I just love going to Miller. It’s the highlight of my season, who wouldn’t love having a garage, power, air, a TV, and a world class track to ride.
I brought 3 bikes out with me, the 675, the 2fiddy, and the new pit bike (TTR225). This is probably the only time I’ll need a pit bike, and it was worth having it there. Even if I couldn’t get it out of the truck until I bled the brakes… I guess it was rebelling against having fresh brake fluid.
I spent Friday am, trying to get my act together. It was the first time that I had company on the Friday before the races. Usually, I’m alone and just sending Mikey txts, about what was going on. It was really nice to have him there this time. Even if he’s kinda grumpy in the morning. I thought I was bad… The other bonus for the trip was having one of my best friend fly in from Alaska to spend a couple of weeks with me. She decided to take some time from her husband and kid to come down and get some sun.
It was the first time I’ve done an Apex Track day. They kept things moving, but they really need to work on how the treat their customers…. I don’t like it when people are snotty and rude, when I haven’t done anything to deserve it. I’m hoping I won’t have to deal with them again. If it hadn’t been for Brian C., the day would have been a waste for me. Imagine riding a 250 in the fast group or the 675 in the beginner group… on the perimeter track with the closing speeds between those bikes and the other riders in those groups, I can’t believe those were the options they presented me with. Talk about unsafe, just because they didn’t want me to ride two bikes. I can see for the routine track day rider, but for a visiting racer who wanted practice time. It was just dumb, so on to much better things.
Racing!!! I have to admit that is hard to go back and forth between those two bikes. What is surprising is that it’s the 250 that struggle with the most. I get off the 675 to ride the 250 and I can’t stop myself from using the same break markers I have for the 675. I don’t need the brakes, not much anyway, on the 250, but I keep using them and killing my corner speed. I get back on the Daytona and I finally end up trail braking to the apexes, like I should. It’s really odd.
All of my races I picked so that I could race with one of my favorites there in UT, I wasn’t there to win, but to play. Might not sound like the right thing, but for me, it works at making me go faster and I get to have some epic battles with my friends. With the exception of the Women’s GTO… that one I just flat wanted to win and I did, the highlight of that on was that I was 3rd overall for that combined race as well, it was the least exciting race of the wknd since I was all alone after the first lap.
The best race of the wknd was combined U since I got to chase down Tim G. He and I went back and forth for the whole race, we must have swapped positions 8 times. He finally got around me and put some distance between us on the last lap… but he did it under a waving yellow. I slowed down for it, but he didn’t. Bad Tim… very bad…
Then next fun race was the 250 Production Cup, what a blast. I stalked and chased down a couple of others on 250s, but made my best passes of the wknd to get around Dale on the last lap in the 3rd to last corner…. he didn’t stand a chance. hehe.. what fun.
