HOLY SH&%!! It's been a while since I've posted anything... Let's see...I'll make this brief and pick up from my last post. Spokane was a bust. Waste of a weekend. I got the bike together and was fairly close to leaving Portland on time when I found a small break between the master cyclinder resevoir and the master cylinder on the front brakes. Hours later I had fabricated a new braket and simply cut off the broken section to make it shorter. I did manage to get the bodywork back together and looking pretty good considering what it was before. I did all the painting the day I left so all things considered the bike looked good. Too bad it didn't run good too... I made it to Spokane around 8AM on Sat. with a mere 4 hours of sleep and went about setting up the pits. This was made dificult by lots of wind which was probably steady at 10-15 MPH and gusted up to around 30mph at times. It sucked. Especailly when mixed with the rain, snow, hail, and bits of sunshine. Wierd weather! So after getting tires mounted, brakes bled, and the bike in good working order it was already to the start of the 3rd practice session and I wasn't even suited up or really in the mode to think about riding. I decided to just wait till after lunch to practice. First session was me going slowly and re-learning the track. I felt pathetic. I couldn't do anything right. Second session. Much better! Actually starting to work towards decent lap times and felt like I was doing things right. Bike started acting wierd though. Would pull fine to 12000 RPM and then the power would just turn off, maybe pull up to 13000 if I was lucky then turn back on like a light switch. Going down the straight was a painful ordeal as guys flew past me. To top of the session I ran out of gas on the last lap but was lucky enough to be able to coast all the way back to the pits. Bad new was I thought I had another session to go but that was it for the day. Thought it over during a nice dinner and new the bike wasn't running right, I didn't have enough track time to feal competitive, the weather was really just pissing me off, and really my head just wasn't in the game. So I packed it up headed home that night. Let me tell you what's not fun...driveing to Spokane and back in the same day with 11 hours at a track in between driving stints. Still it beat trying to camp at the track with the drag racing going on and it was nice to sleep in my own bed when I got home.

OMRRA Race--May 19-20 Great weekend! Good weather and bike running much better since its little stop at EDR for some tuning. Seems one of the coils was bad but would only start dropping off at high RPM's when it got hot. I did decent times in practice on Friday. Ended up running dBcom for the endurance race on Saturday. And Sunday went really well too. First qualifier of the day was 750SS. I did a 1:20 then 3 1:16 all within about 2 tenths of each other. I was happy with that even though I know I can go faster. 600SS qualifying wasn't quite as spectacular but I still did very well. Mid pack finishes in both. Races went really well to but I was still only running in the 1:17 range. The bike just doesn't have the power it used too. I had some good battles with a couple guys and a real hairy moment on the 3rd lap of 600SS when a rider highsided right in front of me out of turn 3 and tumbled right in front of my wheel. That combined with a pileup in turn 1 brought out the red flag.
Anyway...I finished 16th in 750SS and 17th in 600SS. Both really good finishes for my first "real" expert race in the dry.

If you looked at my schedule you would notice that I should be returning from a race in Seattle today. Well I didn't go. The bike still stutters a bit around 9500 RPM making it hard to get out of corners good so it is back at EDR for some more fine tuning. I have also been pretty sick the last week and just didn't feel up to a trip to a new track. Someday I will get up to Seattle for a race....

I should have some real race reports up and new pics soon...(yeah I know I've said if before...)