Here I am in turn 8a at Sears Point
click for larger picutre
this photo was taken by Mo Kaluta

This was my first weekend racing with the AFM. Saturday was the new racer school, 4 hours of classroom session in the morning, with follow the leader around the track in the afternoon. After a few sessions of follow the leader we had to go out with an instructor and show that we could run a smooth fast line around the course. Upon completing this step, I was the proud owner of a novice race license.

Sunday morning practice started out fine but then I started hearing a 'weird' noise from my bike. Maybe I was just imagining things, I rode a few more laps and then came in to find out that I had a very real problem. The chain adjustment nuts had come loose allowing a piece of metal to hit the sprocket, I was lucky that nothing serious happened. My confidence was pretty low at this point and as I worked feverishly in the pits to fix the chain adjuster, the upcoming race was making me pretty nervous, it didn't seem like I knew this track well enough to get a reasonable lap time, let alone race.

Finally it was time for the 600 Superbike race, fortunately, I was gridded on the first row of the second wave so I wouldn't have to fight through 50 other guys for some open track. I got a good start and entered turn 1 in 3rd and suddenly all the butterflies were gone, time to get down to business. I finished 59th out of 67 riders.

Next race was 600 Production, I started mid-pack, what a mind blowing experience, kinda like being in a traffic jam where everyone has it floored. By turn 4 the pack started to string out and it was back to business, by this time I knew the track pretty well and my lap times were dropping down to the 2:03 range. I finished 26th out of 42 riders, much more respectable!