Seven Months Ago On This Date

...I thought Belle had had the biggest year of her life. At the time of writing that, she had already:

- Become a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

- Become a Homeowner

- Become a Wife to the most Awesome Husband (effectively)

"Good things come in threes." A trifecta, a "hat-trick," and without even being greedy, who in their conventional mind would think that somehow, she could manage to fit another milestone in an already momentuous year?

I swear, I don't think Belle herself knew there was any rabbit left in the hat.

Until we tried and got another rabbit after all...


Enough said, because the last time I said anything at all about how big of a year Belle is having, fate seems to have us defy even our expectations.

There's still two and a half weeks left to this year.

I'm not sure Belle or I can handle any more awesomeness at this point. :)



P.S. I've been maintaining this weblog with mostly my adventures going into five years now, and yet somehow, they all pale in comparison to Belle's 2011. Women, I tell ya!

Shedding Leaves

That's a big tree, and so it makes me damn glad that Belle DID NOT buy a house that's too big, but just big enough for us. Cause that means we don't have a huge lawn to maintain front and back, which consequentially means we don't have a huge lawn FOR ME to maintain front and back.

I wish I could buy a leaf blower, but I refuse to stockpile our single-car garage with tools or toys that would only see annual use. (And believe me, there are A LOT of tools and toys I'd want to have, not the very least of which is a chainsaw!)

So a plastic rake it is. At the very least, it's good exercise for me.

We're coming up on the closeout for 2011, but I'm not ready to summarize it yet, because I have yet to put the cherry up top for this year. I won't be until Christmas Eve, but until then, I just have to look at this magnificent tree shedding its bountiful leaves of this past season, full of color, getting ready to do it all over again for next year.

If this damn tree's still up for it in all its good years, there's no reason I shouldn't be when I'm just heading into my thirties.

Bring it on, Tree. Bring it on.

---

Around this time last year, I was elated to have been crash-free (at the track) for 2010.

Since taking up motorcycle track riding back in 2007 (I think), I had not been without a track crash at least once per season in my attempt to be better and inherently go faster on my motorcycle, up until last year that is. Admittedly, being crash-free at the track was a goal I was striving for when I decided to do less and less trackdays every season; this was my way of decreasing the odds of me having an incident, mitigating danger from an already dangerous hobby. I also wanted to preserve my passion for the sport, and as is with a lot of things I take interest in, I always firmly believed that I end up disliking anything I liked if I did them often enough (with the exclusion of Belle and Rusty, of course!). It was just the nature of my beast.

However, in continuing last year's streak, I am crash-free for 2011! I can say this now since I've figuratively parked my bike from any more trackdays this year, and I may have only done four trackdays this year (the lowest that number's ever been!), but it's not for a lack of trying to crash per se; I've gone faster at Thunderhill Raceway this year than I've ever had in all seasons I've been at this favorite track of mine (see previous entry).

Unlike last year though, and unlike my current clean streak at the racetrack, I did have an incident on the streets this year.

It could've been a lot worse, and I'm not just saying that. But what was more important about that incident was that it reaffirmed to me just how good the good people I have already met truly are.

I had planned on making a winter project out of repainting the blemished panels of the bike with the help of my good friend Jeff, who had recently taken up DIY-painting after having done a set of track fairings for himself. He had agreed to help me in the process seeing as he had more quantifiable experience than me, and the tools to do the deed. We just needed the right color code for the red and white used on the paint, so I dropped by Bob Hope's paint shop again, firstly to catch up with him on the fantastic season I had had with the bike, thanks in no small part to his generous and fantastic work on the paint job. After hearing my account of the street incident resulting in the rashed panels, and after having looked at the damage, he offered to repaint it himself rather than just providing us with the color code of the paints he used. I wasn't expecting this, and even though he once gave me a generous price when he painted the whole bike, I did not expect him to repeat this generosity when he told me how much he'd repaint the damage fairings this time around.

Bob didn't need to do anything more than he already has to convince me that his was a giant heart amongst mediocre men. Yet he continues to be like that big tree in our front yard, standing tall and ready to give all he can at every blow of fortune's wind, even at the misfortune of others.

Admittedly, I had once thought to also preserve the bodywork on my bike by implanting them on a rolling chassis (a non-running motorcycle) of my bike, and just park it in my living room.

But it still stands that the very people responsible for helping me make a picture that was in my head a rolling reality, continues to make me proud to run their colors every time that I can, just as much as my personal underlying sentiment in this whole thing does.

I walk with gentle giants amongst these men. :)

Visualization (Look There, Go There)

"Six months prior to the 2000 Summer Olympics, Wilkinson suffered a serious foot injury that kept her out of action for a couple of months. During this time, she used mental images to visualize her dives. Her foot was not fully recovered by the time she started diving again, but she was able to qualify for the Olympics. At the 2000 Summer Olympics, Wilkinson, who was still in pain from her foot injury, was in eighth place after the first of five dives in the platform diving finals. However, she earned her the first gold medal for a female American platform diver since 1964."

- Wikipedia entry for Olympic Diver Laura Wilkinson

The true story above is one that I will never forget, if not just for the mere fact that I always fall back on it during applicable situations.

You look where you want to go.

Also another adage in my book of self-motivations and learning tools. A bit of a racing nugget describing the phenomenon that regardless of the mechanics, your body will lead you to what you are looking at. Riders are taught this for a couple of reasons; to make a corner even in doubt, and more importantly, to not hit a wall (or anything!) if you don't want to (unless they want to!).

At the height of my track riding addiction, when I could average a bit more than doing a trackday once a month or so, I had all the opportunities to practice the sport-riding around a track for the sake of honing it. There is no substitute for actual on-track experience when you are trying to learn the dynamics of piloting a motorcycle, especially with regards to body position, which is a significant tool in a rider's repertoire to be able to control a motorcycle at speed. You could put your motorcycle on stands to stabilize it, then move, pivot, and pitch yourself all over the motorcycle in trying to burn to muscle memory what your proper body position ought to be, but the properties of a static motorcycle changes at speed, therefore so would your interaction with it.

Then came my self-imposed regulation, when I decided, for the sake of not getting sick of what I love doing, to do less trackdays. I think I've been successful in implementing this regulation every year for the past couple of years or so now. This year alone, I've only done four trackdays to date. This is fantastic in the sense that I still love the sport, I spend less, and the chances of having on-track incidents have decreased as well. Unfortunately, the other casualty was sacrificing a bit of my never-ending quest to get better and better through practice. I've always used every street-riding that I do as something to hold me over in between my trackdays, but as I wrote earlier, the dynamics of motorcycle riding changes at speed; you don't ride the street like you would the track, and vice versa. The basics are the same, which at the very least is what I retain and burn to muscle memory, but the physical and mental sensations differ between the two, and greatly determine one's inputs on the bike.

So what else did I do to keep me relatively sharp and progressing, even when not doing?

Visualization.

There are a lot of professional motorcycle racers I admire, each and every one of them having something distinct in their ability to make a motorcycle go around a racetrack fast, from a MotoGP god like Casey Stoner, to local AFM hero Dave Stanton. Even if reality dictates I could never amount to a tenth of what they are now, they still make the best examples for me to try and emulate as far as riding abilities go. Now out of the number of them I could've used, I chose Valentino Rossi. His riding style seemed the most natural and relaxed, looking as if it's not hard work to make the machine go fast, exuding comfort and thus total control over his machine. The way Rossi rode a motorcycle, it looked like how a person ought to ride a motorcycle if a rider had nothing else but natural instinct to go by; no unnecessary contortions, no wasted physical effort. Just sheer efficiency.

So I found one photo of Rossi taking a corner, which is the photo depicted below. Numerous times I would look at the photo, pulling it onto my monitor at random times of the day just to stare at it, to imagine what he must have thought of (if he even thought about it) to make his body move the way it did to look the way it would; how he bent his arms, upper body, legs, etc. I tried to imagine how he anchored himself, what muscle(s) were taking the load, and which were featherweight in comparison. I tried to visualize his point of view, of how the road ahead of him would look or how much the horizon would tilt in correlation with how much he tilted his head from his shoulders.

More or less I would imagine, "what would it feel to do that?"

It didn't happen overnight, and it probably happened over tens if not hundreds of times I clicked that image file to open and view it. Admittedly, I eventually stopped (or maybe forgot) looking at the photo for awhile now, but I guess it really stands that if you keep looking at something, even previously, something eventually burns itself to (muscle) memory.


Valentino Rossi up top, just some random poser trying
to look like him on the bottom.

You see*?

I can still pick out a number of things that I do differently from my model image, but maybe if I go back to glazing over Rossi's photo again, I may just completely plagiarize the man himself.

As apparent, you look at something enough times, and you will find yourself there. :)






* Pun most definitely intended!

Four Seconds

Is the difference you'll get at Thunderhill Raceway by taking a six-month break from it.
Or maybe from the April Spring to October Fall weather.
Or maybe from the Ohlins FG43 forks, PVM billet monobloc calipers, and 45mm throttle reel rate.
Or maybe from getting married...

Thunderhill in April on the left (camera on bike)
Thunderhill in October on the right (camera on rider)

Actually, I have no freaking clue where I got the speed to shave off four seconds 'round Thunderhill. I just hope lightning will strike twice the next time out at Thunderhill again.

Maybe six months from now again. :)

Sponsors...

Can't live with them.



Can't live without them. :)

Monkeying Around

Well that was a bitter-sweet.


Was back at Thunderhill over the weekend (October 8th) with a gang of my good friends, including my ever-present buddy Trung, who's coming back from his last outing at Thunderhill that resulted in yet another tumble.

Man, that last crash really did a mental number on Trung; he's otherwise healthy and his bike supposedly runs just as well as it did before he binned it, but for some reason, Trung just could not get back in the groove. Pre-crash, he was probably one of the faster Intermediate riders around a track, but post-crash, he says he couldn't even pass one person on track, let alone our friend Jeff, who's only back in Thunderhill for the third time, first time out in the Intermediate group. He says he's, "going backwards."

The poor guy. I say if he really is going backwards, then let's start from the bottom; put the street fairings back on his bike and let's start riding the streets again. Less stress, less time away from his now burgeoning family, and ultimately cheaper.

That was bitter.

For myself, I haven't been back to Thunderhill for as long as Trung, and the last time I did any kind of track riding was late in May, during Yamaha's appreciation days in Laguna Seca. All in keeping with my self-imposed tradition of doing less and less track days in the last couple of years or so. After this past weekend, I've only racked up four track days in total this year, which is a far cry from the height of my addiction, I think having done up to fourteen track days in one season.

Yet somehow, I'm still getting quicker.

I've never ran a lap timer. The one time I ever owned one came with the purchase of one of my track bikes, and I promptly turned around and sold it. The closest thing to a lap timer I use is my ContourHD; a lot of people use their videos to gauge their lap times, marking the time marker when they crossed the checkered line, and again the next time out - the difference between two marks make up your lap time. I never made a habit of doing this though. Recording sessions were done solely for the purposes of compiling fun little videos as a side hobby of mine. Nevertheless, I had an idea of how fast I could go, because I needed to know whether I could move up to a particular group; from Novice to Intermediate, to Intermediate to Advanced. Track day providers post their guidelines of cut-off times to meet to be able to safely run with each group, particularly the Intermediate and Advanced.

In the example of Keigwins@TheTrack, their guideline cut-off lap time for Thunderhill Raceway is 2:15 for the Advanced Group, so back when I decided to move to the Advanced Group, this was the time that I knew I had to meet. I can't remember how I figured I could meet this time, but I did, as I've been an Advanced rider since, but still I did not keep a lap timer. Since becoming an Advanced Rider, I figured I must be doing 2:12's at best around Thunderhill.

This past weekend, my footages marked me at having done 2:08's consecutively. I had no idea I was even doing sub-2:10's, or for how long now. My warm-up lap alone out of the hot pits was at 2:15!

Color me genuinely surprised. How could I be going faster when I've been hardly going to the track?

That was sweet.

I paid the price though, because the day after my body was sore all over. Thunderhill is a physical track in that it is high-speed, so you are hanging on for dear life against wind-blasts and high-speed braking, fighting to turn the front wheel at triple digit speeds. I guess going that much faster raised these same challenges as well. That, or maybe it's cause I hardly do this kind of riding anymore, so my body's just not up to par than before. Even 48-hours after that track day, I was still residually sore.

That was bitter.

It was all worth it though, despite my buddy Trung now starting from square one, and me being DOA coming home from that day. It's nice to know that I somehow have the aptitude to retain particular skills or abilities, and improve upon them, even when the frequency of practice is seldom. A good number of friends I've come to know over the years were also there, so the company was just as awesome as the weather itself was. To cap it off, despite the high number of people that showed up and the people that I know that also rode, not one of us had any incident. Everybody went home the same way they arrived at the track.

That was very sweet. :)

Am I Too Unlucky, or Too Lucky?

Remember this? And this?

Is it still a "coincidence" at the third occurence, or does it become factual?

I swear, I really can't have anything too nice and/or red, cause sooner or later, I just end up throwing it down the road (so to speak).

I'm about to hit 40k miles on the R1, which should be by the end of this week, which is something I'm pretty stoked about. I bought the bike to replace my beloved Aprilia Mille about three years ago when it had 14k miles, so to date, with all the bikes I've ever owned, the R1 is the bike that I've racked the most miles on in the six years I've been riding. Actually, it's the only bike to date I've owned the longest out of all. So much for a "rebound" bike.

About a year ago is also when it became the TAAF bike. So how do I celebrate its annual anniversary and subsequently being at the cusp of 40k miles?

I get it all scratched up!


(sigh)
Let's rewind back to 48 hours ago, when I decided to finally cross off Skaggs on my list of roads to ride with a few friends of mine. Skaggs has always been one of the roads in the State that gets a lot of praise for being a great riding road, but in all the years I've been riding, I've never made it up there, even though it's only about 90 miles north of me. I've ridden to roads further than that from me.

Before heading up there, I looked at Google Maps to get an idea of how to get to Skaggs. Pretty simple; head up to Healdsburg, CA and exit off of Dry Creek Road. Head northwest on Dry Creek Road, and it turns into Skaggs Springs Road.

Not quite.

While on Google Maps it looks like the two roads eventually turn into one another, in reality, it doesn't. Heading west from Dry Creek Road, you'd have to make a left turn to get to Skaggs; Dry Creek Road continues past Skaggs and becomes another road instead. If I had actually ZOOMED into the satellite view in Google Maps, I would've notice this, but I didn't.

So three other friends and I, with myself in the front, found our way to Dry Creek Road, and stayed on there waiting for Skaggs to appear, either a sign, or the road to simply start winding up. Well the road did, and it was FUN. I'm riding the road thinking, "This has to be Skaggs. It is too fun, clear, and virtually isolated from traffic that this MUST be Skaggs."

The road just kept winding; "Skaggs" kept on going and it was just stupid fun the whole way through.

Until of course, we turned into an otherwise harmless bend on the road, as pictured below:


Have a closer look at that photo, and see that where the arrow is pointing, is the part where the fantastic two-way pavement ABRUPTLY turned into a one-lane dirt road.

That's right. In the middle of that turn, the pavement literally disappeared. There were no transitions, and if there was ample warning prior to us bearing down on that bend, I missed it (and per account of the rest following me, they saw no sign either). Even worse, it's not as if the road straightened out after it turned into a dirt road, giving us much needed room to slow ourselves down with our rear brakes; the road bent left, and to make matters worse, the left side (bottom half of the photo above) was a sheer cliff. And if that's not bad enough, there was a heavy-duty steel gate across the dirt road blocking my trajectory.

Clearly I didn't fall of the cliff, or hit the steel gate, else I wouldn't be writing this now, nor would the damage to the bike be as minimal as pictured above. I managed to scrub off as much speed as I could through the dirt with the rear brake, though admittedly not enough that I did end up riding up the hillside slope a bit instead of hitting the steel gate. This worked to my benefit a bit as it more or less scrubbed off the remaining momentum the bike and I had, but being nearly 45 degrees up in the front meant I lost my footing, and therefore the bike and I fell on the right side on a bed of rocks.

The bed of rocks were bitter-sweet; on one hand they saved the bike from even more damage, cause if the bike and I hit the ground instead, hard parts would've been broken and the fairings would've been cracked or punched or anything other than scratched. On the other hand, they weren't without their punishment, cause they did gouge my fairings. Take the good with the bad though, right?

Two of the three friends following me also got sucked into the dirt, though they had more warning than I did after seeing me in a cloud of dust, so while they still had their own dirt excursions, they managed to scrub off more speed while they still had pavement, and therefore kept it upright through the dirt. Once we got my bike upright again, I just turned to my friends Lili and Jeanette and asked, "What happened to the road?"

Lili and Jeanette had done Skaggs before, especially Jeanette. However, they were both equally sucked into the-road-that-was-not-Skaggs and how fun it was, that I'm sure they just wanted to see where it would go until stopped. You couldn't blame them if you were riding the same road.

Nobody can be faulted for this at all in my opinion, just chalk it up one of those strange things about riding. Given the circumstances and options at the time of the incident, I can't be mad as well, cause as far as damage limitation is concerned, I think I definitely pulled off the lesser of the would-be evils; the only way I could've done it better is if I was able to keep the bike upright at 45 degrees up that hillside slope. Maybe I should practice that some more...

Oh, and you want to know what the actual name of the-road-that-was-not-Skaggs is?

Rockpile Road.

See. When even fate has a sense of humor about things, you just can't be mad. :)

Ohlins is Swedish for "Oh Yeeeaaaaah"

This one was a long time coming, and in truth, most of the time, I thought it was just a personal pipe-dream. Impossible may be too implausible of a word for it, but knowing how unwilling I am to drop some serious coin on certain things, one day fitting the R1 with a set of Ohlins forks alone just didn't seem like an m.o. given their cost, even if used.

So to be able to fit these glistening legs AND a pair of billet monobloc radial calipers, well, this is the good side of pouring when it rains. :)


Ohlins forks from the donor bike, mine in the background,
transplant in progress. :)
In short, I found a same-gen Yamaha R1 being sold locally, already fitted with the bad boys along with other too-good goodies. It wasn't an option of buying just the parts that I wanted, but having a friend like Rob, who's in the biz of buying and selling bikes, he did me the favor of a lifetime by buying the whole bike to sell, but not before he swapped the parts that I wanted out of it and into my bike!


PVM 4-piston Radial Billet Monobloc Calipers - in layman terms,
if Michelangelo's hand was a CNC-machine,
this would be his painting.
I swear, at this point, I'd be happy to retire the bike and just keep it in a glass case from this day forward. :)

Normalcy

I seriously must be just a simpleton. Or a homebody.

Or unadventurous.

(Gasps! What??)


At the SSB Yamaha Sportbike Showdown,
participating as one of the Amateur builders!
Between Fort Lauderdale three weekends ago and MotoGP at Laguna Seca (Monterey) a couple of weeks ago, I was looking forward more for this past weekend than the other two. I really don't mean to sound ungrateful, but it was just really nice to not have to be anywhere, or committed to be doing anything. It's fun to be in demand every now and then, but it's the kind of fun that just takes up a lot of your resources.

The idea of vacationing to me sometimes sounds and feels exhausting, it kind of defeats the purpose.

But like I said, maybe I'm just too simple.

The Perpetual Gift (or "A Happy Anniversary")

Would you look at that?

Has it really been already a year ago when I first sat down and came up with the idea to turn my bike into a moving billboard for TAAF? Talk about time flying fast when having fun!

At some point some months ago I had probably thought of doing something to celebrate the anniversary of what I've done to the bike, but to be honest, I didn't really think of what it was I was going to do. Hell, I had only realized recently that it's coming up to a year now, and even then, I didn't get to the realization until an amazing thing happened recently :). I actually held off on writing about it until now, when the situation is the least bit official.

Well now that it's officially posted here, here's my official blog entry.

By no intent of mine, this bike is now due to participate in Yamaha's Custom Sport Bike Show during the Laguna Seca round of MotoGP next month!


Let me try and recount how this came to be...

I've been going to the Laguna Seca GP for the past three years now, and I always remembered seeing a Yamaha tent filled with what were clearly privately-owned custom bikes. I even remembered the Bostrom Brothers being associated with the gallery when Ben Bostrom was racing a Yamaha in the AMA. So, after the paint job that I did on the bike last year, I kept in mind to try and find out if there was a way to get my bike into the display tent, as part of my ongoing m.o. of raising awareness for TAAF.

Fast forward to now when the Laguna GP is upon us, I contacted Zoom-Zoom since they were Yamaha-sponsored, to see if they may have a contact that knows a thing or two about the upcoming Laguna Seca GP. They didn't, but they did send me the link I posted above for Yamaha Custom Sport Bike show, thinking that that's what I was referring to. I looked at it, and I wasn't sure if this was the same display I had seen, but I did see an email contact at the bottom, which I decided to contact.

I basically fired an email saying that I saw the show announcement, but that I wasn't really interested in entering my bike (hell, I didn't even think my bike was contest-quality), but was wondering if Yamaha had another tent or area somewhere to showcase customer/modified bikes as part of their regular display. I mentioned that the bike is modified, but particularly noted the custom paint job to create awareness for the foundation, and I included a link to TAAF for their reference.

A day later, Sarah Timleck responds to my email. Sarah is the person who runs STCreates.com. Basically, she's the one that is in charge of organizing and pulling off all the events for her clientele, with her two major clients being Yamaha and Icon at the moment. In her email, she says that they would love to have my bike in the show, and that they wanted to include it in their "other class." Before I could email her back to ask what she meant by "other class," Sarah actually calls me to touch base, and basically:

The contest is composed of two classes - the Pro Builder class, and the Amateur Builder class. Pro Builders are people in the industry of building and/or heavily modifying bikes; think of a motorcycle shop and the like, while Amateur Builders are regular Joes like me who DIY and just bolts on parts available that they buy online. She wanted my bike entered into the Amateur Builder class without even having seen a photo of it yet. I guess she must have taken a real liking to the fact that it's promoting a non-profit foundation and their cause. She practically guaranteed me a spot, asking me to complete an online submission as a technicality, but that she was going to contact Yamaha herself to let them know to definitely include me and my bike for the Laguna Seca GP contest. Apparently, they will accept 100 online submissions, and from there, choose 30 bikes to participate during the MotoGP contest next month in Laguna Seca.

She then tells me that as part of being chosen for the contest, each participant will receive $300 from Yamaha to cover the expenses to bring the bike to the contest, along with two (2) General Admission tickets good for the whole weekend (worth $80 each last I checked)!

AND, that she has a contact with Super Streetbike magazine (who are co-hosting the contest this year), and with my permission, she wanted to send them my bike and my contact info, cause she felt that they would be really interested in running an article or a column about my bike and its story.

I had to soak this all in while I was listening to her in the other line. I basically told her how floored I was, cause I would've been grateful if they just had a corner or something where they would allow me to put my bike on the stands and my self-made poster next to it (she even told me I can bring my poster ALONG with their display for my bike!). I didn't even think to think my bike and I could or would participate in something like this! And without sounding too eager, I even clarified that I will get the free admission passes, because at that time, my friends and I were finalizing our GP plans and were ready to purchase our passes. Sarah tells me on the phone:

"No. Don't buy your passes. You're getting the free admission passes. You're in."

Un-freakin'-believable!

So now I've actually been making arrangements and bolting on some new bits and pieces on the bike to get it ready for the show and contest. I honestly have NO aspirations to win (I will fucking FLIP OUT if I do! ), but I figured if Yamaha and Sarah are willing to put it in the contest for whatever their agenda, the least I can do is make it look like it ought to be in competition.

Oh, and if by some grace of the motorcycle gods my bike does win or whatever, any monetary proceeds I do receive will of course go straight to TAAF, including the $300 they will give the contest participants.

You know how they say that no good deed goes unpunished? If this is the kind of punishment I'll be getting for this deed, I'll gladly be a glutton for punishment!

I'm sitting here remembering that one of my key principles in having done this to my bike was to give a gift that would keep on giving.

I just never expected that my perpetual gift would be perpetually gifting me with such amazing experiences. :)

Do Not Go Quietly Into the Night

No matter what you do, no matter how little or common it may seem, TRY your damnedest to make it a hell of a ride. :)

In writing this entry, it means I've somewhat found some time and room to actually breathe, sit, think, remember, and then write about the craaazy two weeks that have just passed.

Yes, Belle and I got married the other weekend, but let's go a little bit further back than that.

Last year I was a best man for the very first time in my life for my cousin Jeff's wedding, which meant for the first time, I had to plan a bachelor party. I was freaking petrified. Not only did I not know the first thing about throwing a bachelor party, I had to throw it for a gang of Army veterans!

Whatever. Head in, balls out, fuck it attitude, and go for it.

Turns out, unless them Army boys were just being polite in patting me on the back when it was all over, it was a pretty epic bachelor party that included alcohol, a stretched SUV, alcohol in the stretched SUV, a gentleman's club, alcohol in the gentleman's club, a dildo in a blind-folded Jeff's mouth, more alcohol in the stretched SUV, three buckets of chicken wings, alcohol in Jeff's house, two private dancers in Jeff's house, and alcohol ON the private dancers in Jeff's house.

Innocence was ravaged on that epic night.

It was sooo good, it was partially the reason I didn't care to have a bachelor party for myself a year later for my upcoming wedding; I just didn't think it could get any better than that.

Lo and behold, I was wrong.



Take Yamaha, add it to Zoom Zoom Trackdays, and mix them both in at Laguna Seca for two days, and I had the quintessential Dennis bachelor party a quintessential Dennis could ask for. :)

Three days before my wedding (you read that right), I was at Laguna Seca as a participant in Yamaha's owner appreciation track days hosted by Zoom Zoom Trackdays. In the world-class racing circuit Laguna Seca. For 70-freaking-5 dollars per day! Normally I wouldn't brag about anything money, but when Laguna's regular track day rate averages $300/day, you've got to brag when you pay about 25% of that!



Laying down some track rubber for next month's MotoGP!
And to make it that much sweeter, throw in my good friend Rob who joined me for both days, even though he didn't own a Yamaha (!). Perks of being in the motorcycle service industry is you can just buy one at your whim, which is exactly what Rob did, just to be able to ride Laguna. I'd like to say he did that though cause it was my bachelor party :). Even one of my sisters and her boyfriend passed by, and FINALLY got to see what a trackday is, after the last three years I've been at it. She expressed her newfound appreciation for my hobby, which I appreciated myself. :)


My motley cru. :)

I really couldn't and still can't think of a better way to have spent my last days as a full-pledge bachelor, without crossing fantastical. I am so thankful to be surrounded with so many understanding and support friends and family; any other man might have been put on a straight-jacket for even thinking about spending a day flirting with Death at triple-digit speed, much less two days!


This is a portrait of a man who can die happy!
More importantly, I am eternaly grateful and indubitably blessed to have the love and trust of a woman who doesn't let her own fears get in the way of even my own happiness. I liken her to my own personal guardian angel, even when I taunt Death.

Kids, when you find a woman like I did with Belle, who will let you stick a red-hot poker on an already pissed-of and misandrist bull, days - nay! - HOURS before your wedding, yes, you better marry that girl.

You would be lucky to marry that girl.

Me? Well, of course I married her.



It's the least I can do. ;)

Belle's Adventurous Year

So even though this is supposed to be a trio of an adventurous journal between myself, Belle, and Rusty, truthfully, Belle's adventure entries have really been non-existent. It's there, but it's not.

Like a muffled fart silent letter.

Anyway, that's about to change with this entry, and in true DBR fashion, when Belle goes to have an adventure, she goes big. ;)

2011 is quite a year for Belle really, and in speaking of trifectas, she doesn't just have one or two, but three big achievements this year! Starting it off with our scheduled wedding in less than a month's time, she followed it up by finally becoming a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.

And as if those two are not enough to assert that she's a full-blown grown up (which is really a never-ending quest), she goes and buys a house on her own. :)

the house


Not quite a white picket-fence, but it's the 21st century;
nothing says security better than heavy-duty chain links!
A bit of a short-sale find in the current buyer's market of houses, I think Belle found this little gem early this year, and since then she's learned the ins-and-outs of homebuying 101 until she finally took hold of the house keys about a month or so ago. Or at least, she learned them during the process, but has since purged them off her system now that it's all over with. She was quite traumatized throughout it, you know.





Fortunately, it isn't something of a fixer-upper project house; not something to be flipped then sold for a profit. In motorcycle terms, the house was a Turn-Key house; just get on the damn thing and go.

However, Belle, being the expert home-buyer that she is, was quick to set her mind on overhauling the interior floors and repainting the walls. With the exception of the kitchen and the bathroom, the living room and both of the bedrooms were covered in carpet, so the first order of business for Belle was to remove them, and depending on what was underneath, maybe put laminate flooring for the three rooms. Kitchen floor was with linoleum, to which Belle is apparently allergic to (no, not really, but yes, really), so she wanted laminate flooring in that room as well.

Seeing as neither one of us knew anything about flooring, we decided to commission my uncle Robert for the job, being of someone who does that line of work among many others. But until he was able to get started, we started up the process of repainting the walls.

the work

One of the four walls for the living room was adorned with faux-hardwood plywood, of which Belle wasn't exactly thrilled about. So she gave me the go-ahead to go ballistic on the damn thing.


Yes, those are flip-flops. I'm steel-toed though!
It's like putting a red blindfold on a bull, then letting it loose in a glass museum. :)


Then came hours of spraying and wiping TSP off of the walls to clean them, then spackling the spack out of the holes, all for the pain-staking prep-work process of painting. I got to prep most of the rooms and started to paint the corners of the wall in the master bedroom when my uncle finally arrived. At this point, Belle was already exhausted from the mental stress of the work she wasn't doing, so she gave up and just commissioned my Uncle to do the paint job as well.

The poor thing.

Belle, I mean.


Belle chose sage for both of the bedrooms.
I think it's peppermint!
Then my uncle tackled the carpet flooring, which was when we discovered we struck [tainted] gold.

the floor


Living room sans carpet.
Right underneath the carpet seemed to be the original hardwood flooring from when the house was built in the 50's. Tainted though not just for surface wear, but because some panels were warped, and worse of all, there were cuts perpendicular against multiple panels.


It's like someone got a hold of a reciprocating
saw too early too soon.
There were cuts in multiple spots for reasons we can't discern; at random places on the floor of the living room, and some minor ones in the master bedroom. No rhyme or reason we can tell.

Luckily, my uncle was clever enough to make do with what we had left; with some trimming where the major cuts took place, and rearranging the different sized panels, we were able to reuse the existing hardwood flooring to eliminate the gashes. The warped panel(s) were not salvageable, but we were lucky to find a lumber yard that still sold this style of hardwood. My uncle noted that like laminate flooring, hardwood floors nowadays were thicker than what we had, so it was great that we were able to source some needed panels from the lumber yard we found that matched the thickness of the existing hardwood.

It didn't matter that the replacement panels did not have the same finish, as Belle wanted the floors to be refinished a darker stain anyway.

So with the fixes in place, next up was sanding the old finish to make way for the darker stain. This in itself was a little adventure of its own; we had to do two trips to Home Depot for the rental orbital sander as the first one would crap out on us. Thankfully, Home Depot was gracious enough to reset our 1-day rental agreement at no extra charge, which worked out fortuitously because we over-estimated the process. In no way did the multiple-sanding it took for all the rooms took one day, unless maybe if we worked through the night.



In the end though, it all worked out as intended, and as of writing this entry, my uncle should be putting the semi-gloss finish on the newly stained flooring for all three rooms.


On top of that, the laminate flooring in the kitchen was knocked out of the park in one afternoon. We were a bit worried about doing this as the kitchen floor actually had a slope to it. To the naked eye it wasn't easily discernable at a passing glance, but drop a marble on the center of the kitchen floor, and you'll find it rolling down the slope. My concern was that the laminate flooring over the kitchen floor/slope would leave substantial gap in between, dipping upon load and maybe straining the laminate flooring in the long-term.


So far though, seems like the laminate flooring worked out better than I dreaded, and the darker finish on them helped to mask any sign that the flooring was uneven. We'll just have to see how they hold up in the long run.

the rest

We're due to start our move into the house in the coming week, so all that's left now is to put the finishing touches; finish off the paint to the corners, tack the mouldings back on the wall, repaint the window sills/door frames/cabinets/etc, install an iron screen door to the front, new curtains/blinds, and perhaps a handful of other little things to finish off the improvements done to the house.

It's never really done though, obviously, and next on the immediate list of things to do would be to pave a portion of the front lawn to make the space actually useable, and eventually install (an attached) deck in the backyard to the kitchen side, which means also installing a sliding door in the kitchen. There is definitely more to come. All in due time, however, cause for now I think we really want to just settle into what would be our first home.

the proud

Funny, as Belle actually gets a little irked whenever I refer to the house as hers.

"She bought her house."
"She wants to do this and that to her house."
But you know, I'm not detaching myself from her and this house. Of course it's going to be our home, but to me, this is her house.

And I'm proud of that.

I'm proud to say that because I'm proud of what she's done. She did this and she pulled it off. I'm proud of Belle taking charge of her life, in the world that she's making for herself.

It's Belle's world now.

Rusty and I?


Well, we're just living in it. :)







P.S. Maybe Belle's next adventure would be to write her own blog entry!

Speed Cripple

Honestly, I've been trying to do a write-up of my Speed Cripple since I finally got it road-going a couple of weeks back or so (DMV issues), but seems like every day I rode it, my impressions would change, and so did the write-up.

I've been using it mostly for commuting since getting it plated, which was really my intent in buying it, but yesterday I did take it out to the same roads that I would take my R1 to in the weekends, just to really get an overall idea of what it's like to ride the bike for the street. I also plan on doing a trackday on it, just to go full-circle in getting to know it.

Until then, here's what I got:


My previous Cripple experience was on the black one to the left,
on which I've previously spent a day riding.
I'm thoroughly convinced that there is no more-perfect real world engine than a triple.

Yeah, I said it

I say engine, cause regardless if its a supersport like the 675, or an upright like an S3/Tiger, it's the engine that really make these bikes super useful. For reference, I've had a parallel twin, a v-twin, and a lot of inline 4's, all in differing displacements. The triple engine is a real gem.

The engine is just bonkers in how composed and useable it is. I'm like, "WTF engine, can't I get a rise out of you or SOMETHING??"

I've tried wringing its neck on acceleration, or blipping and rev-matching the hell out of it at downshifts, and it just says, "Meh. Here's 70 ft.lbs of torque right from the bottom. Do whatever you want until you lose steam at redline. I DON'T BLOODY CARE."

I've said it before, but the whole gearbox feels like ONE gear in how consistent each gear's characteristic and torque output is; it's like Triumph just placed six gears for the sake of going through the motions of shifting. And because of its flat torque curve (is it still a curve if it's flat?), the bike thinks it's in a drag race in any gear everytime you shift - you feel all that torque, no matter where you are in the powerband.

It's omnipresent.


If all other engines are diamonds in the rough,
this one's a brass knuckle; just as nice to get your
hands on, but ultimately more useful in urban assaults.
The other thing that I really like about the engine is how docile it feels through the chassis, and ultimately, on the bars. The proverbial buzziness that an I4 engine emits is not there with a triple, I'm not even sure the engine mounts have or need any damping. It's just an overall pleasant experience to be riding on top of one. I could be nit-picky and say that the engine-braking isn't as pronounced as say an I4, but really that's just a testament to how linear the engine output is, in either accelerating or decelerating. For you to fault that, you'd have to be one of them riders who swears by needing to have "character" in your bike. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there's nothing wrong with this either.

Regarding the migration to an upright bike after many years on supersport ergonomics, it did take me a few seat time and riding types to get accustomed to it, and was a good reason why I wanted to do a shakedown in the twisties. It's given that you get more wind-resistance at freeway speeds, but I was more concerned with the spatial sense of being upright - going into corners and tipping the bike to its side where I then use my peripheral vision as a tool to determine how much I'm leaning in relation to the ground. Riding an upright bike has always made me feel like I'm leaning more than I need to, at the very least because my head's so high up to begin with. Yesterday's 3-4 hour shakedown through the twisties really helped me get acclimated to the riding style needed to ride upright, and I eventually figured out the proper BP I ought to be adopting when riding spirited on the Cripple. I do want to say that it really helped to get my upper body down and forward to really help load the front-end; prior to doing this, the Cripple's front end always felt light to me when leant over, and I didn't like that feedback. The bike also benefited from having a lower-profile (it's amazing what a few millimeters can do), but wider (Renthal) handlebars; the low-profile pretty much shifts more of my weight forward to plant the front end, and the wide stance lightens up the steering due to more leverage. I highly suggest this upgrade if you want even quicker-steering for your upright bike.


Upright and wide - I feel and look like I'm flying while flexing my upper body.
Them CRG bar-end mirrors are the bee's knees and tits though, I underestimated them!
Apart from these two traits I've written about, and an inherently more plush suspension than my R1 (still need to have the Cripple's suspension set up for me), it's just like riding any other supersport. Yes I know I've pointed out how much more gentlemanly in composure the Cripple is, say compared to my R1, but the sheer fun factor you could get out of it is just the same as what you would get from a supersport. I wouldn't be surprised if its strengths drop off when I ride it 'round a track, but for real world purposes - everything from commuting to weekend jaunts to short stints - the Cripple is a great bike to be on. I always said that every motorcyclists ought to also own a truck. Well, I might also start saying that every motorcyclist who rides the street ought to own a triple.


The R1 was already relegated to weekend riding after buying this, but after
yesterday's twisty jaunt, it was in hot water of becoming an actual garage queen...

I give my 12-year old Cripple three thumbs up.

(and maybe another couple for the pair of bug-eyed headlights, cause they do a great job of deflecting wind! )

Posing for a Cause

At The Aneurysm and AVM Foundation's 6th Annual Awareness walk in Fort Mason in San Francisco, which was the first time I was able to come out in support.

Following photos by the event photographer:




She was a volunteer and a motorcyclist; said that she was
going to send photos of the bike to her brothers back
home who road race. Very cool to know she was a road
racing fan herself! :)
Beautiful day for a good event, with a lot more turnout than I actually expected, and I met a good number of people who either enjoyed the bike, or were motorcycling enthusiasts themselves, which was very cool. :)


Accompanying poster I made.

Here's to hoping many more years in participation!

A Bedtime Story I Could Tell My Child

(Also known as Thunderhill 04.18.2011)

Sit down kidlet, and let me tell you a story.


Now as you know, your Uncle Trung and I pay an exorbitant amount of money to get ourselves killed, possibly engulfed in a raging ball of fire at over a hundred miles per hour, or what is more commonly known as a motorcycle trackday. Now there usually isn't anything out of the norm whenever we do our trackdays, we just go there, gear up, turn the key on our missiles, and go around as fast as we can while staying in one piece at the end of it.

But on this particular day, there was just strangeness all over.


When you see something strange and unusual on track,
raise your hand to let everyone else know.
The strangeness started with the weather, with the track overcast but dry from the previous night's rain. Then within the next hour the track was soaked in another bout of rain.


I had never jet-ski'd before, but a Hustler in the land is a Hustler in the water, if you know what I mean.


Then, within the next hour, it was Spring! Your Uncle and I managed to get a handful of dry laps before the clouds, and eventually the rain, came again.


But just before the rain came again, IT happened.


You see, your Uncle Trung came up to me and told me, "I'm going to follow you on video, so do about sixty to sixty-five percent of your pace." To which of course, I had said, "Ok."


So the next session we go out to, I rode like I said I would. I came back to the pits after a handful of laps or so, but your Uncle Trung was already there, even though I never saw him pass me.


"What was that?!" Uncle Trung asked, to which I replied, "What?"


"I lost you just halfway through the warm-up lap!" So we decided to do it again in the following session. "Remember: SIXTY to SIXTY-FIVE PERCENT only," Uncle Trung insisted, which once again I duly noted.


So we did another session, and I periodically checked with my peripheral vision to make sure Uncle Trung was behind me. Everytime I looked, Uncle Trung was in touch.


We did this for nearly a handful of laps, wading through on-track traffic. But then, unbeknownst to me, your Uncle Trung decided to attempt a pass on me around the outside of Turn 2. He had been sizing me up the whole time he was following me, trying to set up a pass on me on Turn 2.


So I dived into Turn 2, your Uncle Trung still in tow. But your Uncle Trung then tried to carry enough corner-speed to go around me, leaning the bike more and more to compensate and try to make his ill-advised passing attempt.


Uncle Trung leaned and leaned, and per his words to himself, "(Fruit) yeah, keep on leaning!" He leaned and leaned, until his front-end folded on him, front tire losing grip and therefore losing contact from the tarmac.


Uncle Trung and his bike slid, heading off the track. Upon hitting the dirt, Uncle Trung and his bike then started an acrobatic competition against one another.


The bike won on sheer acrobatic technicality like it was NEVER going to be outdone.


Tail stands, head stands, no stands - it pulled it off with vicious tenacity numerous times until it landed down to graceful halt.


Your Uncle Trung got up to his feet, having conceded defeat for the second time in a matter of seconds.


He walked to congratulate his machine, the true sport that your Uncle always is.


Don't worry kids, Uncle Trung was safe and sound. But he was VERY MAD for having TURNED ON the camera prior to the session, but not hitting the RECORD button!



So to this day your dad still has no decent video of himself on the track, and your Uncle Trung has yet to pay a higher price for being so duplicitous than he did that day.

So what is the moral of the story? :)