It’s winter time here and we’ve had a week of stormy weather, rain at the house and snow up in the hills. Today it was clear and time to go riding! I can ride my XR100 out of my shop, down my street and up into the hills. After gaining about 1000 feet in elevation on a fire road I started to get into deep enough snow that my tires did not make it down down to the dirt. I was able to keep going up for about three miles in the snow. In a few spots I had to help the bike by pushing, finally when the rear tire was packed with wet snow it was time to head down.

Down hill in the snow it crazy fun! The snow slows you down like deep sand so you have to give it full bunny to go anywhere. The straights are not very, mostly long weaves where you gain speed. The curves are a blast, you have to go in at full speed without backing off because you will be slowed down by the deep snow. Sometimes you get a nice long slide with the rear hung out and sometimes the front pushes. The goal is to keep both feet up and not back off. Crashing is no problem because the snow is soft.

Todays ride was a good one and I can prove it. I got home with a flat front tire and my rear fender was carried back inside my jacket. After making repairs I’m planning to take my friend Lenny with me tomorrow. When you see Lenny you can ask him how I broke his finger on one of these rides.

Tony is 70 years old, he raced back in the day and came back to it because he could rent a 250 Ninja from RaceBikeRentals.com. He’s starting over again in the novice class and he wants to win.

Plan A was to get another Ninja and build the engine, this is allowed in the novice class. Plan B was my idea, I said a 250 Ninja with a factory/kit/cheatasmuchasyoucan engine would still be a 250 Ninja, nice bike and all but not much power. I offered Tony a TZ 250. Not just any TZ 250 mind you, my first TZ ever. She lived with a few others after me but she’s back now. Tony is financing the restoration and will test it tomorrow at Willow, if all goes well he’ll race it on Sunday in the new WSMC Novice 250 GP class.

By the way, it’s a 1990 TZ, 20 years old. Tony and the TZ together are 90 years old. They are at the track this weekend living, what are you doing?!

I’ll be here all weekend, stop by the Roadracing World garage and say hi. On Monday I’ll be at Streets of Willow, Hyper Cycle is having a track day, you could go and you can hire me for only $200.

EDventure Racing and RaceBikeRentals.com have teamed up for this weekends Fastrack/WERA event at Fontana, aka Cal Speedway.

You can get a deal from Richard on the rental of one of his 250 Ninja’s and you can get my Personal Coaching & Crew Chiefing for only $50 per day. Or you can bring your bike and get my help for only $100 per day. My normal price is $200 per day plus travel and track fees.

Come find us in the pits, we’ll be set up together.

My wife and I went to her parents house for Christmas dinner with her large family. We had the full dinner spread, a few games of Dirty Marbles and finished off with three kinds of pie, Pecan Pie, Coconut Cream Pie and Key Lime Pie. I had all three. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good Pie.

Track Daz held their annual Turkey Daz this past weekend at Willow Springs and Edventure Racing was there. We set up in the Roadracing World garage on Saturday to work with Editor At Large Michael Gougis on a story for the 2010 Track Day Directory.

Then on Sunday two riders, Bert and Price split my fee and dropped over eight seconds each from their lap times. Both bikes needed some set up adjustments including tire pressure, sag and damping but most of the improvement came from debriefing after each ride and talking about better lines, braking markers etc. We also worked on rider note taking, if you don’t write it down, it never happened.

Racing and Track days are expensive and the cost of a Personal Coach & Crew Chief can be easily seen as too much but think of this. How much time and money will you have to spend to drop eight seconds from your lap times? Also, Bert was planning to replace his tires on Sunday but with my advice and adjustments he did not and therefore saved more money than he spent with me.

As you know I have a race shop, I only work on race and track day bikes. Just like my coaching I work on maximizing your resources. Bert sent his CBR1000RR with me after the riding was done. His bike has plenty of power, I’m going to make it a little easier to change the wheels, install EBC brake pads, send the shock and forks to Lindemann Engineering for springs and re-valving then deliver his bike back to him even better than it already is.

When I’m not helping nice people have more fun on the track I’m working on nice bikes in my clean race shop. I’m not making the kind of money I was as a service manager at a large dealership but my life rocks. See you at a race track in the future!

Husband and wife Andrew and Niccole have matching 250 Ninjas and they both took over four seconds off their best lap times today on Big Willow at a Motoyard.com track day.

We spent a little time making adjustments to the bikes before their first on track session, then we rode until we were tired. We even did one session on Streets of Willow.

Look for Niccole and Andrew to do well in January’s WSMC race. In fact, I’m so confident in them that I’m willing to say that they will be the fastest husband and wife team on the track.

If you want the same kind of results I’m available for race and track days the world over and I’ll be at the Track Daz event next weekend.

I’ll be at Willow Springs this Monday the 23rd. Motoyard.com is having track days on both Big Willow and Streets of Willow. So I’ll be blasting around tracks in the sunshine with customers. What will you be doing?

My first time at Daytona was in ‘98, I raced my TZ in AMA 250 GP. Back then it felt like motorcycle racers were not wanted at the track. But everything changes and to give you an example of how nice it is to go to Daytona now I’ll relate the story of my last trip there for the Oct. AMA/CCS races.

I’ve been working for DMG since they started with Moto GT in 2006. I was the rider who tested the light set up before the first Moto GT race and before the 200. I’ve also been involved with the Team Hammer School so the guards and managers at Daytona have known me for some time.

For this trip I drove my RV and trailer to the track and caught a flight to Canada so I could drive another truck and trailer down for the winter. I had called ahead and asked if I could park my rig at the track while I was gone. When I pulled up to the gate and introduced myself to the guard he said, “Mr. Sorbo, we’ve been expecting you, park right over there.” How cool is that?!

Back at Daytona after my trip to Canada and before the racing started one of my jobs was to get all the pit exit cones set up and I wanted to check on the “verge”. The verge is the interface between the edge of the track or curbs and the dirt. When cars put a wheel off they pack down the dirt and leave the raised edge of the track or curb, this can catch a racers knee or if they crash, other parts.

At Daytona, the guards control the cones, so I went to the security office and asked if I could have some nice clean cones. Then I called the maintenance office and asked for some dirt. Both jobs would start at turn 3 so my helper and I headed that way. A few minutes latter a pick up truck showed up full of cones driven by one of the guards. At the same time a back-hoe with a load of dirt, some shovels, a rake and 3 crew charged into view. My helper walked along the track placing the cones as the guard drove next to him and I went for a lap with the dirt crew to fill in all the low spots. This may not seem like a big deal and most of the time this kind of stuff goes unnoticed but after fighting with management at other tracks just to get the bathrooms cleaned and the sprinklers that water the track surface turned off I’m still pleased when things are easy.

I left the names of the people involved out of this story because it was not just they who did the good work. In fact everyone I interact with at Daytona International Speedway is helpful and easy to work with. Thank you.

Now about the gates:
Daytona has at least 138 numbered gates. There are some un-numbered gates but I don’t have a full count of them yet. It makes sense to number the gates when you have that many, otherwise you could imagine the conversations on the radio. “Where are you? At the gate you told me to go to. No, I’m at the gate and you’re not here. Who’s on first?”

The gate numbers start with 1 (I haven’t found that one yet) and go up to 806. Once you get into the triple digit numbers the first digit tells you something about where that gate is, they are grouped together.

I’ve made a list of all the numbered gates I’ve passed though:
7, 35, 39, 45, 62, 63, 64, 70, 80, 106, 132, 133, 134, 149, 170, 201, 202, 317, 400, 401, 402, 406, 408, 410, 412, 413, 416, 500, 504, 507, 511, 512, 513, 601, 603, 607, 702, 703, 704, 709, 800, 804, 805 and DO 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11.
51 gates and counting. This is not counting the un-numbered gates. My goal is to pass though all the gates at Daytona, climbing over does not count but squeezing through does.

Here’s my idea:
1. I want all the gates numbered or named. That way we can keep score.
2. Then DIS can sell shirts with a list of all the gates on the back and a cool DIS “Gate Runner” logo on the front.
3. You check off each gate on your shirt with a marker as you pass though.
4. Some of the gates will never be open for the public but we need a way to get though them. So we can check off all the gates on our Gate Runner shirts. A fun run/walk. Open all the gates and map out a course that takes runners and walkers through all the gates that they missed. Runners/walkers sign up sponsors who pledge money for each gate the runner/walker can check off and the money goes to a cause supported by DIS.

Another cool thing about going to DIS: At many tracks we get called Drivers, we are Riders and we hate being called Drivers. The DO gates lead into the Drivers/Owners RV lot. When we show up and get our window pass for the DO lot the pass says Rider/Owner.

See you at Daytona in March, 2010.