After my less than stellar efforts down South at the first round of the National's I arrived home from 3 weeks at work to a well busted bike and a pile of parts that would hopefully transform it from trash into treasure.
By the time Sidewinder arrived Wednesday night with my fuel pump/filter etc it was lookin' good to push the button and fire it up: noise! Beautiful beautiful noise! With Billy coming to the rescue with fairings to be fitted at Manfeild things were finally lookin' pretty good.....
....until the guy who had offered to bring my replacement gloves over from Wellington piked it at the last minute and I had to do an emergency 2 hour round trip to Lower Hutt late Thursday afternoon.
....and the guys changing my tyres on Thursday decided to play with their dodgy new wheel balancer rather than change the tyres accumulating at their feet.
....and the pin snapped off the front stand as I was gettting set up at Manfeild.
....and after finally getting on track for the second last session of the day the sexy new billet roll-a-click brake lever didn't allow enough travel to let the master cylinder bleed port open and jammed the front brakes on in the middle of the track on the second lap.
....and in the last gasp session of the day the bike started hesitating/surging and losing power after just another couple of laps. So much for "gixxer power 4 eva", as written on so many toilet walls....
So all in all, just shitty lil' problems and running around getting nowhere, on top of a bike that just felt disgusting after a fork spring change and clicker flicking after my suspension woes at Ruapuna.
So unlike at Ruapuna I decided to listen the lil' voice in the back of my head saying "Sir, please step away from the vee-hickle" and parked it up. I needed some low pressure test time to get the thing sorted, not trying to push it at the National's with the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end waiting for the "next thing".
Thanks heaps to:
Chris Osborne who raced home to grab/make another front stand pin for me
Billy (AutoCycle Refinishers) for making up a great set of Yoshi type fairings that fit nicely straight up.
Kerry Dukie for changing tyres at a moments notice
Mark Bennett for figuring out my stoopid brake problem and arranging a quiet test session on the back circuit out of everyones way
Everyone who missed me as I was stuck in the middle of the track. I was seriously considering dumping the bike and running for it, but figured at least standing up the bike was an easier target to miss for you guys.
Finally, why most racers would rather ride around in the rain and cold in the middle of winter, battling just to get a spot in the stables, rather than the stunning weather and your choice of umpteen great pit spots at a summer event has got me beat. You've got rocks in your head.
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Originally Posted by Tony.OK
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