It was like hanging out with the cool kids. It was like hanging
out with the seniors.
As the only ride-yer-ride to the track jerk leftover from the day
before, I took one of the SCCA-vacated lean-to paddock stalls. I
waited for some gutted, belching, tricked-out 325i to ooze out of
its electrically-outleted, fluorescently-lit, lovely-shading paddock
stalls.
The call came for help getting more gear from the Shenandoah.
Dara, Mark, Tim, Rux & Max sat our asses in the little bike trailer
affixed to the ass-end of Dominic’s white Jeep Cherokee. The last
two members of that assortment of asses would have been dog’s.
One of these dog’s asses would have been Motorcycle Max’. More
on him later.
We got back over to the Shenandoah and there was no gear to
haul, nothing to load. But there were a few bikes that needed to
get from there to the Main. I loitered discreetly. I figured certain
that there would be plenty of well-qualified, cool-jerks with a
social claim to riding the bikes. But everyone vamoosed and Mark
said “Choose yer poison.”
I picked the lower-ride-height looking of the two, a well-worn
mostly blue Yamaha R6. I strode it. I looked down at the
controls, hoping I wouldn’t have to ask how to start the beast.
Amongst the shifter lights, the timing beacon, the zip strips
poking out and steering damper, I found stuff i recognized–the
kill switch and the ignitor. First one, then the other and the four
cylinders hummed into being. The tape on the tank said
“[somebody’s-name] STANDARD.” Ok, good, i think i can shift
this thing. It’s not some sort of wacky GP shift.
I grooved it into gear. Slid the clutch out. It snatched forward
like a cat tensing. If my bike is a crouching tiger this thing was a
slender stalking bobcat. I rolled out past Mark, struck by the lack
of snatch and grunt of my bike. Kinda like the difference between
eating chicken-fried steak and some tabouli-laced vegan thinness
for dinner.
We were of course helmet-less, glove-less and fully gear-less in
shorts and Crocs and i zoomed it up the bridge that flies over the
track between The Hook and The Chicane. The wind through the
orange “Texas Hill Country” bike shirt my Ma gave me and the late
afternoon light gave a sense of late-afternoon-lit freedom as i
streamed over the bridge into Gasoline Alley.
I entered the cloud of dust kicked up by the fleeing SCCA Ford
F-350 SuperMegaTurboDiesels and their 40′ long enclosed trailers
and dodged a bus-like black SUV in the close wooded turn onto
the Main track bridge. Came into the paddock and pulled it into
the mosh pit of puppy-piled track bikes twenty-deep under the
awning and shut her down.
Amazing how many of the super-fast guys are old and or
overweight. Just willing, breathing, flogging & sweet-talking those
bikes like gulls around the curves on rails like Andy Reiss.
I distributed my kit liberally about the place, grabbing it from
Mark’s Ford F-150 Lariat, the cooler and chair he’d lent me as well.
scrotocycles.rip 