Competition Riding

A weekend riding bikes is a good weekend, especially when the bike looks so good!!

Friday I got an early start as I had lots to do on the bike. I ended up spending the entire day tidying up and finishing off a whole bunch of things on the bike. Little things like a seat pad (painted fibreglass is really slippery), bolting the brake disk onto the spare rear wheel, final cut and polish so the new paintwork doesn't get damaged, go to the supermarket and get supplies for ...

The major stickers are on. Now they're in place I can have a look to see where I want to put some others. But that's next week. This weekend I get to ride it

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I'm so sore. I can't believe how sore I am. Didn't crash or anything silly like that but I did do lots of laps on a totally different bike, one that I haven't ridden for well over 3 years and I haven't been on a bike at all for over 9 months.

The test day at Taupo the day before the final round of the Victoria Club's Bridgestone Winter Series was on a Friday so I had to take Thursday off work to finish getting the bike ready. Things like changing tyres (I really hate doing anything ...

Not long until it's done and I can ride it. I'm really looking forward to the end of this month.

I got a message saying my bike was back together and running!! After some hurried organisation I was all set to travel down to Wellington, put the bike on the dyno then take it up to New Plymouth to sort the suspension out.

Originally my wife was going to go with me and make a trip of it so I'd organised to stay with Pete McDonald. That way she could ...

Now that was a good weekend cos I learnt a hell of a lot.

Saturday my wife and I rolled out of bed a bit later than we should've, buggered around for longer than we should've and generally dragged our arses. Neither of us wanted to get out of bed at such a ridiculous time, her because she doesn't ride bikes (working on correcting that particular failing but a fix is gonna take a while) and me because it'd been a long week. After I'd made us both a decent cup of coffee ...

Talk about wet!! The ducks have more brains than motorcycle racers cos the stayed home.

5:30am is a ridiculous time of the night (even though there's light it's ridiculous to call it morning) to do anything, but that's the time I set my alarm for. A short while later I was out of bed and making a coffee for the road. Throw the rest of my gear into the car and I'm off to McDonalds for the traditional grease-fest that gets me through a race day.

Pulling ...

AMCC Round 1 at Hampton Downs signalled the start of Summer racing and the first race for me since Paeroa in February, 8 months ago.

This time I planned to get an unusually early start so that we're not rushed even if something doesn't quite go as it should so I'd set my alarm for 5:30am. That's an insane time to be awake. On the average work day my body might be walking around but my brain isn't awake until about 10:00am. Even then that's only after some breakfast ...

Paeroa was one of the reasons that I started racing. I told my wife that I wanted to do Paeroa (and maybe Wanganui) and that was the justification for doing other race meetings (rules say you have to do at least 3 track events to be eligable for the Streets).

Because of the tight time constraints with a Street Race, sign-in and scrutineering for Paeroa are on the Saturday so that Sunday morning it's straight into the riding as early as possible.

I ...