Day 0 - (Thursday night ) After the 3 hour drive south from San JoseI rolled in to the track at 10:30pm the night before the race weekend.  I quickly realized that the parking lot was not open for camping – as I had been led to believe.  Fortunately, I had changed the way I packed for going to the track by putting the bike on one side of the minivan instead of the middle.  This made it possible to shuffle things around in the inside of the van to allow me to lie down next to the bike and sleep for the night.

Day 1 - Open Practice

I awoke at 7:15 to the sounds of cars and trucks driving past me to get in to the track.

I rolled over to the track a little later than normal.  I was expecting to get rained out yet again.  This time, the weather held up much better.  It was cool, but there was some sun and the track was *mostly* dry.  For most of the day, there was standing water on the exit of turn 3 and at turns 14/15, making it impossible to get great lap times.

The day was positioned as a club racing school.  What this translated to was that there were many additional instructors present, providing one-on-one sessions throughout the day, as well as classroom sessions during our track breaks.  A new feature for me was that they ran  45-minute sessions, which is far longer than the typical 20-minute sessions that most track day organizers.  Because I was sti ...

Wow.  Where to begin?  I’ll start with the past week.

Last week I had the tires mounted and balanced.  I talked with Alex Florea, the Michelin guy for the Bay Area, and had him mount some of the 16.5” racing slicks on my rims.  I’m still not sure whether I should run Michelins or Dunlops, but we’ll try the Michelins for starters.

Last weekend, I ended up running other errands most of the weekend, and didn’t get a lot done on the bike.  I managed to get the bodywork mounted, but still didn’t have my gas tank, didn’t have the seat mounted, and didn’t have my gear packed ...