WAY TO GO NICKY!

I've known about Nicky Hayden (and his brothers) racing since 1993 when I saw them on 125's racing a WERA race in Kent, Washington on what is now Pacific Raceway. I've followed him since the very beginning of his Pro career in AMA. He started off in supersport on a privateer Suzuki and was then quickly grabbed up by American Honda. It didn't take Nicky long to see his first Supersport Championship while ridng Honda's CBR600F4i. He then moved up to the Superbike class on the Honda RC-51 alongside team mate Miguel Duhamel where he grabbed the Championship away from the potent Matt Mladin.

Entering MotoGP Nicky almost signed with Yamaha to ride the M1 before Honda again snatched him up and teamed him with Valentino Rossi on the RC211V. Nicky had a mixed start in MotoGP and has always caught a lot of grief from the world press because of this. Despite this Nicky has always been strong, and this year has ended for him with the best result possible. Nicky Hayden, from Owensboro, Kentucky is MotoGP World Champion!!!

Congratulations to you Nicky and to Honda!





Photo From Soup
Nicky wearing the number 1 plate he will run in 2007 while riding the 800cc RC212V in a test at Valencia.

Music of the moment?

That would be "OK Go"
I dig the style of thier video's too.




Ipmressive choreography to do in one take :)

This is great! Original concept and funny!

Battle of the Album covers

I recently found Samorost 2 on the net. The original Samorost game is still one of my favorite Flash games that I have ever played. The music and art in both games is phenomonal! After Playing it tonight I made a few destop wallpapers from the game. I'm now using the bulb picture myself. The wallpapers are at 1680x1050 Resolution for 16:10 Aspect ratio.

Enjoy the game Samorost 2

Wallpapers:
Bulb (above)
Bulb Interior
Ships of Samorost 2
Samorost 2 abode

Today was a busy day.
Let me start off by saying that I tend to be the type of person who procrastinates but can get a lot of things done, and done well, under pressure. Today proved that.

I fly out for the Unadilla, NY AMA Motocross in about 7 hours. This will bring my 3 weeks off to an official end. I'm looking forward to getting back on the road but wish that I would have done more projects w/ the time off. Not that I didn't do anything in the last 3 weeks. I've been pretty busy actually. I was in my best friends wedding, I've thoroughly cleaned and organized my garage. I finished putting both the ZX-6RR and the ZX-10R back to track readiness and took them both to a trackday. I've been hiking, working out, bike riding, and even got Melissa a bike so we could start biking together. Today alone I've been running errands like a madman and converted the ZX-6RR from trackbike to streetbike and managed to spend a few hours w/ Melissa bicycling. But here I sit at 12:09 AM about ready to fly out of town and I still haven't packed and I need to organize my riding stuff so that Cascade Tracktime can ship my bike down to Laguna Seca for me. It's a good thing I'm good under pressure and like being up late at night!

Anyways, with all that, I still managed to mess around tonight and make a short video clip of me converting the ZX-6RR from trackbike to streetbike.

So here it is, 21 seconds of fun!

Now then, I've got to go pack!

It's been far too long since I've posted anything here. Of course, a LOT has been going on with me over the last year! I'm happy to say that I'm doing pretty well these days. My body has healed pretty well and I'm back to working out on a regular basis and trying to get myself back into good physical shape. After listening to the doctors tell me that part of the reason I survived last years crash was because I was in good physical condition, I promised myself that I would never be out of shape again. I intend to keep up with that promise. Especially now that my body seems ready to tackle regular work outs again.

I'm going to try and post more regularly on here and it may be just day to day stuff, or racing stuff, but what ever it is, if you like it or just want to say something, feel free to leave comments!

futureshock "late at night"

Do the robot.

I've spent the last 10 days traveling. I was in St. Louis for Supercross and then Daytona for bike week and the Daytona 200. This was my first time doing bike week and I had a great time and it was awesome to see all the bikes and how big of a show the industry puts on in Daytona.

I spent some time working on the ZX-10 tonight also and as before, I have a movie to go along w/ the nights work. :)

Work Night 2 - 9.8Mb - 1:50 length

I picked up this years race bike monday and I've started working on getting it race prepped. Tuesday I took it to EDR Performance where we put it on the dyno to get a stock baseline run. I came away impressed with how much power the bike made and how smooth and linear the power delivery is. This is going to be a fun bike to ride. The handling is being handled by GP Suspension and Dave has the forks right now.

I put together a little movie of the work progress so far:
A Night in the Garage - 4.8 Mb .wmv video - 3 min.

I also have a short clip of the ZX-10R on the dyno making impressive power:
Dyno run - 2 Mb - 10 sec.

KawiForums.com

Here's a write up someone who did a track day on an '05 ZX-6R

I've put a littel bit of work into updating the site tonight.

2005 schedule is up
Sponsors page has been updated
For Sale page has been updated

I'm leaning towards racing a ZX-10R for 2005. Things are far from set in stone right now but it's promising to see a couple 2005 models roll off the dyno bone stock making over 156 rwhp! I've heard reports that w/ just an Akrapovic Race Exhuast on one it went to nearly 170 rwhp! Nice gains from just a pipe!

I've been pretty faithful at sticking to my training so far this year and I feel that I'll be ready for whatever the ZX-10R can dish out this year!

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth! I've been pretty busy lately. Melissa and I headed to Nepal for 3 weeks in early November and then I just recently started a new job. The Nepal trip was amazing and being back at work is...well...work!

I've updated the site a bit tonight. The Pictures page is now a real gallery w/ all the photo's from the past and also some new ones. Including the Nepal trip gallery. So be sure to check out the new galleries.

Off to Nepal

I'm off to Nepal for the next 3 weeks. Last weekends racing went pretty good w/ me getting the following finishes:

6th 750SS
7th 600SS
9th 750SB
9th 750SB

I'll post up a report of the race and the Nepal trip when I return near Thanksgiving!

Here's an update on things since it's been a while since I've posted much here.

After the crash I spent nearly 5 weeks just sitting on the couch w/ my foot elevated. Anytime it wasn't elevated it throbbed w/ pain so I really could do next to nothing. I couldn't even sit at a computer w/ out a lot of pain. I was getting by on my laptop for a couple weeks until it mysteriously dies one day and left me w/ no entertainment other than basic cable.

I pulled things together and started Physical Therapy a couple weeks after the crash and things have been progressing along pretty nicely. I'm finally to the point where walking seems normal but if I'm not carefull I still a bit of pain. I got off crutches just in time to work the Road Atlanta Superbike races though it was a bit of a struggle at the time. Then I flew out to Virginia for the VIR season final only to find out a half hour after I got off the plane that the round was canceled due to hurricane Ivan and I had to fly cross country AGAIN the next day. UGH!

Since VIR was canceled I decided I would race the OMRRA event that weekend. The weather was really back and forth w/ rain and sun for the weekend and after a wet Saturday teaching novice school, Sunday actually turned out mostly dry. I had some simple mechanical issues that kind of held me back from good results but it turned out to be a decent day none the less.
I'll have report posted shortly.

Other than that, I'm just working on building up some strength in my leg again and hoping my ankle will be ready for the 3 weeks I'll be spending in Nepal in November!

Crashing sucks!!!

Getting injured while crashing sucks even more.

As you might have guessed, today didn't go so well for me. It was a brief day for me. I missed my first session this morning while I removed the seat and tank to get to the plug to re-connect the fuel pump to it's power source. A simple oversight on my part that could have been avoided if I'd simply started the bike at any time in the 24 hours before my practice session started.

So, I made it out in the second session and spent the first few laps scrubbing in and warming up my tires. Alan Schmidt came by me and I figured I'd use him as a carrot since one of my goals this weekend was to get my lap times down a considerable margin. Alan was on his 1000 when he came by me on the brakes going into T7. My brakes were a bit soft this morning and I knew I would have to bleed them when I got back in but I decided to stick w/ Alan the best I could anyway. So I followed him thru 8 and 9 and of course he yarded me down the front straight to the tune of about 12-15 bike lengths and I got on the brakes a bit late and kind of scared myself a bit going into 1 because the bike just wouldn't slow down, but I tipped it in and trail braked it in pretty heavily, I carried a lot of the speed thru 1 and 2 and gained about 8 bike lengths on Alan by the time I came into T3. I tipped into T3 like I normally do and was again making up a bit of ground on Alan when the front end simply let loose. There wasn't a lot of warning when it went away and I had no time to react and I was sliding before I really new it.

When I hit the ground I must have snagged my right foot on the pavement in a bad way because I could instantly feel pain in my foot. When I stopped in the grass I tried standing up and my ankle was in a lot of pain. The turn workers were right there and Alex helped me hop off to the wall. I couldn't put any pressure on my foot w/ out a lot of pain so I caught a ride w/ the ASIT guys to the ambulance where the EMT's kind of looked at it and said get it X-rayed. So I caught a ride to my pit and iced my foot while I waited for Melissa to show up and give me a ride to the emergency room.

After a relatively short time at the ER the X-rays (thankfully!) revealed nothing was broken and I got the obligatory pain meds prescription and headed back to the track.

This is when I got my first look at the bike. The bike came out of the ordeal w/ only a few light scratches/scuffs on bodywork and a bent shift lever. Pretty amazing really! I'd like to thank Phillip Trujillo and his wife? gf? and Jason Bluth for helping me load everything up! I couldn't have done it w/ out your help guys.

As of this writing, some 15 hours later, I still can't put any pressure on the ankle w/ out serious pain so it looks like I won't be coming back to race for sunday. I'm pretty disappointed that I had to wait 14 weeks with no racing only to turn 3 laps and crash out and finish my weekend... at least I don't have a broken bike to fix up tho...

July 31, 2004 2nd Annual Oakridge Ride Photo Gallery

Last weekend was the 2nd Annual Oakridge ride organized off the sportbikes.ws website. This year we had around 35 riders on the trip down to Oakridge. It was another great year, the roads were incredible and the riding was fast and safe. Even w/ the large group we had this year we managed to keep the group fairly close together. Pretty incredible if you ask me. Unfortunatly we had 1 guy crash by himself on the return trip but luckily he was mostly uninjured (bruised and sore) and the bike was almost entirely cosmetic damage. We had a sweep truck following so he wasn't stranded for more than 5 minutes.

I'm glad to see that more people came this year. Last year was a blast w/ the 17 or so that went and when it was over we had a lot of people who were bummed they didn't go. We still had a lot of people who couldn't make it that will surely sign up next year. The link above goes to a picture gallery of the ride. Hope you enjoy it!

I've been busy the last week putting the engine back in my bike and going over everything else on the bike w/ a fine tooth comb. It's nice to not find anything wrong with a bike when you are going over it. I paid special attention to the cooling system as I have had issues w/ the bike running very hot in the past. I'm pretty sure that at one time, when the bike started to over heat, the water wetter was able to coat the inside of the radiator with a film and decrease it's cooling ablitities. So I flushed the whole cooling system out well and actually got a lot of gunk out of it.

I'll be able to test out if it worked tomorrow at the PSSR track day at PIR. I'm looking forward to riding again. Last time out for me was in early May and that was only for 5 laps.

Tomorrow will be a busy day for me. Not just because of the track day, but because as soon as it is over I board a plane to Brainerd, MN for the AMA Superbike round. Should be a fun weekend!

I'm currently in Elkhart Lake, WI at the Road America AMA round. Yesterday I was awake for over 40 hours. I had to take a redeye flight out of Portland to here and then the full day of work was long. But, surprisingly smooth and fast.

It's good to see the local racers down here. Alan Schmidt, Matt Zurbuchen, Nathan Hester, and Mike Sullivan have made the trip and all are doing pretty well. The races and qualifying tomorrow will be good. I'm just hoping the rain will stay away for the weekend. This place has some serious walls so I hope it stays dry.

This long break between races is killing me. 14 weeks between events is rediculous! At least I'm getting my fix iby at least being able to watch live racing w/ my new job. Working for AMA Pro Racing has turned out to be a great job so far. The last 2 events at Barber and PPIR have gone off really smoothly for us and I think I've picked up on everything pretty quickly. I'm really looking forward to finishing out the season with this job.

As far as my racing goes. My engine is still at EDR right now. I had to leave it there while I was gone for the last 2 AMA rounds and Eric was good enough to do what he could w/ it while I was gone. I'm hoping to have it back together and be riding it again in a couple weeks. I think I'll be putting it straight to street in 100% stock trim so that I can work on selling it to get the '04. If anyone is interested in an '03 ZX-6RR, drop me a line.

I've been in Brmingham, AL for the AMA Superbike races at Barber Motorsports park this past weekend and this weekend I'll be at Pikes Peak Int'l Raceway outside Colorado Spring, CO.

I'm looking forward to checking out the Pikes Peak Rwy. after witnessing first hand the Barber facilities. Monday I went back to the Barber Museum. WOW! What a great collection. I had a great time checking out the vintage bikes. The board track racers from the 1910's were especially interesting. I only had an hour to run thru the museum and next time I want at least 3+ hours to check it all out.

Last weekends races were great and I can't wait to check out PPIR.

Mountain Consolidated

A group of friends I grew up with that have been playing together for about 12+ years are in the studio recording a record and they have finally posted some of thier new stuff in the form of video clips from when they opened for "The Presidents of the United States of America" last month. Please check them out at http://www.mountainconsolidated.com/ and check out thier music.

I'm pretty excited to see them release new stuff and I'm sure one day you'll hear them on the radio.

3 Weeks has passed by quick!

My wife and I took off on our honeymoon for a couple weeks just days after the 1st race of the season and got back just days before the 2nd race of the season. Unfortunatly this left me w/ no time to get the tranny fixed so racing this last weekend was out of the question.

I spent tonight dropping the engine out of the bike and will be taking it in to EDR tomorrow to get the transmission fixed.

There is great news tho!

Kelly's Olympian and Pizza Schmizza have both agreed to sponsor Day One Racing. I'll have details up soon about both on the sponsor page.

Well alright!

The first race of the season is done with. It was a mixed afair for me. I felt I was running pretty good but my bike was having some shifting problems that was costing me time every lap.

So, the results are as follows

600SB - 8th
750SB - 13th

600SS - DNF
750SS - 13th

It's a decent start to the season but not really what I was looking for. The crash in 600SS really hurt my points but luckily not me. The bike survived for the most part.

I've put up some new pictures and will have more pictures and the race report up soon.

Good night ;)

The last week I've been busy prepping the the bike's bodywork for paint.
I got it shot this weekend so it's pretty much all ready to go now. I just need to put on the race numbers and some sponsor logo's and it's ready.

It'll be nice to be running a bike that is not primer grey this year ;)

Things are looking pretty dismal for me concerning this years racing efforts. I hate to say it, but this is the 11th hour and things aren't looking good.

I've got all the tools necessary to make a good assault on this years racing, just not the funds. At one point I was really hoping to be able to squeak in the first 2 OMRRA rounds and then play the rest of the season by ear. But with my current employment set to end in 3 weeks time and no immediate follow up job lined up yet...it's hard to plan on the outlay of cash necessary to go racing.

I NEED A SPONSOR!!

Bottom line... I'm bummin'....

I've gone thru the whole site tonight and removed old junk and cleaned up a few areas. The site has needed that for a while.

Sport Rider-2004 Kawasaki ZX-10R on the Dyno

Sport Rider has dyno charts of the ZX-10R making over 161 HP stock!
WOW!
Eric at EDR Performance just bought his own personal '04 R1 and put it on the dyno and it makes 156 HP stock. Still very impressive. But I can't wait for him to put a ZX-10R on his dyno for a real world comparison.

Welcome Back

You may have noticed that this site was down for a while. The Host for the sportbikesnw.com domain had a series of server problems and lost all the data for the site. Soooo...Day One Racing is back with an older backup that will be updated soon, and the Forums at www.sportbikesnw.com are up and running again and we are hoping to recover the posts.

Motorcycle Daily> ZX-10R track test

Motorcycle daily.com did a write up on the ZX-10R introduction from homestead raceway.

Badger Badger Badger

HAHA!
ahhh..snake!

AMASuperbike.com :: 2004 Kawasaki ZX10R Test

AMASuperbike.com has a review of the new ZX-10R. The story was from the World Press Introduction at Homestead Raceway near Miami Florida. They came away pretty impressed but were right when they said that a side by side comparison will be the only way to truly know which open classer is the best.

One bit that has me a tad concerned is the issue he spoke about upshipfting the bike into 4th gear while at speed. It seems an awful lot like the issues I have w/ my ZX-6RR on the back straight at PIR.
I hope Kawi sort this issue out.

New Boards for OMRRA and WMRRA

I am marking this day in history! Today is the first time I have ever seen my name on Roadracingworld.com! It may only be for an announcement of my position as Member at Large for OMRRA, which I am very happy about, but I'm hoping it will be only the first of many mentions on that site!

Well the Dunlop tire test at DIS has wrapped up and I for one was really consumed by the whole thing. I spent a lot of time looking at the live updated lap times provided by the AMA timing and scoring. I also was busy watching AMAsuperbike.com and roadracingworld.com for pics and story updates. WOW! A lot has happened in the past 3 days.

Kawasaki has shown a huge improvement on the '04 ZX-6RR with Tommy Hayden consistently going faster than anyone else on a supersport 600.
The ZX-10R was putting in impressive times and speeds at the speedway as well. I think superstock will be a very exciting class this year. Wish I could say the same about Superbike.

It looks like Honda's new CBR1000RR with its HRC magic will be a great package for the superbike class. Seeing speeds over 190 mph straight out of the box is amazing! Ben Boz may have a shot at a championship this year. His competition may be his brother on the Duc!

Yamaha seems to have taken what they learned from the R6 and motogp and rolled it into the R1. They were turning superbike times on thier superstock bike. The Kawi was even lagging behind it unfortunatly. Competition in the superstock class should be fierce!

The low point of the test was Jason Disalvo's rear tire failure at over 170mph on the banking. WOW. It was good to hear he faired better than Ben Spies slide down the track. It'll be interesting to see what comes of the recent tire failures at the speedway.

ZX-10R testing at Daytona

I had a great weekend. Friday night I went up to Seattle for the International Motorcycle show. I was lucky enough to make it into town in time to catch the movie Faster. Good show! I think I'll definatly be buying the DVD when it's released. The show was my first time at a large show like that. It was great fun to sit on all the bikes on the floor. The ZX-10R amazed me with it's small size and light weight! I REALLY want to race one next year now!

Speaking of racing ZX-10R's next year. Today is the start of the Annual Dunlop tire tests at Daytona. Attack Kawasaki is there with Roger Lee Hayden and Tommy Hayden and they have some superstock ZX-10R's circulating. This is going to be a GREAT year of racing!

Mladin Replaces Nicky at Joe Rocket

Looks like Joe Rocket didn't miss a beat. After announcing that Nicky Hayden would no longer be one of thier supported riders, Joe Rocket has announced a 2 part deal with Mat Mladin. Mat will both wear the leathers, and be the official distributor of Joe Rocket in Austrailai thru his import business Mat Mladin Imports (MMI)

Let's hope that Joe Rocket can come up w/ some better looking leathers than the AGV's Matt's been wearing the last few years!

ROCKET AND NICKY CHASE DIFFERENT FUTURES

Looks like Nicky Hayden will not be flying the Joe Rocket banner anymore. I've always liked seeing Nicky supporting a US company w/ his apparel. It's kind of a shame they are parting ways.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

AMASuperbike.com :: McCoy or McWilliams for Aprilia?


Hmmmm...

I'd like to see either of those guys on the Aprillia next year.
Though, I think it sucks that McWilliams will get tossed to make room for Kurtass Roberts.

Put the lil Roberts in WSC and see how he does before moving him to MotoGP is my feeling...but then, if I had a dad running a MotoGP team, I'd try to get on too!

MotoGP Crashers

Here's a quick tally of the crashers in the MotoGP season.

Haga leads with 17 crashes for the season.
MotoGP champion Valentino Rossi had 1 crash in over 80 hours time on the bike.

Both of these numbers are impressive! Haga for still being in one piece and Rossi for superb mastery over the RC211v!

Here is a link to a GREAT MotoGP highlight clip from the '03 season:

http://images.motograndprix.com/multimedia2/258/258236.wmv

If you've been reading the MC industry news lately you've surely noticed that Eric Bostrom and Kawasaki have officially split and Ben will be riding a Michelin shod Ducati 999 next year in AMA Superbike.

While I was sad to see E Boz leave Kawi when they have the new ZX-10R next year, I can't say that I blame him for leaving when they decided to not run it in Superbike. What a disappointement coming from Kawasaki. They release a brand new open class bike and they are going to run Superstock only. I was hoping for awhile that Eric would go to MotoGP with a half way decent team and start learning tracks and placing well so he could make a jump to a better team next year, similar to Colin Edwards. But, that is not the case. Eric has apparently signed a 2 year deal with Ducati for AMA Superbike. Let's just hope there is a provision in there for him to take Ruben 'Crash' Xaus spot when the D'Antin team bosses get tired of fixing crashed MotoGP Ducatis and want a real fast rider that doesn't crash!

..::;;::..
00
"
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\/\/ eebs!

Blogger LIVES!!

We are alive again after so much down time...

I'm very happy to announce that the OMRRA Season Results have been released.
I managed to finish top 10 in all 3 classes I ran this year.

600SS -7th
750SS -7th
600SB - 9th


An EXCELLENT season!

Testing
again

I will be using Blogger.com to do the frequent news and other personal updates.

Still trying to work out the problem with the post going to the wrong page. Hopefully I'll get it resolved soon and get some real updates.

HOLY SH&%!! It's been a while since I've posted anything... Let's see...I'll make this brief and pick up from my last post. Spokane was a bust. Waste of a weekend. I got the bike together and was fairly close to leaving Portland on time when I found a small break between the master cyclinder resevoir and the master cylinder on the front brakes. Hours later I had fabricated a new braket and simply cut off the broken section to make it shorter. I did manage to get the bodywork back together and looking pretty good considering what it was before. I did all the painting the day I left so all things considered the bike looked good. Too bad it didn't run good too... I made it to Spokane around 8AM on Sat. with a mere 4 hours of sleep and went about setting up the pits. This was made dificult by lots of wind which was probably steady at 10-15 MPH and gusted up to around 30mph at times. It sucked. Especailly when mixed with the rain, snow, hail, and bits of sunshine. Wierd weather! So after getting tires mounted, brakes bled, and the bike in good working order it was already to the start of the 3rd practice session and I wasn't even suited up or really in the mode to think about riding. I decided to just wait till after lunch to practice. First session was me going slowly and re-learning the track. I felt pathetic. I couldn't do anything right. Second session. Much better! Actually starting to work towards decent lap times and felt like I was doing things right. Bike started acting wierd though. Would pull fine to 12000 RPM and then the power would just turn off, maybe pull up to 13000 if I was lucky then turn back on like a light switch. Going down the straight was a painful ordeal as guys flew past me. To top of the session I ran out of gas on the last lap but was lucky enough to be able to coast all the way back to the pits. Bad new was I thought I had another session to go but that was it for the day. Thought it over during a nice dinner and new the bike wasn't running right, I didn't have enough track time to feal competitive, the weather was really just pissing me off, and really my head just wasn't in the game. So I packed it up headed home that night. Let me tell you what's not fun...driveing to Spokane and back in the same day with 11 hours at a track in between driving stints. Still it beat trying to camp at the track with the drag racing going on and it was nice to sleep in my own bed when I got home.

OMRRA Race--May 19-20 Great weekend! Good weather and bike running much better since its little stop at EDR for some tuning. Seems one of the coils was bad but would only start dropping off at high RPM's when it got hot. I did decent times in practice on Friday. Ended up running dBcom for the endurance race on Saturday. And Sunday went really well too. First qualifier of the day was 750SS. I did a 1:20 then 3 1:16 all within about 2 tenths of each other. I was happy with that even though I know I can go faster. 600SS qualifying wasn't quite as spectacular but I still did very well. Mid pack finishes in both. Races went really well to but I was still only running in the 1:17 range. The bike just doesn't have the power it used too. I had some good battles with a couple guys and a real hairy moment on the 3rd lap of 600SS when a rider highsided right in front of me out of turn 3 and tumbled right in front of my wheel. That combined with a pileup in turn 1 brought out the red flag.
Anyway...I finished 16th in 750SS and 17th in 600SS. Both really good finishes for my first "real" expert race in the dry.

If you looked at my schedule you would notice that I should be returning from a race in Seattle today. Well I didn't go. The bike still stutters a bit around 9500 RPM making it hard to get out of corners good so it is back at EDR for some more fine tuning. I have also been pretty sick the last week and just didn't feel up to a trip to a new track. Someday I will get up to Seattle for a race....

I should have some real race reports up and new pics soon...(yeah I know I've said if before...)

YES! I am so happy it is Friday. This work week has flow by for me. The sun is just starting come up now and so far it looks like there is potential for a nice day. Let's hope so! I still have work to do in the garage and it is so much better when there is sun shine to warm it up in there. Yesterday I managed to get a lot done in a short period of time and hopefully today will be more of the same. Lots to do before Spokane. Gotta get crackin!

Holy cow was my bodywork torn up. I worked on it a lot this weekend and still have a ton to do on it. That explains why there is no other updates to the web page yet. I bought some new power tools that should help out a lot but I think that I will still be lucky to show up in Spokane with primer on the bodywork. I was going to dedicate this morning to working on it but my poor dog has been limping since yesterday. She wouldn't even put her foot on the ground but she was not wimpering or whining at all. She is one tough dog. Very stoic and proud. Well I took her to the vet today and they determined that she had torn a ligament in her knee. Similar to the ACL that athletes tear. Luckily it is not torn all the way through and does not require surgery. But she will have to take it easy for about a month. I'm not even supposed to take her for walks. This will be incredibly hard for this dog. She has balls and frisbees all over the house and in the front and back yards. If she can't find a toy she will hunt for a stick or something that she can drop at your feet for you to throw for her. She loves chasing things. I can tell already that she will be barking at me a lot becuase I won't throw anything for her. (she does that when she is impatient) Anyway...I will be working on the bike tomorrow morning when I get home doing some more fiberglassing and checking the rest of the bike out to make sure it's straight. It will probably be a while still before I get around to updating the web page with a full race report and pics. Sorry...

Still no race report yet. I have something simple put together but it still needs work. I am thinking of making a bunch of changes to the site soon so I may just hold off until those are done. With the addition of my new computer and software I can finally start to make some more custom graphics for the site. We'll see how long it takes me to do that! ;) I seem to have been in a daze that last few days. I came into work tonight and thought that I had another night to go...when this is really my Friday! YEAH!!! Well I'll have to start working on the bike again. Damn...remind me not to crash and tear up bodywork when I am in Spokane OK!

For those of you saying "Hey! It's been 2 days now since the race, why isn't there a report yet?" I'll tell ya! After the races on Sunday I went home and dropped off all my race gear and then had enough time to shower and get my butt to work! Yah, that's right, I got up at 7am on Sunday, went to the track for a full day of racing, went home for 45 minutes and then to work for 12 and a half hours. That makes my 3rd 27+ hour day in the last 2 weeks. Exhausting I tell ya! But have no fear, I will be working on getting a full report up to the site soon. In the mean time I will tell you that the day ended with mixed results due to the rain. I finished 13th in my first race (750SS) and then crashed out of 600SS while in about 10th place. I got away with absolutely no injuries and the bike isn't to bad either. So keep checking back...

It's 4:45 am and I am soooo ready to get home. This is the worst thing about 12 hour shifts. You've already worked 8 hours and are ready to go home but you still have 4 hours to go. Thank goodness it is my Friday and I have an action packed weekend coming up. Thursday is a track day at PIR and then Friday thru Sunday is OMRRA racing. This will be my first time back on the bike since last October. I am getting soooo damn excited. I've really been trying to focus on making this year a great one. I want to focus and push hard all year. I'm trying to decide what is a realistic goal for finishing in the 600SS and 750SS races this year. I did well last year with pretty consistant 4th place finishes in the Ameteur races. With the rules change this year putting us all in one expert group I think it is fair to assume I could be a top 15 finisher in most races and maybe even in the top 10. I want to push that up as high as possible this year (OK...what racer doesn't!) and put myself in a good position to place well in the Formula USA races in Sept.

Besides the actual racing one of my main goals is find sponsorship. I am currently working with the Portland Motorcyle Company as my only sponsor. They have been a great help to me this year so far and I recommend you check them out. I would like to expand and gain a couple of money sponsors as well. We all know this is an expensive sport and everything helps. If you are interested in helping out in any way at all please contact me and we can work out a package to fit your needs. E-mail me here.

Today was the first day in weeks that I have not come home from work and gone into the garage to work on the bike. Nope...today there was more important business to attend to (at least in some peoples book). Today was tax day and I, like millions of others, left it until the very last minute. Not to worry though, after and extremely long nite at work, taxes are a cinch! Well...no...that's not true...I sat down for one minute when I got home and turned into a corpse. Apparently Melissa was shaking my arm and talking to me to try and wake me up but I kept on sleeping. I don't remember it at all. But I did manage to only sleep for about 4 hours before waking up and finishing my taxes. I was just about ready to seal the envelope when I noticed a really bad mistake I made in my half asleep tax prep mode. Dang...off to the post office for another form. I finished it all up and dropped it in the mail and went home for a couple more hours of shut eye before work. I slept well knowing that uncle sam will be giving Day One Racing a nice sized mid-season influx of cash! Now onto the dilema of the nite...what to eat. It's Hillsboro, OR at 12:15AM I have Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, or if I leave right now Wendy's. These are the decisions that I have to make nightly....rough, right!?

This weekend was supposed to be my first race of the season and my first time racing at SIR near Seattle, WA. I am pretty disappointed that the weekend didn't turn out well. I've worked my ass off for over two weeks trying to get everything ready and it all just kept falling apart around me in the last few days. With munched bodywork due to a qualifying race crash last October and a broken bike with parts on order, I had a lot to do. I focused on the bodywork for the last two weeks since I could do nothing with the bike unitl the parts arrived. Typical days saw me working my 12 1/2 hour shifts at work and coming home and working another 4-5 hours on the body work and other items. Even with the long hours, noxious fiber glass resin, constant droning of power tools, and lack of sleep I was managing to keep my sanity and things on a pretty good schedule. I could still see myself completeing everything on time though. I knew I still had a lot of work to get things finished so on Thurs I ended up putting in a 27 hour day in an attempt to keep up. I even managed to get up early on Friday to continue the work. Now that I look back I should have stayed in bed the whole day. I'm typically not a superstitious person but I have no way of explaining the day I had. I didn't reallize it was Friday the 13th until late in the afternoon. By that time I had already managed to put some not so nice dents into my truck and was well on my way to blowing up the battery for the bike. Of course I saved that until 9pm so that all the stores would be closed leaving me no possible way to get a replacement before my planned 5 am departure. I'll sum up by saying that on Sat. at 2 am I had bodywork with wet paint and no numbers, all riding gear still tucked away in closets, nothing else even remotely ready to be packed up, and no idea of how I was going to finish mounting bodywork, load everything up, get some sleep, find a new battery, get to Seattle, and learn a new track well enough to be competitive. I figured with the luck I was having I should stop while I was ahead and not in a hospital with a trashed bike. So that's what I did. Next week I'll be ready though. After a semi-relaxing weekend of finishing things up I am ready to focus all my energy on the track and riding. This is the way it should be. I'm going to try to do the PSSR track day at PIR this next Thurs. to make up for the seat time I missed. Hope to see you out there.

I'm testing a new web posting tool called blogger. Hopefully it will make posting updates to the site a breeze. It should also allow tons of stuff to be added all the time. So keep checking back!