This weekend was supposed to be my first race of the season and my first time racing at SIR near Seattle, WA. I am pretty disappointed that the weekend didn't turn out well. I've worked my ass off for over two weeks trying to get everything ready and it all just kept falling apart around me in the last few days. With munched bodywork due to a qualifying race crash last October and a broken bike with parts on order, I had a lot to do. I focused on the bodywork for the last two weeks since I could do nothing with the bike unitl the parts arrived. Typical days saw me working my 12 1/2 hour shifts at work and coming home and working another 4-5 hours on the body work and other items. Even with the long hours, noxious fiber glass resin, constant droning of power tools, and lack of sleep I was managing to keep my sanity and things on a pretty good schedule. I could still see myself completeing everything on time though. I knew I still had a lot of work to get things finished so on Thurs I ended up putting in a 27 hour day in an attempt to keep up. I even managed to get up early on Friday to continue the work. Now that I look back I should have stayed in bed the whole day. I'm typically not a superstitious person but I have no way of explaining the day I had. I didn't reallize it was Friday the 13th until late in the afternoon. By that time I had already managed to put some not so nice dents into my truck and was well on my way to blowing up the battery for the bike. Of course I saved that until 9pm so that all the stores would be closed leaving me no possible way to get a replacement before my planned 5 am departure. I'll sum up by saying that on Sat. at 2 am I had bodywork with wet paint and no numbers, all riding gear still tucked away in closets, nothing else even remotely ready to be packed up, and no idea of how I was going to finish mounting bodywork, load everything up, get some sleep, find a new battery, get to Seattle, and learn a new track well enough to be competitive. I figured with the luck I was having I should stop while I was ahead and not in a hospital with a trashed bike. So that's what I did. Next week I'll be ready though. After a semi-relaxing weekend of finishing things up I am ready to focus all my energy on the track and riding. This is the way it should be. I'm going to try to do the PSSR track day at PIR this next Thurs. to make up for the seat time I missed. Hope to see you out there.