There’s a new bike in my life
I worked many, many hours over the past 9 months to prepare for last weekend. I finally lost all sight of my self control (or so my parents might say) and bought another bike. I had learned alot about building, tuning, and riding turbocharged Hayabusas from my experiences with the last ill-fated bike, The Velvet Hammer. I wanted to build another from scratch and do it bigger this time out. I had plenty of time to think about it while I was healing from my prior learning experience and paying off the debts that I had incurred in building it. It seemed to me that the best way for me to get back into the game would be to buy a bike that was already built and tuned. Was I ever correct. I asked around in the racing circles and within 48 hours, I had found a likely candidate. I bought a bike from a fellow racer in Virginia and had the bike shipped to me, sight unseen, other than a few pictures. I thought how cool it would be to have a bike already set up, tuned, with all the right parts, and ready to go. Turnkey.
Spending that kind of money turned my stress levels up a notch without question. By the time the bike arrived, I felt like I had been waiting 2 consecutive lifetimes for it. I rolled it into the garage and looked it over. Turnkey it was not. Lesson learned: Never trust anyone where money is concerned. In the end, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I second-guessed myself countless times, wondering if my expectations were out of line. I read the description on the for sale ad over and over. I talked to the seller. In the end, I just sucked it up and ate it to a degree. I didn’t have to spend more than $3-400 dollars to make the bike run properly. It did take me a couple of months to find out what was wrong with it, and that did not ease my anxiety. It took over six months to get it to run reliably with me turning the wrenches. Others could probably done it in a weekend, but I just don’t work that way. I’m going to move past the details, but it’s safe to say that I went through an enormous amount of time and labor to make the bike run and make it street legal.
Fast forward to last week…I had paid my registration fee for the Texas Mile and was working feverishly to convert my daily driver into race form. I changed the gearing, put on a new chain, swapped out the wheels, dialed in my boost controller (or so I thought), and bought 5 gallons of race fuel. I had my hotel reservations, I bought all new safety gear, everything that I thought I might possibly need was loaded into the bed of my pickup and I was off. I arrived at the track at 7pm the day before the event and passed tech inspection and got myself registered. Tomorrow was going to be a day to remember…and it was. I’ll tell you all about my first time back in my next post. Please stay tuned, so to speak.
