When: June 12 - 16, 2003
Where: NHIS

Thursday 6/12
I decided late Wed evening to go do promoter's practice at NHIS before the weekend.  I had left the racebike in Rick's trailer from last weekend's LRRS races, so I packed my tools and spares etc in teh van along with my street bike and went up early in the morning.  Got to the track around 7:30am, got everything set up for the weekend and got registered for practice.  They were charging $150 for all day practice, and had seven practice groups in each rotation.  Since I was eligible for two practice sessions, I signed up for both of them.  There weren't enough people to run all seven sessions, so they combined them into four sessions, and I ended up running 40 minutes on track, and 40 minutes off track.  It worked out really well.  I spent the day working on T1 and T6, since those are my weakest spots right now.  The first session had two of us on the track, and by the end of the day there were still no more than 15 or 20 people in a session at one time.  The weather was really good and it ended up being a productive day.  After practice, we went to the front to register for the weekend, and then I rode the Ducati back home as I had to work Friday.

Friday 6/13
Left work on the Duc around 4pm.  The traffic sucked, as did the weather.   I did a little lane splitting, but not too much.  Since it's bike week I figure the cops are on a rampage to bust bikers, so I kept it pretty mellow.  It took me about 3 hours to get to the track, and my wrists were pretty sore once I got there.   I haven't really put any miles on the streetbike in a couple years, and forgot how tough the Duc is at slow speeds.  I got to the track just in time to see burgers etc coming off the grill.  Perfect timing!  Judy had taken the initiative to put black numbers on the bike for the national, so that saved me a ton of time (thanks Jude!).

Saturday 6/14
Happy Flag Day!!  Since it had spent most of Friday night raining, the track was green and damp, but there was very little standing water.  I skipped the first practice I was supposed to be in (for GTL) but went out for the second practice (Can-Am125).  It was pretty slick, so I just meandered around at a snails pace and worked off the cobwebs.  Near the end of practice I got passed in T11 by Brian Yoo on his 125, who gave it a little too much squirt, and he high-sided right in front of me.   He and his bike ended up barrel rolling about three inches in front of me, but I managed to keep it together enough to not run him or his bike over.  Brian ended up being OK after the crash with just a bruised hand.

GTL
Since I didn't go out in GTL practice, I didn't get a qualifying time.  However, there was a computer glitch and the organizers lost all of the practice times.  This meant they gridded by entry order, not practice times.  This worked out in my favor, and I ended up on the third row of the first wave.  I got a good start but wimped out in T1 (as always!).  I was riding a pretty good race when I came up on a guy on an MuZ Skorpion.  He was running 1:25 - 1:26 lap times, and I was running slightly faster.  For whatever reason, I couldn't get my act together enough to get around him, and since he would out-motor me on the straights I couldn't get him set up.  I ended up following him for most of the race.  Unfortunately, a good number of the people behind me ended up getting by, so I lost a lot of positions.  I finally got around him and put a significant distance between us, but it was the last lap so I had no chance of getting back to the crowd I should have been running with.  Oh well.

Sun 6/15
Happy Father's Day!!  I got up early, as the Can-Am 125 qualifying session was Sun qualifying was at 8:30 am.  I'm not so good for first session, so the fact that I had to qualify that early without a first practice bugged me, but c'est la vie!  I went out and ran some laps, then came in and took a break, and went out for a second attempt.   I qualified 25th on the grid out of 39 entries, with a best time in the 1:24's.

Can-Am 125 GP
I started on the right side of row 7.  The flag dropped and of we went.  I got an awesome start, and went into T1 with the front group.  I felt really good for the first few laps, and was being pretty aggressive with traffic.  A few laps into the race, I got passed by a group of three riders (Marshall, Brian and Angela) coming out of T12.  My bike just didn't pull with them.  I spent the next few laps playing the elastic band game.  They would pull me on the straight, and I'd reel them in through T1, 1a and 2, then I'd make up a ton of ground going through T3, etc..   No excuses though, I definitely needed to be going faster.  Several times I'd end up right on Marshall's tail, but his new(er) bike had serious legs!  Somewhere around the halfway mark I missed my downshift between T11 and T12, which killed me.  I put my head down and worked hard to catch back up to the group and had them back within reach after a few laps, when I made the same mistake *again* between T11 and T12.  I wasn't too happy about that !!!  I lost touch for good with the pack and set my aim on two of the Team Acid riders that the group had gotten past.  I was making up a lot of ground to catch them when the checkered flag came out.

Judy got taken out in T3 by Nodell on the 5th lap who was leading at the time.   She was bummed, but unhurt. Turu was apparently right behind me for the entire race, and chose not to take advantage of my mistakes (though he certainly should have!!).   Overall, it was a fun race.  The weather was perfect, and there were a lot of 125s on the grid.  I managed to click off a 1:23.4 and run consistent 1:24 lap times.   Congrats to Marshall who dropped 3 seconds and get down to 1:21  !!  The weekend was definitely worth the efforts.  Congrats also to Deb Barton who flew in from CA to ride Steve Scott's tz125.

Mon 6/16
I taught track day for Riverside Motorsports so I stayed at the track sun eve.  Kev Glick and I went out with a few people for dinner, and got back to the track around 12:30am.  I taught the morning on the Ducati and pulled the race bike out for the afternoon.  We had a couple instructor sessions, so it was a really fun day.   There were a couple crashes, but that usually happens on a track day.  I packed up my stuff and stopped off for dinner with Al and the gang (thanks for dinner Al!) and went home.  I fed the cat, unpacked my stuff and went to bed.  It was nice to be home after being at the track for so much time.