When: October 7 - 9, 2005
Where: Gingerman

John and Tammy Dempsey invited me out to ride John's backup bike at Gingerman.  I was running 4th in the Infinity 125gp championship and had a good chance at 3rd place for the season.  They were driving down with John Crook and were bringing the bikes anyways, so I agreed to head out and got the arrangements made.

Thursday 10/6
Took a flight out of Boston Thurs night, got a car in Chicago and drove to Michigan. Met up with John, Tammy and John Crook at the hotel.  We hung out for a while. Eventually we got some sleep.

Friday 10/7
Got the track Fri am and set up. 12-7 open track practice. The only problem was that it was 48 degrees and cloudy.  The tires on the bike were pretty beat up, so after the first practice I managed to borrow a set of wheels with some lesser-used Bridgestones (I usually use Dunlops and didn't want to burn the new set I had lined up).  The first turn after pit out (T3), I ended up on the ground.  Absolutely no warning. I got on the brakes before the corner, got off the brakes, leaned the bike over and next thing I know I'm sliding across the pavement. I hadn't even turned the throttle.  It was a bit humorous though.. since I was on John's bike and he was right behind me at the time *laugh*.  I only bent a clipon and collected some dirt, so I got the bike back to the pits, got it fixed and finished out the day without furthur incident.

We went out for some dinner, went back to the hotel, and I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.

Saturday 10/8
Sat was even colder than Fri.. 45 degrees and cloudy.  I skipped morning practices and went out in the afternoon with new rubber. I was slow, and didn't feel productive, but I got the tires scrubbed in.  We finished up around 3 and went back to the motel to get a hot shower, and got some dinner, etc.  Another good night of sleep.

Sunday 10/9
We had an 8:50 practice session followed by a 9:15 qualifier. What I want to know is, who the hell thinks it's a good idea to qualify for a gp race in Michigan in the middle of October at 9:15am !?  It was cold, but luckily the sun had decided to come out in full force.  I tried to make the morning practice as productive as possible, since I hadn't felt like I had gotten in too many good laps.  I qualified OK.. 5th out of 14 or so people.  I was still way off the pace, but apparently so was everyone else.

We were up around 12:30, and it was a bit wamer.  I got a great start and went into T1 with the front row..  I was in 5th and got passed.  On the 3rd (perhaps 2nd?) lap, the rider who passed me made a mistake coming out of T1 (2nd gear left hander), so I went inside him and got on the gas.  T2 is a long late apex sweeper.. I got on the gas hard to stay in front of him, but got on it too hard too soon and ran out of racetrack.  I went off into the grass pinned in 3rd gear.  I shut it down and got on the rear brake, but I was running out of runoff, so I had to get on the front brake.  This isn't what you would normally do in the dirt/grass, and the bike got all out of control and pitched me off to the left.  Crap.  Second crash of the weekend.  I was worried, because all I really needed to do was get a decent finish and I would have 3rd wrapped up for the season, and here I was lying face down in the dirt.  I picked up the bike, pulled out all the grass and dirt, whacked the clutch lever back into place and got it started.  *whew*  I took off, and after a bit of sliding from dirty wheels, I managed to get back to lap times I had been running.   Unfortunately, the crowd was long gone (and I got lapped) but I managed to hold it together to finish 12th.

My finish was good enough for me to hold onto 3rd for the season, so I finally get a national/expert championship podium finish!

Special Thanks to:  John & Tammy for the bike, and of course them and John Crook for the great company.