Well, as you may recall, last Saturday was my first track day since I retired from racing in 2007.
I went there nervous and excited because of all the unknowns, Knee, tires, bike, thumb shifter, age, lack of any meaningful talent. You get the idea.

I can now state that IT WAS SO FREAKING FUN !!!! I was signed up in the Novice Group so lower pressure on me.

First lets talk about the bike.
2006 Gen 1 with 83,000 miles, PC3, Yosh exhaust, Conti Sport Attack tires, EBC HH brakes.
The bike was brilliant. Did everything I could ask for and more. We were on the tight Thunderhill West track which, on the 14 is basically a go kart track. Because of the knee and the thumb shifter I was getting destroyed coming out of the 2 hairpin turns, but the bike had enough stomp to get around most folks on the straights. I decided to just leave it in 3rd and concentrate on my lines. That worked well.

Now, me. I could have sworn I was tucking and looking through the turns. As you can see from the pictures, that was NOT the case. The problem I'm having is I need about 5 more degrees of bend in the left knee. I can't get my toes up on the peg and that affected every part of my body position. But even though I was riding like Frankenstein, we were passing more people than getting passed.

I was thinking that this would be my very last track day. Not anymore. I dragged the SV650 that I bought for $250 out of storage and I'm now pulling the blown engine. There's a chance I may even be working for the track day organization next year.

If you've never considered a track day, think again. It's a huge, huge amount of fun.

Mad