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? :)

Bigger. Better. More Badass

I'm back on green. :)


Just picked up that bad boy above, at a price that practically had the seller paying ME to buy it. Other than dancing with DMV to get its license plate back, the bike is aces.

And I love how reminiscent it is of my very first bike, albeit better in every way!


First bike - 2006 Kawasaki EX500

Fashionista

Here's Rusty, moments from his first appearance for the Peninsula Human Society's annual Fashion for Compassion animal fashion show held over the weekend.



Of course he'd be smiling that wide. He looked as dapper as I do! :)

Heartbreaker

Well, what'd you expect?

He does takes after me. :)

A Couple of Old Flames

Altamont Pass and Patterson Pass.

These two roads used to be my stomping ground when I was still a newbie. Never any traffic, and the scenery was always worth the ride there.

Since it was sunny out today, I decided to revisit them, as it's been months since I last went there.


There's good news and bad news with Altamont Pass. Apparently, since I last did the road, its slightly bumpy section got a major repave, starting at the second underpass heading eastbound, all through the end. That's the good news, cause basically, this fast road is even faster now with the repave.

Bad news is that the speed limit remains at 55mph. So whereas you could be 20-30mph over the speed limit prior to the repave, you can now find yourself easily over 30-40, even 50mph over the speed limit, easily.

Meanwhile, Patterson Pass never fails to make you back off the throttle and just admire its scenery.


I swear, you don't ride Patterson Pass for the thrill of the bends; you ride it whenever you start wondering what it must feel like to ride a motorcycle on a paved road in Tolkien's Middle Earth.

Rusty. Snow.

Rusty hates snow, if you couldn't already tell from his body language in the photo below.


Belle has always wanted to take Rusty to snow for his first time, and we were going to drive to the Sierra's for the snow, but the local mountains here in the Bay Area actually had their bouts with the snow, so we simply took him up Highway 35 between Saratoga and Los Gatos.



Made quite for a hairy drive on my two-wheel drive Ranger with no load in the bed. :)

Stage 2

While the rest of the country has been marred with the debilitating winter climate, us Californians have been spoiled by uncharacteristic Spring weather in the last month or so. Of course, I had to take advantage and bring the R1 out as much as I can! Next week's looking to be another bout of a somewhat Spring weekend, then the winter rain should be coming.

Until then, I gave the bike a deserved Stage 2 wash; washed the individual fairings off the bike, as well as around the engine as needed.


Don't ask me what a Stage 3 wash entails. :)

Speaking of second stages, with the pleasant success of the TAAF bike project I took upon last year, I've since been thinking of ways to evolve from that this coming season. The bike's been getting the attention I had hope it would, and day by day I'm hoping that more and more people are burning the letters T-A-A-F in their brain, inevitably associating it with the Foundation. For every person that's asked me what T-A-A-F stood for, was another person that had previously never heard of The Aneurysm and AVM Foundation.

So this season, I have two tentative plans to create awareness for TAAF, and maybe even raise funds.

First was an inspired effort from my friend Pete Leist; in hopes to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Pete did an endurance ride around Thunderhill Raceway, raising funds by collecting pledges from people to match evey lap/mile that he did with a particular dollar amount. I thought it was genius. For me, it wouldn't be but just another regular trackday that I would do, but by finding pledges to match every mile or lap that I did, every mile or lap that I used to do for pleasure would now be put to good use. Much like what I did with my bike, this was another way of taking something that I personally enjoyed and was for my personal gain, and turn it into something more objective.

Secondly, which really parallels the fundraising trackday effort, is to hold a motorcycle group ride to raise funds and create awareness for TAAF. My weekends usually consist of volunteering stint to lead/sweep a group ride; it was part for-pleasure, and part paying it forward by providing some time and perhaps what little riding know-how I have with other riders, particularly the newer ones. It's not uncommon for someone to hold a fund-raising group ride, and I've actually participated and volunteered for one as well for my friend Jenn Barrett in her efforts towards Cystic Fibrosis. The plan is to hold a group ride just like any of the ones I've volunteered in. Everyone is welcome to participate, if not just to ride as their show of solidarity for the cause and effort. I thought though, that to give riders further incentive to participate and perhaps donate, is to offer up custom TAAF arm sweatbands in exchange for a minimum donation. These armbands will then be worn by those who donated throughout the ride, as a badge of their honorable intentions, and as a show of their true, generous colors. I've contacted a manufacturer of custom armbands, and as long as I can front the funds to order in bulk, the armbands will tentatively look like this:



For now, I'm fairly certain of the fundraising trackday, as it's going to be an individual effort on my part, so logistically, it's the easier of the two. Either way, I just need to hear back from the foundation to make sure they have no qualms about it, and for any information I might need to know as I've never done any kind of fundraising before.

Escalation.

It's not always a bad thing, eh? :)