When: May 25, 2002
Where: NHIS, Loudon NH


Friday 5/26/02
It took me 4 hours to get from Boston to Loudon NH, as this is the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.  Got to the track around 7pm.  Paid my deniros, went in and found a garage to share.  Met up with some of the 125 crowd.. Craig and I went and had a bite to eat (thanks for dinner!) after I did some minor work on the bike.

Saturday 5/27/02
Got up and had a shower..  Found registration after about 7.. the prices for USCRA went up.  It cost $110 for me to register for 1 8-lap race (last year it was $80 for a 12-lap race plus qualifier!).  We had two practice rounds scheduled...but I should have gone out for the slow practices as well just to get my money's worth.

We were in race 8, which ended up happening around 2pm.  Got the tire warmers off at the checkered flag, went out to pregrid and waited.  And waited.  And waited.   As it turns out, someone's vintage bike poured a pile of oil out of their transmission breather all the way around the track.  There was so much oil, they were shovelling the speedy-dry (aka "fairy dust") out of barrels off the back of a pickup truck.  Since the breather was on the left side of the bike, it got into a lot of the left handers..  The exit of 12, entrance to 1 and exit of 2 were covered in oil and powder.  I guess the bike ran out of oil after T2?  There was a little in T3 as well.  While we waited on the grid for the cleanup to happen, everyone put their bikes against a wall or fence, took off their helmets, and hung out.  I even had time to run to the bathroom (*that's* a first)  !  Eventually we got out there.  I got a great start, but managed to stuff myself behind a few people, and the crowd went around me.  For most of the race I  was by myself.. though I did manage to dice with a person or two in the beginning of the race.  I had one scary moment when the front end pushed hard in T3, but the race was otherwise fairly pucker-free.  I ended up 8th out of 9 people.  I had spent the race and morning practices fixing some trouble areas, so I felt like I had accomplished what I needed.   I was pretty happy.