The Riderman Chronicles
As some of you may or may not know, my line of work is rather
interesting. It’s downright hilarious if you consider that I’m
someone who spent the better part of his college years fitting as much
pot smoke and beer as was humanly possible into my sizeable
frame. When I wasn’t engaged in those activities, I was busy
reading ancient novels and plays or writing slightly informed essays on
literature hundreds of years old.
Now,
roughly 6 years and 700 miles later, I’ve found out what most kids out
of college do just after they leave the halls of academia: Of all the
things you study in school, roughly .05% of it will be applicable in
your everyday, adult life.
Most
days you’ll find me doing any number of things around my office that
are in no way related to the academic experience I received while I was
in school. Mainly, I busy myself with typical, administrative
type stuff. I answer phones, I take orders and I talk to the
various distributors of our products. I, as my “title” so aptly
puts it, direct sales. On any given day, I might also be
manufacturing the product we sell in a number of ways, either by
running the CNC milling machine that cuts the billet aluminum we use to
house electronics or by assembling those electronics in one way or
another.
Aside
from all that non-English-major type stuff, my job as of late has
gotten even less literary and analytical. In addition to
manufacturing the timing equipment we sell to amateur, club series
racers and motor sports enthusiasts all across America, we also have a
small motorcycle road racing team.
As
the 2004 season came to a close this past November, we were faced with
a mounting budget to keep the team afloat and stay in business at the
same time. Cuts had to be made and, ultimately, it was decided that
the full-time mechanic we had traveling to all the events keeping the
bikes running during race weekends was just too expensive and we let
him go.
Now,
as the 2005 season is beginning, the mechanic’s departure means I’ve
somehow managed to land myself in the thick of all this racing
madness… Me, the consummate C student… Me, the guy who can barely
even change a flat tire and has used Cliff’s Notes only to find that
Thoreau is still immensely confusing… Me, the consumate, all-around
klutz. I have somehow, in addition to my everyday, office-bound
self, become a miniature Crew Chief and will travel with the team to
all the various events to help keep everything in order.
I
say “miniature” because I really know no more than most of you about how a motorcycle actually works. Fill it with gas,
turn it on, sit down, twist the throttle and it goes. True, I am
learning more and more each day, but I still find myself asking dumb
questions or describing pieces of the motorcycle as “that springy
thing” and “that bar dealy” when I don’t know the proper name.
Ask me for a wrench, and I’ll probably hand you any number of different
things, a screwdriver or pliers or an allen. Ask me for a 10mm
wrench and I’ll probably just start crying.
Over
the course of the next 9 months, I will travel to approximately 25
different race events scattered all over the country from Alabama to
New Hampshire. Whether there is any interest in our exploits as a
team remains to be seen, but I spoke with Nacho and will try to
maintain a column of sorts about our many trials, tribulations and
(hopefully) victories over the course of the 2005 season.
The
inaugural race for us this year was a combined 4-day event at Daytona
Super Speedway in Florida. Going into it, we were facing a number
of hurdles varying in severity. Firstly, Daytona is the only
NASCAR track that we will race on all year, meaning close walls, banked
turns and massive straightaway where speeds upwards of 180 miles an
hour are possible. Included in this straightaway is the turn that
cut Dale Earnhardt’s life short. The track itself was probably
the biggest and most threatening aspect of the weekend. Secondly
came the fact that our rider, (known henceforth as Riderman), had never
been on this track before in his life. Thirdly, we are riding on
a different, structurally suspicious brand of tire this year and,
fourthly, there’s me… Klutzman.
Going into it, we were all just
a big bundle of nerves. Can we do this? Can we get
everything right? Will everything fall into place? Can we
remember everything?
I
suppose I should backtrack a little bit here and give you an idea of
what, truly, was my very first weekend working on the
motorcycles. Somewhere in the middle of the season last year, I
began going to racetracks around the Atlanta area with the team.
Initially, it was vacation time for me and filled my weekends with some
excitement. I’d been to many races, but hadn’t actually done
anything more than hand tools to people or wrap warmers around the
tires. On one particular weekend we were in Alabama at Talladega
(Little Talladega, not the famous one) and my brother, Spanky, had come
along to see what this whole “racing” thing I constantly yammered on
about was like.
It
was a Thursday. Thursdays and Fridays on race weekends are always
practice days. Days are divided into 15 minute segments of track
time for each particular class of motorcycle. First, there are
the 600cc Novices, followed by 600cc Experts, then 750cc and up
Novices, 750cc and up Experts, etc. They give the teams the
opportunity to go out and run laps, then tinker with the bikes so that
they can get gear ratios set and suspensions tuned just the way they
like them. Any kinks the motorcycles may have are worked through
during these days. This Thursday, with my brother watching,
Riderman and the mechanic, having the bikes set where they wanted them,
decided to show me how to change a front tire.
Really,
changing a front tire is much easier than you’d think. The front
tire on a motorcycle has two large brake rotors on either side with
brake calipers attached around the top of each rotor. First, you
unfasten the brake calipers, then unscrew the main axle and afterwards
the tire comes right off. After some brief instruction from the
two, I did this. I did this extremely gingerly. I did it in
roughly 5 times the amount of time it takes a normal person, but I did
it and I was proud. My brother watched and, secretly, I think he
was clapping on the inside.
With
the old tire off, it was time for the new tire to go on. I slid
it into position, stuck the axle back through and tightened it.
Then I re-attached the brake calipers, spun the tire around a few times
to make sure nothing exploded and told Riderman and the mechanic that
they needed to look over my work to see that I’d done everything
correctly. Everything appeared to be in order, they patted me on
the back and I was officially the proudest person at the track.
I
was amazed at myself. Here I was in a place doing a thing that, 3
years prior, I never could have possibly imagined I was even capable of
doing. The fact that I’d just changed a tire and was officially
learning to put a wrench to a race vehicle made me immensely
proud. Prouder even than I’d been after getting an A on my 25
page Senior Seminar paper comparing Edmund Spenser’s Faerie
Queene to The Matrix (and it was a killer
paper). That immense sense of pride and wonder lasted
approximately 10 minutes.
When
Riderman took the bike out on the track and started racing it around,
everything appeared to be in order, but it most definitely was
not. You see, what Riderman and the mechanic had
neglected to tell me or check for themselves is that anytime you remove
brake calipers from a tire, be it the front or the back, they get
spread out a little bit. As a result, when the new tire is put
back on the bike, the pads aren’t actually touching the brake rotor;
there is a little bit of space. So, anytime you futz with brakes
(and this goes for cars too), once they’re back in place, the brakes
need to be pumped so that the pads are resting on the rotor. The
process of changing tires had become second nature to them and they’d
underestimated my prowess as an English major completely incapable of
understanding the mechanics of a brake pad on a rotor.
Needless
to say, Riderman’s pads were not resting on his rotors and he found
this out at about 120 miles an hour going into a turn when he squeezed
the lever and got nothing but thin air in response.
Fortunately
for us, there were 200 feet or so of flat grass off that particular
turn, so he was able to keep the bike upright as he careened off the
track and into a pasture. In the end, he was no worse for the
wear. When he came off the track, I had no idea that I’d done
anything wrong, but when he told me that my minor oversight was nearly
catastrophic, I was devastated. I had no idea that something so
small, something that I hadn’t thought to check — something I didn’t
even know to check — could have such disastrous repercussions on the
track. He just shrugged it off and laughed because, hey, he
hadn’t crashed, so no harm no foul.
But,
going into Daytona, this incident was all I could think about.
I could only think of the things I didn’t know about. Every time
I touched the motorcycle, I looked for things to squeeze or tighten
afterwards. I read motorcycle manuals and studied engine
mechanics, reading things about piston movement, combustion and
top-dead-center that I can’t possibly begin to understand. At
Daytona, there are no 200 feet of flat grass to pad a mistake, there is
only an unforgiving 33 degree banked turn met with concrete walls on
all sides, everywhere you look. Forgetting to squeeze a lever or
tighten a bolt at Daytona has dire consequences.
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