The Riderman Chronicles: Part II
We arrive in Daytona around 3am on Thursday morning. Riderman
has long since gone to bed. It’s customary on these kinds of
trips for
him to go to sleep around 10 or so because we’re always conscious of
the fact
that he has to ride in the morning.
Generally I stay awake and keep Riderdad company while he drives the RV
to wherever it is that we’re going.
After a quick 3 hours of sleep in a Wal Mart parking lot,
it’s time to wake up, head to the track, and find our spot in the pits. Parking in the pits is very similar to mall
parking in that it is first come, first served. If you arrive late, you’re saddled with a crappy pit spot far
away from the track, and you end up paying for it all weekend long come
practice or qualifying or race time.
This is doubly so at a place like Daytona where you might have to travel
upwards of half a mile to get to the race grid.
In America, the two large club series of racing are the Club
Championship Series (CCS) and the Western Eastern Racing Association
(WERA). Both host small regional events
all over the country as well as larger national events. CCS national events are known as the Formula
USA (F-USA) series. In either series,
the national championships are more sought after, they pay more money for a win
and the level of competition is about as high as you’ll see outside of AMA
professional racing. The prize purses
on some weekends are even enough to coax a few of the smaller AMA teams out to
the track to try and win. For those of
us whose teams don’t have significant factory support and who are on bikes that
don’t cost $50,000 or $60,000, this is referred to as “cherry picking” because
it’s no contest for the factory guys. If they’re at the track, chances are
they’re going to walk away with the $2,000 or $5,000 payout when they win the
race.
The two series are fairly similar, the larger of them being
CCS as it’s owned by Clear Channel.
Although it is a larger series, the events tend to be disorganized and
disheveled making them highly frustrating when it comes time to be out on the
track. The most important difference
between CCS and WERA events is the way they organize the starting grid for race
day. In any CCS race, the riders are gridded
in the order that they signed up to compete in the race and as a result, the
riders starting on the first row were the first to register for that event and
are not necessarily the fastest riders on the track. However, WERA grids their races based on how many points a rider
has, so the more races you’ve competed and done well in, the closer you’ll
start to the front. F-USA grids all
their events based on qualifying times posted during sessions held the day
before races. In this respect, F-USA is
a lot like AMA professional events.
But the grids are not what we’re thinking about when we
arrive at Daytona. Our goal for the
weekend is fairly simple: Just keep our
shit together the best we can. We still
aren’t sure what exactly to expect.
We’re having to do things to the bikes that even Riderman is not
entirely familiar with, and unfamiliarity when you’re on a tight schedule is
intimidating and scary. It is very
important that we get everything right if we want to keep the bikes rubber side
down.
Our problems at Daytona begin with the first races on
Friday. While we thought we signed up
early for the CCS races, we apparently had not, as Riderman was gridded back on
the 14th row. Not only does
this mean that Riderman has over 50 motorcycles in front of him from the get
go, it puts him at the back of the second wave of riders on the start. When there are more than 30 or so
motorcycles in any given race, they stagger the start so that there are only 15
raving lunatics screaming into the first turn at the same time instead of 45 or
50. This means that the second wave of
riders has to start the race a full 10 seconds behind the first.
Immediately, I am not at ease. I know Riderman and I know how
he gets in these situations. In a race with only 12 laps, he’s
got a
limited amount of time to work his way through the slower riders and up
towards
the front of the pack into positions where he’ll finish with a
payout. I know as I watch him wrenching the throttle
on the grid that this is exactly what he’s thinking as well.
He’ll take chances and ride as hard as he
can.
The race begins, the pack tears off and, for the next minute
and a half, as the dust settles around us, I’m standing clutching my
stopwatch, looking at bare race track. We all stand and listen to
the whine of the
bikes as they zig zag through the course behind us. During any
given race, I’d say we probably get to witness about a
minute’s worth of actual racing and the rest of the time we’re just
trying to
hear the announcer’s call as he watches the pack move through the
course. We also have to keep an eye on the flags so
that we know if there’s been an accident.
First lap complete, I spot Riderman coming out of NASCAR 4
at over 180 miles an hour. He explained
to me earlier in the weekend that the force of gravity is so greatly magnified
because of the high speed on that banked turn that trying to keep his chest off
the gas tank strained his back muscles and caused all of the blood to rush out
of his head. Being dizzy at that speed
is never a good idea, so he decided after his first time out to rest his chest
on the tank rather than face the dizzyness.
When I spot him, he’s tucked down low underneath the windscreen and he’s
following the draft of a chain of bikes through the tri-oval and then he is
gone for another minute and a half.
He’s moved from fifty-some-odd into 24th or 25th. In the first lap alone, he’s passed about 30
bikes. Seriously… this guy is
fast. Eventually, Riderman would finish
the race in 7th place.
The following race was when it happened. When it does happen, it’s one of those
feelings that you never quite get used to.
It’s an uneasy rock that forms at the pit of your gut. You’ll be standing on pit wall and, every
minute or so, the field zips by and ,for a few brief seconds, we get a glimpse
of Riderman. If he’s battling for a
position, it sometimes takes several glimpses to see that, yes… he’s catching up! Or sometimes it’s “He’s losing
him and needs to speed up!” Our senses
of perception as to how a race is going are limited to two things: The brief
glimpses we see of our rider and the times we’re reading on the stopwatches we
have in hand. We’re using both of them
to the best of our ability.
Sometimes when it happens, it’s right in front of you and
it’s like being sucker punched squarely in the stomach. More frequently than not, it happens the way
it did in that second race at Daytona and it’s hard to tell which is worse. You watch him turn laps for a while and then,
poof, suddenly you see the guy he was chasing, but there’s no Riderman behind
him. Something’s happened… maybe he
just went into a turn too fast and is lagging behind. You linger at the wall for a little bit, hoping that he’s going
to come around that turn eventually.
Soon, it’s a good 30 or 40 seconds past the time when he should have
gone by and that’s when it’s pretty certain: He crashed.
We start to mill around and we can’t hear anything coming
from the announcer and the race hasn’t been red flagged, so it must not be a
bad crash, right? While Riderdad continues milling about the
pit, I run back to the race trailer to see if a crash truck has pulled up with
Riderman and his bike. I round the corner
and relief briefly washes over me.
There’s Riderman standing next to his crashed bike. He is standing. His limbs are intact. He
is awake and aware. Immediately after
that, it’s: What did I do? What did I
forget? The front end of the motorcycle
is pretty much destroyed. The steering
damper is bent. What didn’t I
squeeze? The brake lever is bent into
some kind of perverted J shape. The
bodywork is all but destroyed. What
didn’t I tighten? The wind screen is
gone. The exhaust can is dented and the
entire machine is now filled with Florida sand.
Also, Riderman thinks he may have broken his foot and
possibly his hand… he can barely even stand up straight. But, he’s okay… he’s alive and he’s not
being carted away in the flashy bus. I
rush to the pits to find Riderdad and let him know everything’s okay.
Injuries sustained in a crash are sometimes slow to indicate
how severe they actually are. The
adrenaline can sometimes mask serious bone breaks for 10 or 15 minutes, so it’s
no surprise when Riderman slowly begins to become more and more
incapacitated. Eventually, he is unable
to walk. He decides that he’s injured
badly enough to sit out all his races and practice sessions the next day and
spend that time getting the bikes back into shape.
When Saturday rolls around, Riderman’s feeling better,
although he has a pronounced limp. We
scrounge around the pits for a new fairing stay (the aluminum piece up front
that holds the instrument cluster and windscreen in place) and get the bike
back together the best we can. In the
past, we’ve used Bic pens and electrical tape to keep the front end together,
so Friday’s damage proves just a minor inconvenience. The parts that are too damaged on the 600 to repair or find
replacements for are the brake lever and the upper piece of bodywork, so we
decide that there is enough time between the races on Sunday to swap the
functional parts from the 750 back and forth between both bikes.
And so it was for the rest of the weekend. I installed an exhaust system on the 750 and
crossed every goddamn finger and toe I had when he went out on the track with
it Miraculously, we qualified and got a 6th and a 7th
place in the races on Sunday. Heading
home, we were definitely proud of ourselves.
We’d made it through the weekend and had made top 10 showings in all the
races we were able to compete in. Not
too shabby… now it was time to focus on round two in Jennings, Florida at
Jennings GP.