Oct 1

Drag racing

adventure, motorcycle, photo Add Comment (1)

Yeah, Brian talked me into it. He trailered his Mustang, and I rode my V-Strom the 140 miles from Salt Lake out to the ‘outlaw’ track at Wendover, which is right smack on the Nevada border. I say ‘outlaw’, because the rules are rather lax. The tech inspection is, ‘Do you have $10 and can you sign this liability release?’ The track itself is part of an old runway, and is a tad rough, but, it works well enough.

We left out around 10am. I had to run by the shop to get my riding pants, so Brian went on ahead, and I was to catch up, since he was planning on just doing 65 anyway. I ran about 85-90 all the way, soaking up the desolation that is the salt flats, before I finally caught up with him about 5 miles before Wendover. At the track, Brian’s friends Mike and ‘Modell’ arrived, along with a friend of theirs from California, Matt. Modell was riding Matt’s new Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14 from Salt Lake, and Mike was trailering his ZX-14 and his older Ninja. We unloaded, watched the races for a bit, and registered. I was number 30.

I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Matt was rather nervous, as he had never done this before, and had only had the bike a short while, so we ended up getting paired up for the first run. I was hoping to get under a 15 second time. I was not expecting much. Brian told me, ‘Go on the last yellow light, if you wait for green, you will be too slow’. I did not do a burnout, opting to just roll to the line, stage, and hope for the best. The announcer said, ‘Alright, here we go..’ and the lights dropped. I nailed it. Mind you, I’ve flogged the bike lots and lots of times before in inappropriate places, but this was something else. You had a crowd, you had to watch the lights, and you had to really concentrate on getting everything right. Needless to say, I messed up the first run, but I beat Matt pretty good, even though he was on his Ninja.

I get back to the pits and ride up to Brian and Mike, and they have these huge grins. Mike says, ‘I told you you could do it!’, and Brian says, ‘You’ll never believe this, heck, none of us believe it: You turned in a 12.99′. A 12.99 on my first pass! Very cool.

Next time around, I had Mike teach me how to do a proper burnout so I could warm up my tire so it would be sticky for the launch. The trick is, you ride around the water box, then back into it to get your back tire wet. Then, you stand up, rev it up and hold hard on the front brake, then drop the clutch. Then, hold the revs by throttling up, and the rear tire just spins, easy as can be. Get a little smoke, and you are ready. By the end of the day, I was having a lot of fun doing this.

I probably ran about 7 or 8 runs. Most of the time I was paired up with this guy on a Yamaha 969, which turned out to be a good match. It was usually a toss up who would beat who. I beat him once by a tenth of a second! Most of the time I would get the hole shot, lead out, and he would run me down.

My last, and best time of the day, turned out to be a 12.47. I was doing about 110-115 at the end of the quarter. I’m fairly impressed with myself and my bike. Mind you, Mike on his ZX-14 managed a 10.99, and Modell on his older Ninja pulled in a 10.54, but it was pretty thrilling to say that I did pretty good on my machine.

Afterwards, we went to Arby’s and had some food, and ended up at one of the local casinos for a while. Mike, Brian and I enjoyed some desert while Modell and Matt played cards for about an hour. Modell was down $5 at the end of the hour, and Matt was up $55.

Then we headed back. It was about 45 degrees out on the highway, and I was following Matt on his ZX-14. I had most of my winter gear on, and my grip heaters were running, my iPod on, and I was doing well. My feet were a tad chilly, and my chin was a little cold since I forgot to put in my chin skirt, but otherwise I was riding along pretty well. We started out doing about 80mph, but as we continued on, Matt kept speeding up until we were running about 110. We stopped at a rest area about 54 miles down the road where Mike and Brian had arranged to meet us to make sure we were alright. Matt was a popsicle. This was why he was going faster, trying to make the time shorter to the rest area. He spent probably 15 minutes in the bathroom running warm water and trying to warm back up. As it turned out, he had Modell run the bike the rest of the way in. I can’t say I blame him, he didn’t have any winter gear anyway.

Modell had me ride in front, as he said, ‘otherwise I will be going way too fast’. Probably true, he said he had hit 150 on the way out. I ran about 90 (indicated, bear in mind the bike’s speedo reads about 10% too high). We found something like 8 cops on the side of the road a ways on, apparently looking for something off the highway. Strange. Further on, we were in the right lane doing 90-95 when a silver Chevy pickup passed us, pulled in front of us, and slowed down. I hate being in the wake of a vehicle, the air is dirty and it just kind of pounds on your helmet, so I moved to the left lane. We started to pass the Chevy, but then he takes off. OK, whatever, I move back behind him. He slows again. I get in the left, and hang out. No less than about 4 times does he slow back to me, and take off. He’s wanting to race me, but I’m not having it. Finally, I slowed back, shot behind him, and turned on my high beams, with the idea that maybe that would make him go away. As ‘luck’ would have it, my radar detector starting going bonkers, so I slowed back to the speed limit and the pickup sped off. Never saw the guy again.

All in all, it was a pretty fun day. I don’t know that I want to go back and beat on the bike more in the near future, but I probably will eventually. Brian took video of me running, so I’ll post that once I get it from him. Very fun!