t know Kelly Baker runs a shop just outside of the facility: Kelly Baker’s Performance Unlimited. It’s him, his wife, his kids, and a couple of other guys. They‘re all very friendly and work hard to get everyone back out on the track in a pinch. He’s a great guy for on the fly stuff but he’ll charge you for it. It’s ok though, he runs a valuable service, something akin to a Sparklett’s water salesman in the Sahara...$10 dollars a bottle? Who cares, I’m in the middle of the fucking Sahara desert for Christ sake and I am really, really, fucking thirsty,...no, seriously.
FORGET the fact that the inside of his shop looks like something out of a motorcycle version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Bike parts laying here, bike parts hanging over there, fluids all over the place. I’m standing there thinking, “man this place smells like a rocket fuel refinery, hope no one lights a...” and just at that same moment, as if on cue and in slow motion, Kelly’s wife lights up a fag and take a big drag. I do a quick little wide-eyed hunched over football runningback-like fake out move as I am contemplating in which general direction to dive and take cover when the place explodes. I remember thinking, “Man this is all I needed, a bunch of third degree burns over 60% of my body. That’s really gonna sting while I’m waiting forever to be seen at Antelope Valley Hospital.”
The place didn’t blow up and after a few little diagnostics it wasn’t the rectifier or the stator. Turns out my battery was sooooooooooooo dead that there was no resuscitating it. Good news. Simple fix. Thanked Kelly and his crew over and over again, almost teary eyed and all. Man, I just wanted to hug him but I restrained, regrouped, and hauled ass back to the pits.
MADE IT out for the last two practice sessions of the day. Pretty uneventful. Pretty slow. 1’40” and change. Huevos is my handle but it was huevitos for now. After my big get off at buttonwillow I was a little timid. 1’36” is my fastest time out there so I wasn’t that far off my usual pace but I’m not the fastest guy out there to begin with. For more on this read my expansive race report from a year ago.
SO...I figured out I had lost my wallet when I went to pay for next year’s license. I looked everywhere for it. Retraced my whole day. Took everything out of the truck and put it all back in, twice. Everyone was ready to leave so I told Tom and Kurt that I would follow them to the mexican resataurant where we were going to eat dinner and continue to look though all my stuff there.
PLANNING AHEAD is not one of my strong points. ‘Makes life more exciting’ is the excuse I usually come up with when chided about it. Point is I could’ve very well put gas in the truck in the morning when I actually stopped to fill my can for the bike. I was only two or three miles from the track but he pointer clearly indicated ‘less than E, recommend buying some gas now’... but how was I supposed to know, I don’t read English dude...man...seriously. Besides, I passed on the gas for the truck ‘cause I got one of those slow pumps, you know, the ones designed to make you so fucking crazy about the wait that you end up going into the mini-mart to buy something just to kill time ‘cause it’s going to take longer to go to another gas station to fill up. “Well, fuck the man, I ain’t fallin’ for this shit, I got shit to do” I said to myself, and I stuck it to the man for trying to hold me hostage in his mini mart and take my money and didn’t put a drop of gas in my truck because I was gonna get to the track nice ‘n’ early at ten o’clock.
So later that evening I’m within sight of the gas station, it’s already dark and I can see it’s lights maybe a mile away, of course it makes no difference because I got no money and I left my gas can back at the track with the bike and it’s full tank of gas. My big bad cowboy truck starts mouthing off with some Texas twang to it’s mocking tone,” vroom, vroom, vroom...you’re stupid...vroom, vrooom, vroom....you’re gonna pay for being so dumb...vroom, vrooom, phphtttt...get ready to walk you fat little pennyless moron...sputter, sputter...shoulda got something more economical you dumb motherfu-........sputter, sputter, fart.”
SO THERE I WAS, cutting across four lanes of traffic like a space shuttle on glider mode, aiming for the lighted parking lot/landing strip (cuz I sure as hell didn’t have a flashlight) at the local Albertson’s, “get outta my way all you little cars, I got one chance to do this...MOOOOOOOOVE!”
SITTING in my dead truck, wallet-less, money-less, triple A card-less, I started off in a slow whimper that quickly turned to rage and indignation. “Goddamnit, what did I do?!? Was it those fucking milk crates I borrowed?!? I was gonna take them back, eventually. C’mon man, cut me some slack bro , I already told you that I was getting rid of the porn, what more do you want? Jesus Christ! Seriously.”
I QUIT smoking about two weeks ago but man could I have used a cigarette right there and then...I would have lit that thing right up...taken a big fat drag...exhaled nice and slow...and then BOOM!!!... tossed that damn thing into the fumes in my empty tank, blown the nasty thing to hell, and called it a weekend.
“SO NOW WHAT?” I thought. I did the wallet search one last time, unloaded everything, opened everything, and one by one put it all back in the truck, getting more and more pissed. And as I turned to pick up the last item, I’m not shitting you, there it was. It was like some little racing fairy or pixie or some shit like that flew over from the track and dropped it off in my moment of deepest despair. Now the gas situation. Plenty of money, no can, gas station literally 500 feet away. AAA or Albertson’s for a gallon of milk and some bad karma after dumping it down the drain.
THE RACING FAIRY showed up again an pulled a Jedi mind trick on some fellow racers and forced them to pull into the same parking lot and park right next to me because they had regular old gas in their cans. I offered to buy a gallon and they gave it to me instead. Thanks guys whomever you were.
OFF TO DINNER I went after putting a quarter tank of gas in the truck. Dinner was hilarious. There was a bunch of us: Dustin Coyner, Jiggy, Kurt, Tom, Mark Hill, Matt Quigley, another three guys whose names I forgot. Everyone was talkin’ smack so it was pretty funny. Mark got lit off a cadillac margarita and started drunk dialing. Coyner was telling all sorts of funny little stories about this head bonk and the other and the funny shit people say after clocking themselves at the track when they don’t know their ass from their elbow. Then Jiggy, whose got the best wry sense of humor, starts talking real loud about how he became a camel toe wrangler, and every other word out of his mouth is fucking this or fucking that mixed with a graphic description of the original camel toe immortalized in his My-Space avatar. The funniest part of all this was the fact that right behind him was a table with about 8-10 eighty-something year olds that were mortified. I couldn’t have put on a better poo-poo face than those poor octogenarians did even if you paid me a hundred bucks. There is nothing better than locker room banter with a bunch of guys after a day at the track.
Back in Lancaster at the Essex House, I checked in, showered, and tried to go to sleep. I was tired, but still, it was only eight thirty. I’m used to only about 5-6 hours of sleep a night . After about two hours of tossing and turning I got up and walked down the street to the local bar, The Tipsy Bull.
THINGS GET DICEY at this point. I walk in and the crowd is...well...eclectic. Cholos, cowboys, hessians, military, trailer park types, disco guys in their fifties and for some odd reason, a crapload of Japanese. All in this shitty smokey karaoke bar. I pull up to the bar and sit down. Immediately, this heavy metal hessian guy turns towards me without looking quite at me and this is the conversation that follows:
“You can’t sit there dude”.
“Why not?”
“CUZ, my buddy’s sittin’ there.”
“Okay, it’s cool.”
I move over to the next stool. He sort of looks past and above me as if he were sniffing the air.
“You can’t sit there either.”
“What do you mean I can’t”
“CUZ, my buddy’s sitting there too.”
I’m getting just a tad pissed but I get up and move to the next stool. He’s still looking in my general direction and sort of to the left of me and says, “Dude, what part of-”
And I’m like, “Dude, don’t even tell me I can’t sit here cuz I’m gonna do it anyway, you and your friends don’t own the fucking bar.”
At this point his eyes start going all crazy, pointing in different directions and shit , he looks real angry and yet he still doesn’t exactly make eye contact with me. He barks out something along the lines of this:
“YOU LOOKING FOR AN ASS KICKING? BECAUSE IF YOU ARE YOU’VE FOUND IT BECAUSE I WILL SERIOUSLY KICK YOUR ASS. DON’T THINK I WON’T DO IT JUST CAUSE I’M BLIND! I’LL KILL YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”
To which I say, “ BLIND?!?! What the hell? Dude, you gotta be shitting me. I aint gonna get in a fistfight with a blind guy over a bar stool! Let it go...I’ll move.”
He persists, “YOU AIN’T GETTING OUTTA THIS SHIT THAT EASY, LET’S GO OUTSIDE SO I CAN KICK YOUR ASS.” He calls the bartender over, “HEY SUSY, THIS GUY IS HARASSING ME, I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS BEFORE I KICK HIS ASS!”
Susy sort of shrugs her shoulders as she looks directly at me. I put my finger to my lips in the universal sign for Shhhhh...she is more than understanding. She tells him I’ve left and I quietly walk behind him and sit at the bar on his other side about two barstools away. Meanwhile he’s scanning just above the horizon, and I swear to God he’s like sniffing or using bionic hearing or something to try and tell if I’m still there. I stay real quiet like, don’t move a muscle, stop breathing for about thirty seconds...it felt like forever.
I mean, come on, I aint gonna fight a blind guy, no sirree I am not going to do it. It’s a lose-lose proposition. I mean, if I hit the guy I’m the sociopath beating up on the blind guy and worse yet, if it turns out he has some superhuman sonar locator hearing or some shit like that and he clocks me, then I’m the dumber than dumb shit who got his ass kicked by a blind guy! Forget that noise.
NOT FIVE MINUTES LATER his buddies come back. He starts ranting and raving about this guy that tried to pick a fight with him! The three of them got all huffy, looked like they were getting ready for the final round in the Dungeons and Dragons world series, hitting their fists into their hands and then one of the geniuses says, and I am not shitting you:
“DUDE, WHERE IS HE, SHOW US WHO HE IS AND WE’LL FUCK HIM UP!”
I Just about pissed my pants in disbelief. The bartender started chuckling a bit. I just got up and left after that, this was too fucking weird of a place to be hanging out.
I WALK INTO THE AM/PM about half a block form the hotel for a snack. As I’m walking out this ugly prostitute with even uglier feet and the ugliest damn toenails this side of the Mississippi walks up to me is all like, “so, you lookin for a parté baby?” She didn’t say party, she said parté. I flatly responded, “no.”
She persisted, asking me three or four more times, each time in a more seductive and cheesy fashion. I kept saying no. She finally got upset and started writhing her head over her shoulders all egyptian-like, pointed at me with her arm and hand all wiggling around like a king cobra ready to strike and she said, “ What, is you like gay or sumtin? You a little fat gay, cuz you look gay to me!”
HOW DARE she call me fat. I shot back, “No I’m not gay but looking at you is enough to make me consider becoming gay because you’re fucking ugly, your feet are gnarly and you’re high on crack.”
The shit hit the fan after that.
“OH NO YOU DIDIN NOT JUST DISRESPET ME LIKE THAT!” It looked like her neck was gonna snap off at any second. She started screaming “LATRAY! LATRAY! Come here quick. Dis fool be disrespettin
me!”
So Latray starts swaggering over. He must have been maybe 16 years old but he was pimpin’ large. He looked like something out of a poser mobile commercial. He comes up to me and starts doing this little Run-DMC dance in front of me while he lays out my options, “YOU LOOKIN’ TO GET DROPPED FOOL, CUZ I’M GONNA DROP YOUR SORRY ASS!” Now at this point I realize that the situation is a little more dangerous than my blind guy incident. This guy is young, impulsive, violent, probably high and definitely not blind and to boot he’s got a Mississippi truck stop queen egging him on, “FUCK HIM UP LATRAY, DON’T LET HIM BE DISRESPETTIN ME LIKE DAT!”
I’m thinking that the best course action would be to go into the am/pm and have the clerk call the cops but before I could do that, it just comes out of my mouth, spontaneously, don’t ask me why, and before I could even catch it I said, cool as a cucumber, “Latray or Latrine or whatever the fuck your name is, are you in the habit of fucking with off duty LA County sheriffs? Because that’s what your doing right now, did you know that?” WHoa!! DID THAT just really come out of my mouth? I was shocked at my own outrageousness in what was a potentially dangerous situation but it was too late and at that point I had no choice to commit so I crossed my arms in front of me, sorta arched my back a little bit, and eyeballed Latray. He was quite contemplative for about 5-10 seconds then turned to his tute and said, “Let’s git.”
Now of all the directions they could have “gitted” in they chose the same direction that I was heading in, back to the hotel. So there I was following Latrine and the truck stop hottie down the street. They kept looking back at me and I could tell the Latrine was getting real skittish which was making me real nervous. Then all of a sudden, without warning they simultaneously broke out into a full on sprint down the block and disappeared around the corner.
I’d had just about enough of a Saturday night out in Lancaster and went back to the room and fell asleep.
The next morning was much better. It was raining at the track.
GOING OUT IN THE RAIN on slicks was pretty pointless but I did it anyway, just so that I could say I did and have my grandkids think I was the shit someday when I told them about it. The bike skidded around everywhere something awful. Downshifting and braking for turn three got me all out of shape with a little two wheel skid that got me pretty puckered. I was relieved when it was over. Tom was unbelievable though, he was running around out there like, “rain, what rain, you mean that shiny black asphalt looks that way cause it’s raining,, aw... man... I did not know that.” It was like those cartoon characters that go off the cliff but don’t actually fall until they look down. I was sure he was gonna fall but Tom wasn’t looking down.
The track dried out nicely though and I went out for BOTT middleweight. I was gridded last so there was no pressure to get a good start. It was sorta ridiculous how ho-hum I was feeling,...not in an I don’t care kinda way but in a totally relaxed I’m just here to be here kinda way because I remember seeing Andy (since413) shoot off the line like a bat out of hell and I still had the time to think, “wow, he started real fast wonder how he...OOPS time to go!” Started going around and around for about three laps and started closing in on this Buell 1000. Got in right behind him in turn 2 and thought about a pass but the track was still damp off the racing line. Followed him right into three and showed him my front wheel on the outside going into 4a, followed him out of 4b and down into 5 noticed he was taking a really wide line, as saw my opportunity and took it went on the inside of him on five and got the drive I needed to block pass him going up into 6. I stayed ahead of him all the way out to the front straight where he was just motor passed me. and I caught up to him by the time I was driving out of 1. We did this exact same dance for about 3-4 laps. On the last lap though he got past me on the back straight and went in to 8 with a little more umph than I had seen him do all race. Shit. Looks like last place for me because even if I had past him in 8 I still didn’t have enough buffer to reach the flag first. The fact is that even if he hadn’t of past me on the back straight I still probably would have come in last place because he would have nabbed me on the straight with his motor, it just would have been nicer to be able to blame it on his motor than his newfound drive on the backs straight and into 8. Oh well, no time to be pissed, I’m hungry and it’s time for breakfast.
Spent the rest of the day mulling around the pits waiting for my second race. A couple of friends from the Ventura County Bike Nights crew, Freddy and April, showed up. That was a nice and unexpected surprise. Ran into Steve Slaughter who gave me a very enthusiastic hello and welcome back. For those don’t know him, Steve is such a genuinely nice guy, always upbeat and makes you feel like you really belong, no matter how slow you are. It’s always a pleasure to bump into him. Said hello to Shandra, she looks like such a cool customer on her fizzer. She was telling me how great it was to have the SVers out again as she was the only one holding down the fort for a while.
TOM AND JIGGY RACED in middleweight novice. Before his race Tom came up to me and asked if I had any advice for him to which I replied, “Go fast, don’t crash.” A few minutes later Kurt was giving him all sorts of pointers, he then finished up with his last bit of advice to Tom, “Try to ride angry. Don’t be all like I’m out here to have fun, blah, blah, blah. If someone passes you get pissed.” I looked at Tom and Tom looked at me, I couldn’t help but giggle, not at Kurt’s advice but at Tom’s predicament. I’m thinking, “Good luck with the angry part, Tom” because Tom has got to be the most mellow, nothing gets him rattled or pissed kinda guy out there. So out they go and he’s leading Jiggy around the whole race. The whole time Kurt is like, “ Jiggy is gonna be pissed, Jiggy is gonna be pissed.” Wait a second, I thought it was Tom that was supposed to be pissed. I’m just trying to imagine Tom’s angry guy face but I’m having a hard time doing it. So the race is over and although Jiggy was gaining ground, Tom crossed the finish before him. They pull back into the pits and they’re going over the race, and they’ve got the post race adrenaline going and all and Jiggy goes “Man, I’d reel you in but then on the straights you’d just motor away from me each time.” To this, Angry Tom replies with a smile and half shrug, “Oh man, I’m sorry.” If he’d been any angrier I would have been nervous for all of us.
So 550 superbike finally comes up. I’m determined to make a better start. I do. It was nice to actually have bikes next to me going into turn 1. It wasn’t so nice having them leave me out of turn I though. Okay I thought my tires were a little worn but they held up just fine one lap ago in BOTT, so I got on the gas. I caught up to a group of 3 bikes after turn 2. It was Jiggy in front, and a fizzer 400 and what I think was a ex500. On the second lap the 400 and 500 parked it going into 3 and I came up right on top of them followed them around 4 and got around the first of the two on turn 8 on the outside. I don’t remember where I got the second guy I think it may have been in 8 again. Then I set my sights on Jiggy. I’d reel him in on 2 and going into 3 then run around 4 with no improvement. He’d get the drive out of 5 on me and I’d have to start all over again. I was hoping to get him on 8 as that has by far turned out to be my finest place on the track, but he didn’t check up the way everyone else did and the gains on him through 8 were miniscule. After about 2-3 laps of this I noticed that his pace had considerably slowed and figured he was either tired or had lost focus as there was nothing but clear track in front of him. I got on the gas and figured I had him as there were a couple of laps to go. Then he did this little Rossi of a move on the back straight where he scooted his butt over the side of the bike a little bit and looked back over his shoulder. Shit! He got back on the gas after he saw me and that was it. I didn’t gain any ground on him after that and followed him all the way to the finish. It would have been cool to be right up there with him as our times differed by only a five hundredths of a second, that would have been much more interesting. Makes me almost want to take getting off the line and into turn 1 more seriously.
Anyway, it was an interesting weekend to say the least. It was great to be back. Don’t know about the nightlife in Lancaster though. Next time I think I’ll just go to the movies.
Sorry for the long winded style if it doesn't suit you, it's actually fun to write about all the stuff that happens off the track as well.
LAter
Stevan
SO...I finally decided to make it back out to the races. It had been a full year since my last race and about 5 months of meaning to but never really getting to race due to any number of different reasons: son got sick, son had birthday party, had to work, got accidentally deported...you know, the usual stuff.
WELL...got me a little red trailer from harbor freight and put it together. No more U-haul for me. Also, finally got rid of my pissachet (that’s spanglish for ‘worthless‘) 1994 mazda B2300 that used to get passed going up the 14 by hippie laden volkswagen buses and got me a brand new pissachet in the form of a massive f350 4x4 crew cab, circa 1994 and gettin’ ‘round 10 inches to the gallon. About a month after I bought it I realized it came with two free pretty pink glittery cowboy hats behind the seat and a sticker that said, “My other ride is a cowboy,” and a pack of condoms (unused). That really sweetened the deal. Get to go nice and fast now with my big ass tank and my silly little red trailer.
I felt pretty mellow about the whole weekend so I didn’t get up super early on Saturday and didn’t get to the track until around 10.
The drama started around 11.
After doing some safety wiring in a wreckless fashion I put a couple of nasty little gashes in my fingers. But the real trouble started when my bike wouldn’t. Totally dead. No problem I thought. Hooked it up to my big strong cowboy truck and jump started it. It died over and over. And I continued to repeat the same process over and over expecting something different to happen. After about half an hour a few kind people suggested that I try to actually figure out what was wrong with the bike. Thank god for that because I was pretty locked in. So I did something smarter... I charged it a little longer, jumped it, got on the bike real quick like, and rode off into the surrounding desert.
ABOUT a mile and a half away from the track, somewhere out past the little hillbilly oval my little SV started talking to me and said, “vrroooom, vrrooooom ,vrrooooom,...you’re stupid...vrroom, vrroom, vrroom...you’re gonna pay for being so dumb...vroom, vrom, ppphtt, phphtttt...get ready to walk...pphttt, phhhfttt...fart.”
NOW...just about then I realized that my bike wasn’t trying to be mean or insensitive but that it was just speaking the truth. Boy, was I dumb. Boy, was I far away from the pits. Boy, was it going to be a long ass walk. I panicked and got the sudden urge to let out a little yelp and start crying but I figured it wouldn’t help my situation otherwise I would’ve, swear to God.
I started revving the thing like crazy, slipping the clutch, revving again while simultaneously belting out a continuous loop of , “please God...just a little closer...pretty please...no more porn...I promise... PLEASE ,” in rapid succession .
WELL...it worked although I must admit I must have looked...no...scratch that...I must have sounded pretty stupid going through the pits at 15 mph whilst bouncing off the rev limiter and lurching forward with each slip of the clutch. The porn collection is now property of the local Gooodwill Industries franchise by the way.
As soon as I got back to my pit area I meekly got off my bike, played dumb for a few minutes, then walked over to Tom and asked for a multimeter.
10.5 VOLTS was what it said. I revved the engine. It went down to 9. Hmmmm. That was unexpected. Hmmmm. Probably the stator or the rectifier. Hmmmm. Now what? Hmmmm. Maybe I’ll connect it to the truck again, see if that works. Hmmmm. Then I had a little spasm of meaningful brain activity and exclaimed, “Kelly Baker...he’ll save me!”
For those of you that don’t know Kelly Baker runs a shop just outside of the facility: Kelly Baker’s Performance Unlimited. It’s him, his wife, his kids, and a couple of other guys. They‘re all very friendly and work hard to get everyone back out on the track in a pinch. He’s a great guy for on the fly stuff but he’ll charge you for it. It’s ok though, he runs a valuable service, something akin to a Sparklett’s water salesman in the Sahara...$10 dollars a bottle? Who cares, I’m in the middle of the fucking Sahara desert for Christ sake and I am really, really, fucking thirsty,...no, seriously.
FORGET the fact that the inside of his shop looks like something out of a motorcycle version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Bike parts laying here, bike parts hanging over there, fluids all over the place. I’m standing there thinking, “man this place smells like a rocket fuel refinery, hope no one lights a...” and just at that same moment, as if on cue and in slow motion, Kelly’s wife lights up a fag and take a big drag. I do a quick little wide-eyed hunched over football runningback-like fake out move as I am contemplating in which general direction to dive and take cover when the place explodes. I remember thinking, “Man this is all I needed, a bunch of third degree burns over 60% of my body. That’s really gonna sting while I’m waiting forever to be seen at Antelope Valley Hospital.”
The place didn’t blow up and after a few little diagnostics it wasn’t the rectifier or the stator. Turns out my battery was sooooooooooooo dead that there was no resuscitating it. Good news. Simple fix. Thanked Kelly and his crew over and over again, almost teary eyed and all. Man, I just wanted to hug him but I restrained, regrouped, and hauled ass back to the pits.
MADE IT out for the last two practice sessions of the day. Pretty uneventful. Pretty slow. 1’40” and change. Huevos is my handle but it was huevitos for now. After my big get off at buttonwillow I was a little timid. 1’36” is my fastest time out there so I wasn’t that far off my usual pace but I’m not the fastest guy out there to begin with. For more on this read my expansive race report from a year ago.
SO...I figured out I had lost my wallet when I went to pay for next year’s license. I looked everywhere for it. Retraced my whole day. Took everything out of the truck and put it all back in, twice. Everyone was ready to leave so I told Tom and Kurt that I would follow them to the mexican resataurant where we were going to eat dinner and continue to look though all my stuff there.
PLANNING AHEAD is not one of my strong points. ‘Makes life more exciting’ is the excuse I usually come up with when chided about it. Point is I could’ve very well put gas in the truck in the morning when I actually stopped to fill my can for the bike. I was only two or three miles from the track but he pointer clearly indicated ‘less than E, recommend buying some gas now’... but how was I supposed to know, I don’t read English dude...man...seriously. Besides, I passed on the gas for the truck ‘cause I got one of those slow pumps, you know, the ones designed to make you so fucking crazy about the wait that you end up going into the mini-mart to buy something just to kill time ‘cause it’s going to take longer to go to another gas station to fill up. “Well, fuck the man, I ain’t fallin’ for this shit, I got shit to do” I said to myself, and I stuck it to the man for trying to hold me hostage in his mini mart and take my money and didn’t put a drop of gas in my truck because I was gonna get to the track nice ‘n’ early at ten o’clock.
So later that evening I’m within sight of the gas station, it’s already dark and I can see it’s lights maybe a mile away, of course it makes no difference because I got no money and I left my gas can back at the track with the bike and it’s full tank of gas. My big bad cowboy truck starts mouthing off with some Texas twang to it’s mocking tone,” vroom, vroom, vroom...you’re stupid...vroom, vrooom, vroom....you’re gonna pay for being so dumb...vroom, vrooom, phphtttt...get ready to walk you fat little pennyless moron...sputter, sputter...shoulda got something more economical you dumb motherfu-........sputter, sputter, fart.”
SO THERE I WAS, cutting across four lanes of traffic like a space shuttle on glider mode, aiming for the lighted parking lot/landing strip (cuz I sure as hell didn’t have a flashlight) at the local Albertson’s, “get outta my way all you little cars, I got one chance to do this...MOOOOOOOOVE!”
SITTING in my dead truck, wallet-less, money-less, triple A card-less, I started off in a slow whimper that quickly turned to rage and indignation. “Goddamnit, what did I do?!? Was it those fucking milk crates I borrowed?!? I was gonna take them back, eventually. C’mon man, cut me some slack bro , I already told you that I was getting rid of the porn, what more do you want? Jesus Christ! Seriously.”
I QUIT smoking about two weeks ago but man could I have used a cigarette right there and then...I would have lit that thing right up...taken a big fat drag...exhaled nice and slow...and then BOOM!!!... tossed that damn thing into the fumes in my empty tank, blown the nasty thing to hell, and called it a weekend.
“SO NOW WHAT?” I thought. I did the wallet search one last time, unloaded everything, opened everything, and one by one put it all back in the truck, getting more and more pissed. And as I turned to pick up the last item, I’m not shitting you, there it was. It was like some little racing fairy or pixie or some shit like that flew over from the track and dropped it off in my moment of deepest despair. Now the gas situation. Plenty of money, no can, gas station literally 500 feet away. AAA or Albertson’s for a gallon of milk and some bad karma after dumping it down the drain.
THE RACING FAIRY showed up again an pulled a Jedi mind trick on some fellow racers and forced them to pull into the same parking lot and park right next to me because they had regular old gas in their cans. I offered to buy a gallon and they gave it to me instead. Thanks guys whomever you were.
OFF TO DINNER I went after putting a quarter tank of gas in the truck. Dinner was hilarious. There was a bunch of us: Dustin Coyner, Jiggy, Kurt, Tom, Mark Hill, Matt Quigley, another three guys whose names I forgot. Everyone was talkin’ smack so it was pretty funny. Mark got lit off a cadillac margarita and started drunk dialing. Coyner was telling all sorts of funny little stories about this head bonk and the other and the funny shit people say after clocking themselves at the track when they don’t know their ass from their elbow. Then Jiggy, whose got the best wry sense of humor, starts talking real loud about how he became a camel toe wrangler, and every other word out of his mouth is fucking this or fucking that mixed with a graphic description of the original camel toe immortalized in his My-Space avatar. The funniest part of all this was the fact that right behind him was a table with about 8-10 eighty-something year olds that were mortified. I couldn’t have put on a better poo-poo face than those poor octogenarians did even if you paid me a hundred bucks. There is nothing better than locker room banter with a bunch of guys after a day at the track.
Back in Lancaster at the Essex House, I checked in, showered, and tried to go to sleep. I was tired, but still, it was only eight thirty. I’m used to only about 5-6 hours of sleep a night . After about two hours of tossing and turning I got up and walked down the street to the local bar, The Tipsy Bull.
THINGS GET DICEY at this point. I walk in and the crowd is...well...eclectic. Cholos, cowboys, hessians, military, trailer park types, disco guys in their fifties and for some odd reason, a crapload of Japanese. All in this shitty smokey karaoke bar. I pull up to the bar and sit down. Immediately, this heavy metal hessian guy turns towards me without looking quite at me and this is the conversation that follows:
“You can’t sit there dude”.
“Why not?”
“CUZ, my buddy’s sittin’ there.”
“Okay, it’s cool.”
I move over to the next stool. He sort of looks past and above me as if he were sniffing the air.
“You can’t sit there either.”
“What do you mean I can’t”
“CUZ, my buddy’s sitting there too.”
I’m getting just a tad pissed but I get up and move to the next stool. He’s still looking in my general direction and sort of to the left of me and says, “Dude, what part of-”
And I’m like, “Dude, don’t even tell me I can’t sit here cuz I’m gonna do it anyway, you and your friends don’t own the fucking bar.”
At this point his eyes start going all crazy, pointing in different directions and shit , he looks real angry and yet he still doesn’t exactly make eye contact with me. He barks out something along the lines of this:
“YOU LOOKING FOR AN ASS KICKING? BECAUSE IF YOU ARE YOU’VE FOUND IT BECAUSE I WILL SERIOUSLY KICK YOUR ASS. DON’T THINK I WON’T DO IT JUST CAUSE I’M BLIND! I’LL KILL YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”
To which I say, “ BLIND?!?! What the hell? Dude, you gotta be shitting me. I aint gonna get in a fistfight with a blind guy over a bar stool! Let it go...I’ll move.”
He persists, “YOU AIN’T GETTING OUTTA THIS SHIT THAT EASY, LET’S GO OUTSIDE SO I CAN KICK YOUR ASS.” He calls the bartender over, “HEY SUSY, THIS GUY IS HARASSING ME, I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS BEFORE I KICK HIS ASS!”
Susy sort of shrugs her shoulders as she looks directly at me. I put my finger to my lips in the universal sign for Shhhhh...she is more than understanding. She tells him I’ve left and I quietly walk behind him and sit at the bar on his other side about two barstools away. Meanwhile he’s scanning just above the horizon, and I swear to God he’s like sniffing or using bionic hearing or something to try and tell if I’m still there. I stay real quiet like, don’t move a muscle, stop breathing for about thirty seconds...it felt like forever.
I mean, come on, I aint gonna fight a blind guy, no sirree I am not going to do it. It’s a lose-lose proposition. I mean, if I hit the guy I’m the sociopath beating up on the blind guy and worse yet, if it turns out he has some superhuman sonar locator hearing or some shit like that and he clocks me, then I’m the dumber than dumb shit who got his ass kicked by a blind guy! Forget that noise.
NOT FIVE MINUTES LATER his buddies come back. He starts ranting and raving about this guy that tried to pick a fight with him! The three of them got all huffy, looked like they were getting ready for the final round in the Dungeons and Dragons world series, hitting their fists into their hands and then one of the geniuses says, and I am not shitting you:
“DUDE, WHERE IS HE, SHOW US WHO HE IS AND WE’LL FUCK HIM UP!”
I Just about pissed my pants in disbelief. The bartender started chuckling a bit. I just got up and left after that, this was too fucking weird of a place to be hanging out.
I WALK INTO THE AM/PM about half a block form the hotel for a snack. As I’m walking out this ugly prostitute with even uglier feet and the ugliest damn toenails this side of the Mississippi walks up to me is all like, “so, you lookin for a parté baby?” She didn’t say party, she said parté. I flatly responded, “no.”
She persisted, asking me three or four more times, each time in a more seductive and cheesy fashion. I kept saying no. She finally got upset and started writhing her head over her shoulders all egyptian-like, pointed at me with her arm and hand all wiggling around like a king cobra ready to strike and she said, “ What, is you like gay or sumtin? You a little fat gay, cuz you look gay to me!”
HOW DARE she call me fat. I shot back, “No I’m not gay but looking at you is enough to make me consider becoming gay because you’re fucking ugly, your feet are gnarly and you’re high on crack.”
The shit hit the fan after that.
“OH NO YOU DIDIN NOT JUST DISRESPET ME LIKE THAT!” It looked like her neck was gonna snap off at any second. She started screaming “LATRAY! LATRAY! Come here quick. Dis fool be disrespettin
me!”
So Latray starts swaggering over. He must have been maybe 16 years old but he was pimpin’ large. He looked like something out of a poser mobile commercial. He comes up to me and starts doing this little Run-DMC dance in front of me while he lays out my options, “YOU LOOKIN’ TO GET DROPPED FOOL, CUZ I’M GONNA DROP YOUR SORRY ASS!” Now at this point I realize that the situation is a little more dangerous than my blind guy incident. This guy is young, impulsive, violent, probably high and definitely not blind and to boot he’s got a Mississippi truck stop queen egging him on, “FUCK HIM UP LATRAY, DON’T LET HIM BE DISRESPETTIN ME LIKE DAT!”
I’m thinking that the best course action would be to go into the am/pm and have the clerk call the cops but before I could do that, it just comes out of my mouth, spontaneously, don’t ask me why, and before I could even catch it I said, cool as a cucumber, “Latray or Latrine or whatever the fuck your name is, are you in the habit of fucking with off duty LA County sheriffs? Because that’s what your doing right now, did you know that?” WHoa!! DID THAT just really come out of my mouth? I was shocked at my own outrageousness in what was a potentially dangerous situation but it was too late and at that point I had no choice to commit so I crossed my arms in front of me, sorta arched my back a little bit, and eyeballed Latray. He was quite contemplative for about 5-10 seconds then turned to his tute and said, “Let’s git.”
Now of all the directions they could have “gitted” in they chose the same direction that I was heading in, back to the hotel. So there I was following Latrine and the truck stop hottie down the street. They kept looking back at me and I could tell the Latrine was getting real skittish which was making me real nervous. Then all of a sudden, without warning they simultaneously broke out into a full on sprint down the block and disappeared around the corner.
I’d had just about enough of a Saturday night out in Lancaster and went back to the room and fell asleep.
The next morning was much better. It was raining at the track.
GOING OUT IN THE RAIN on slicks was pretty pointless but I did it anyway, just so that I could say I did and have my grandkids think I was the shit someday when I told them about it. The bike skidded around everywhere something awful. Downshifting and braking for turn three got me all out of shape with a little two wheel skid that got me pretty puckered. I was relieved when it was over. Tom was unbelievable though, he was running around out there like, “rain, what rain, you mean that shiny black asphalt looks that way cause it’s raining,, aw... man... I did not know that.” It was like those cartoon characters that go off the cliff but don’t actually fall until they look down. I was sure he was gonna fall but Tom wasn’t looking down.
The track dried out nicely though and I went out for BOTT middleweight. I was gridded last so there was no pressure to get a good start. It was sorta ridiculous how ho-hum I was feeling,...not in an I don’t care kinda way but in a totally relaxed I’m just here to be here kinda way because I remember seeing Andy (since413) shoot off the line like a bat out of hell and I still had the time to think, “wow, he started real fast wonder how he...OOPS time to go!” Started going around and around for about three laps and started closing in on this Buell 1000. Got in right behind him in turn 2 and thought about a pass but the track was still damp off the racing line. Followed him right into three and showed him my front wheel on the outside going into 4a, followed him out of 4b and down into 5 noticed he was taking a really wide line, as saw my opportunity and took it went on the inside of him on five and got the drive I needed to block pass him going up into 6. I stayed ahead of him all the way out to the front straight where he was just motor passed me. and I caught up to him by the time I was driving out of 1. We did this exact same dance for about 3-4 laps. On the last lap though he got past me on the back straight and went in to 8 with a little more umph than I had seen him do all race. Shit. Looks like last place for me because even if I had past him in 8 I still didn’t have enough buffer to reach the flag first. The fact is that even if he hadn’t of past me on the back straight I still probably would have come in last place because he would have nabbed me on the straight with his motor, it just would have been nicer to be able to blame it on his motor than his newfound drive on the backs straight and into 8. Oh well, no time to be pissed, I’m hungry and it’s time for breakfast.
Spent the rest of the day mulling around the pits waiting for my second race. A couple of friends from the Ventura County Bike Nights crew, Freddy and April, showed up. That was a nice and unexpected surprise. Ran into Steve Slaughter who gave me a very enthusiastic hello and welcome back. For those don’t know him, Steve is such a genuinely nice guy, always upbeat and makes you feel like you really belong, no matter how slow you are. It’s always a pleasure to bump into him. Said hello to Shandra, she looks like such a cool customer on her fizzer. She was telling me how great it was to have the SVers out again as she was the only one holding down the fort for a while.
TOM AND JIGGY RACED in middleweight novice. Before his race Tom came up to me and asked if I had any advice for him to which I replied, “Go fast, don’t crash.” A few minutes later Kurt was giving him all sorts of pointers, he then finished up with his last bit of advice to Tom, “Try to ride angry. Don’t be all like I’m out here to have fun, blah, blah, blah. If someone passes you get pissed.” I looked at Tom and Tom looked at me, I couldn’t help but giggle, not at Kurt’s advice but at Tom’s predicament. I’m thinking, “Good luck with the angry part, Tom” because Tom has got to be the most mellow, nothing gets him rattled or pissed kinda guy out there. So out they go and he’s leading Jiggy around the whole race. The whole time Kurt is like, “ Jiggy is gonna be pissed, Jiggy is gonna be pissed.” Wait a second, I thought it was Tom that was supposed to be pissed. I’m just trying to imagine Tom’s angry guy face but I’m having a hard time doing it. So the race is over and although Jiggy was gaining ground, Tom crossed the finish before him. They pull back into the pits and they’re going over the race, and they’ve got the post race adrenaline going and all and Jiggy goes “Man, I’d reel you in but then on the straights you’d just motor away from me each time.” To this, Angry Tom replies with a smile and half shrug, “Oh man, I’m sorry.” If he’d been any angrier I would have been nervous for all of us.
So 550 superbike finally comes up. I’m determined to make a better start. I do. It was nice to actually have bikes next to me going into turn 1. It wasn’t so nice having them leave me out of turn I though. Okay I thought my tires were a little worn but they held up just fine one lap ago in BOTT, so I got on the gas. I caught up to a group of 3 bikes after turn 2. It was Jiggy in front, and a fizzer 400 and what I think was a ex500. On the second lap the 400 and 500 parked it going into 3 and I came up right on top of them followed them around 4 and got around the first of the two on turn 8 on the outside. I don’t remember where I got the second guy I think it may have been in 8 again. Then I set my sights on Jiggy. I’d reel him in on 2 and going into 3 then run around 4 with no improvement. He’d get the drive out of 5 on me and I’d have to start all over again. I was hoping to get him on 8 as that has by far turned out to be my finest place on the track, but he didn’t check up the way everyone else did and the gains on him through 8 were miniscule. After about 2-3 laps of this I noticed that his pace had considerably slowed and figured he was either tired or had lost focus as there was nothing but clear track in front of him. I got on the gas and figured I had him as there were a couple of laps to go. Then he did this little Rossi of a move on the back straight where he scooted his butt over the side of the bike a little bit and looked back over his shoulder. Shit! He got back on the gas after he saw me and that was it. I didn’t gain any ground on him after that and followed him all the way to the finish. It would have been cool to be right up there with him as our times differed by only a five hundredths of a second, that would have been much more interesting. Makes me almost want to take getting off the line and into turn 1 more seriously.
Anyway, it was an interesting weekend to say the least. It was great to be back. Don’t know about the nightlife in Lancaster though. Next time I think I’ll just go to the movies.
Sorry for the long winded style if it doesn't suit you, it's actually fun to write about all the stuff that happens off the track as well.
LAter
Stevan