Hi all
Sorry, havn't wrote for a while as been alittle busy cruising round the country making a fool of myself. The last couple of months have seemed worse than spending time in Iraq at the moment with battlefields only a block away and landmines keeping me on my toes. But I guess life is never perfect and hopefully I coming back from war soon.
At the end of July, after a month off racing, we rocked up to Laguna Seca. I had picked Mummy up from the airport and off we trot to the track in my mates motorhome. I was lucky enough to race at Laguna last year and with the limited time on track again this year, having raced there before was a blessing of soughts. Practise went o.k with my times 1.5 seconds faster than last year but the bike not really working too well. As qualifying came around, the times got slightly slower and I ended up back in 29th on the grid. The race was left till after the Moto GP race on the Sunday afternoon and with sweltering track and air temperatures, we took off for the start of a 28 lap battle. The race turned out to be a struggle with some bike issues really hampering the end result. I ended up crossing the finish line in 22nd and dropped one place to 15th in the championship.
I was set to go out east for a month as we had three AMA Superbike rounds out there in succession. I came to realise that with no trusting Chevy Astro van which had died a horrible death one winters night a month before, transportation might become an issue. Well there is nothing that Ebay can't fix so 20 minutes on the computer and bang, transportation complete. And with 5 hours on a beautiful Greyhound bus(the vomit of transportation), I had a nice new friend to hangout with, Mr Dodge Ram truck. So with a 3700km test drive, we ended up out in Ohio for the 8th round of the AMA Superbike Championship.
Ohio turned out to be a continuation of the struggles from Laguna Seca. Chasing a bike that will work all weekend is turning out to be like trying to reach for the shelf with candy on it, the shelf that children try but can never reach. I ended up qualifying in 26th and finishing with a 12th and 17th after racing at 7pm on the Sunday night. I got away with a lucky weekend as alot of people struggled with crashes and mechanicals but left the track as puzzled as a Fear factor contestant stuck in Jeopardy. I slowly ticked away the days with my week off in between staying at a friends house catching up on the soap operas and all that other important stuff in the world today.
Travelling out to Virginia for the next round was nice as Virginia is one of the nicer states and has abit of natural beauty to it not to mention the beautiful $30 motel that Mum folks out for. Ya got to love Mums. Well, we got out to Virginia International Raceway on the Wednesday and setup the pits, beautiful camper and all. I road at VIR last year and tho it is one of the nicest tracks in the country, it takes alot to get a good lap together as the whole track is one big combination. Practise was a struggle trying to chase my front end issues and also getting back up to speed from last year. Qualifying on Friday didn't turn out to much as my footrest fell to bits after 3 laps thanks to my mechanic(me). Saturday morning came around and so did qualifying. Round and round I went trying to get together a lap that would put me on the grid as Mat Mladin(top dog) had smashed the lap record and with there being a time cut off I had to sought my act out. Well there is a first time for everything and sadly for me that was today. I missed qualifying by 0.2 going a second slower than last year and ended up mopping back to my pits with something in my eye, I swear. I sat there and watched the racing looking at my championship fall to bits as I dropped back to 17th in the table. Its not the time of year to do stuff like this as I'm starting to talk to people about next year and stuff like that so DNS's kinda suck.
Well, after my non performance of Virgina, we cruised down to Florida to hang out at my Aunties/Mums sister. It's all hard work down here catching up on the soaps and what not so hopefully I can survive before we head off to the next round at Road Atlanta on the 31st of August.
Catch ya later
Dom
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Originally Posted by Drew
Now that we know how hard he is to properly break, we wouldn't even have to bother wrapping him very well. Hell, throw him out of the plane as he's flying over your van. While he's still going through rehab might be worth putting out a mattress for him to land on though.
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