The adage "Throwing good money after bad" seemed particularly apt as we drove back across the country from Las Vegas. Having one's crankshaft break in the first four hours of the first race of the season can create a doubt which will worm insidiously into one's resolve. However, after having spent untold thousands to get into last place of the championship it seemed, like to many other con artist victims, easier to go forward than withdraw.
Pit boss Tim starting making calls as soon as his flight landed at Dulles to locate another motor while Amy and I went skiing in Utah. Tim determined that YZF 600 motors were in short supply since the bikes were not very popular to begin with and, apparently, are too slow to crash. He received quotes between $1,500 and $2,000 before Dave at D & D imports altruistically brokered a $1,000-2,900-mile-only-ridden-by-a-squid-on-weekends motor for us. With four weeks between the Las Vegas debacle and our first shot at redemption in Road Atlanta it did not seem like much of a problem that the motor was in California and our race headquarters are in Maryland. "Plenty of time" we reassured each other.
UPS dutifully picked up the motor and dragged it halfway across the country before some teamster decided that the engine was too heavy and returned it to its origins.
The first twinges of doubt materialized.
The stalwart salvage yard contracted with Overnight shipping to
bring us our motor on a truck, and, although not living up to
their name, the motor was delivered into our ardent hands exactly
eight days before we were supposed to leave for Georgia. The motor
would have to come down to the cases before we could race it.
With less than a week for prep time we oiled the air tools, warmed
up the espresso machine and went to work.
YZFs are not exactly brimming with bhp from the factory. Our previous attempts to wring more power had met with disaster so we decided to be a little more conservative this time around. We had already stocked most of the parts we would need to rebuild the motor but had not been able to order the crank bearings until we could get the numbers off the cases. The bearings were ordered with a certain sense of urgency to be delivered on Friday. Steve Ward, our parts man at Battley Cycles, is always reassuringly calm at times like this. He has always been able to find whatever we need by whenever we need it but don't call him and order stuff 'cause he's already busy enough holding our hands all the time.
Apparently the three most common lies told to racers are "We've never heard of that problem before." "We don't supply special tires." And "Compression Ratio…..12:1." Despite the claims in the manual, this motor, like the last, was at a nice comfortable 11.2:1. Tim took the head to the machine shop to have about an inch milled off while I busied myself with bolting together the bottom end. Our extra special deluxe transmission survived the carnage in Las Vegas although the clutch in the new motor looked to be in better shape (apparently the divots in the aluminum clutch fingers aren't supposed to be there). Another Falicon crank (this one with the stock YZF stroke) was installed with some peened and polished rods. Tim spent a tenth of his usual porting time on the head and did a bit of smoothing and blending.By Sunday the motor was completed and hung from the chassis. Tim had been installing a dry brake fitting in the gas tank so for various reasons (no starter motor, no gas tank) we had not actually started the motor yet.
We happily trundled off to the Battley Cycle's dyno with the hopes
of putting a few minutes of running time on the crank before firing
it down into the dip at Road A. It was not going to happen Tuesday
night however. The bike wouldn't start and a quick look at the
plugs revealed, no spark.
The 649 motor we blew at Vegas had used a different ignition box
and wiring harness than a normal YZF 600. When we had swapped
motor back I had bought another wiring harness and done my usual
cut and splice job on it to eliminate the sidestand cut out circuits
and other such safety devices. I also eliminated the turnsignal
wires and such. All of the components looked very similar between
an FZR and YZF so I bypassed all the safety equipment in the same
manner as in the past. Yamaha was one step ahead of me though,
for we had no spark.
At moments such as these I always get a chemical taste in my mouth.
I understand that, not only did I cause the problem, most likely
there is no one around that can solve the problem except for me,
therefore I have to solve the problem. There is no other recourse
and I always appreciate a good contingency plan.
After dissecting the wiring harness and straightening out the
safety circuits we planned to return to the dyno the next evening,
which was the only evening between the current time of 1:30am
and our estimated time of departure. We tentatively drove back
out to Battley, strapped down the pig
and lit it up.
We didn't even bother turning on the dyno's computer since the
bike would only run up to 9,500 rpm and then act like it was hitting
a rev limiter. It would buck and snort and absolutely refuse to
run past 9,500 in any gear, including neutral. With one of our
riders sick with the flu and a recalcitrant motorcycle, we were
ready to race.
For some mysterious reason, driving from DC to Georgia did not
clear up Jim's head or our bike's asthma. We were thinking it
must be electrical when Paul Youngman said "Disconnect the
accelerator pump". We followed his sage advice and the problem
diminished although the bike was gasping coming out of crucial,
uphill turn five. The bike would get to 9,500 and start to stutter
and spit but at least with the Youngman carb modification it would
blow its nose and keep running. For the rest of the day we played
with different needles and main jets trying to get the bike to
accelerate in a more linear fashion but all to no avail.
The silver lining was Walt Schaefer's
magic box of Michelins. Amy went over to get some new rubber and
was lamenting our fall from the powerful to the weak while Walt
ran the tire machine. He handed her back the wheels with a wink
and said "Since you're down on power I put something a little
special on the front."
Saturday morning the bike was running as bad as ever and we tried
changing the jetting another four times. The bike was running
a little better but would run rough and then hit a flat spot;
at least we weren't going to high side it. We did some depressing
math before the start of the race and determined that we were
only going to be able to safely run 45 minutes between pit stops.
That did not bode well.
I elected myself first rider (I get to do stuff like that since
I'm the captain) and went out for the first 45 minutes, actually
43 minutes but more on that later. The bike ran as bad as ever
(at least it was predictable) but surprisingly I was still slowly
pulling through the herd of 600s in front of me. At some points
the racing was pretty close and, although I don't know who or
when, my muffler and someone's front wheel were on a pretty intimate
basis.
I got my times down to 1:32 (which is only slightly faster than what I ran on my lightweight bike the year before) and after awhile I stopped catching people. I figured all the fast guys had long since run off at the front but in theory we were actually leading the class. I was shown a board indicating I had one lap left before the pit stop so I took that lap and pitted. Unfortunately there was a little confusion amongst the pit crew about what the pit signals meant and I had pitted at 42.5 minutes instead 45. Ordinarily that wouldn't make much difference but a red flag on the next lap gave all the other teams a free pit stop dropping us from first place (in class) back to sixth or so. It was a little hard to tell since we weren't listed at all on the first hour results.
The red flag gave us some time and I felt that since the bike wasn't pulling redline in top and was stuttering down low it would be good to go one tooth larger on the rear. Tim and Amy swapped the sprockets and John went out to try to get back our lost pit stop time.
Another red flag brought John in after 40 minutes or so and Jim
gridded up for the restart. He got about five laps when another
red flag was thrown. Five laps after that restart and another
red flag was thrown. He muttered something about squids and flus
and ceded the bike to me.
After riding around for twenty minutes at around 1:32 I started
to grow complacent and found myself following another bike around
the track. The sun was warm and his bike was quick compared to
mine (damning by faint praise) so I followed for a few laps at
1:33. Another 600 superbike caught up to us and passed us both
and that shook me out of my trance. I followed the other 600 which
dropped me back down to 1:32 and then passed it which dropped
me down to 1:31. The track wasn't feeling the best it ever had
but Walt's front tire hadn't budged yet so I tried to keep to
the 1:31 pace. Slowly the other bike ahead of me grew larger and
eventually I passed a few more middleweight superbikes before
handing the bike back to John.
I was pretty woozy after that stint and took a few minutes to
rehydrate before walking over to check the result board. Although
we were not listed at all on the first hour results and the second
and third hours had us down in the 5th 6th
range. The fourth hour had us in third place exactly two seconds
behind first (C.A.D #88.) and one second behind second (Tapeworks
II # 63), Royale was about 20 seconds behind us in fourth.
Back on the race track we were about 8 seconds behind 63. John
was riding a lot faster this stint and sped up even more when
we hung out the "-08" board the next time he came around.
He laid his ears back and eight laps later we were in second.
Two laps later Tapeworks pitted and not long after that C.A.D.,
who had us beaten up to this point, suffered a flat tire and had
to pit to swap rear wheels. This put us momentarily back into
the lead although we still had to make one more pit stop. We figured
out how many laps Jim was going to have to complete and loaded
the dump can with the bare minimum of fuel to get him in and out
of the pits as fast as possible.
Royale has got a gas tank on their bike that would make an RV
proud and they were able to skip the last gas stop entirely. This
strategic move moved them into the lead and out of striking range.
I walked over to Jim and explained that when he went back out
on the race track he was going to be about ten to fifteen seconds
behind bike # 63 with twenty minutes left in the race. If he caught
that bike we got second place. If he didn't we got third. "But
no pressure, right?" he said through his flu muddled haze.
John comes in, Royale goes by, 63 goes by, Jim goes out. Board says "-12" Twenty minutes to go.
Apparently Jim's usual considerate sense of track etiquette was
compromised by his diseased brain. He started taking back markers
two at a time on the brakes into turn one and was coming out under
the bridge faster than I'd ever seen him ride his TZ 250. The
board stayed at a steady "-12" for three laps and then
began to drop "-08", "-06", "-04"
and then he was by. It didn't last too long since he passed two
backmarkers up to the bridge and aimed at his usual apex, only
to find that he had initiated his turn ten feet further to the
right than usual. Heading for the red clay and his team's unkind
remarks he grabbed the front brake and lifted the rear wheel in
an attempt to avoid causing another red flag.
Walt's front tire didn't even squeal although bikes poured past
Jim on his way down the hill into twelve. Three laps left and
he recovered his lost positions and had us back into second. The
countdown to the flag was killing me. Had we put in enough gas
in the abbreviated pit stop? Would the rear tire stand up to this
late race abuse? We had. It did. Redemption.
The next race was to be held at Slummit Point in West Virginia.
Slummit really does deserve the reputation it has. Some might
say it rewards local knowledge. We happen to be a team of locals.
Like the American military (or French for that matter) we always
like to prepare thoroughly to compete in the race we just finished.
With that in mind we took the gas tank up to Forrest Kerns
((301) 948-1166 ) to have some additional capacity added.
Forrest has four qualities which make him a superb fabricator.
While the tank was getting TIGed at Kerns we went in search of
more power at the Battley Cycles' dyno. Our brute force method
of engine building had been terribly successful in terms of power
but perhaps had been a trifle weak on reliability. Tim decided
what we needed was to optimize the resonance of the engine with
the proper lengths of intake and exhaust tract. Realizing what
life was going to be like around the house for the next few weeks
Amy wisely decided to attend the Jerez Grand Prix, packed her
bags, and left.
Tim, however, being a professional researcher, commenced his studies
by calling a dozen exhaust manufacturers and inquiring as to how
long the primary pipe was on their respective YZF pipes. He was
told anywhere from 16 to 24 inches. All of these pipes were purported
to make gobs of top end with tire shredding mid-range. Tim's formulas
suggested that a short pipe would be appropriate for our application.
Only one pipe supplier, Sudco, claimed to have a pipe with a primary
pipe length that would suit our needs. We had to buy the Sudco
pipe although we did get it at 10% below dealer cost. Micron lent
us a pipe for evaluation purposes just 'cause Tim asked real nice.
Not having anymore money to spend on exhaust pipes, the D &
D, the Micron and the Sudco were to be our sample size.
We were particularly excited about the Sudco (perhaps as a result
of paying for it) and its 16 inch header pipes. It would appear
that California rulers have bigger inches on them since we measured
the pipe as having a length of 18". Exactly the same as the
D & D pipe we already had. The Sudco and the Micron have the
cool spring mounts which permanently bolt to the head where as
the D&D has the cheesy flanges which bend the head studs if
you try to torque them to spec. The Sudco and D&D have a very
similar 4-2-1 construction although the Sudco pipe has a slightly
larger diameter collector pipe. The Micron uses more of 4-1 set
up with real short secondary collectors. "Very V-8"
opined a friend who should know.
Tim made up some spacers to play with the intake tract length
on the flatslides so we could try everything from ten inches to
the stock thirteen. With our constitutions fortified by quadruple
espressos we set off to Battley Cycles for another fun filled
day in the dyno room.
Upon seeing us arrive with three exhausts and numerous intake
tract lengths the resident dyno guru, Chris Sanders, just hooked
us up and locked us in.
We decided to try the D & D pipe with all four lengths (10,
11, 12 and 13) of intake tract. The D & D pipe is wrapped
using ceramic cloth. This was done primarily to shield the radiator
from the pipe heat. We do not really know what effect the insulation
has on power since its always been on there but neither of the
other pipes were wrapped. Because we are hacks with other jobs
and limited attention spans (I lose interest in dynos after the
eighth hour) we decided to leave the jetting the same for every
pipe and tract length. We realized that trying ten different jetting
set-ups with each tract length and each pipe may have been more
enlightening but one weekend of this is really enough.
To summarize our day: Intake tract length can tune one's power
band (low end vs high end) but in this application the low end
gains were below 8,000 RPM which we don't really use very often
on the track. All three pipes delivered the most powerful curves
with the stock intake tract length, but not the most peak power.
It would appear that all of these pipe were designed for supersport
racers or street riders but not for superbikes.
We decided after our tests that, although we liked the construction
on the Sudco pipe more than the D & D and, for supersport
racing, we preferred the Micron; We kept the D & D on the
bike since the powercurves were all about the same and they are
paying contingency money.
All through out these test our 9,000 rpm gremlin did not rear
its head once. Not once.
Summit Point
During Friday's practice the surface of Summit Point was as bad
as I'd ever felt it. Both Jim and I pitted after three laps complaining
of oil on the rear tire only to find the rubber was dry, hot and
grippy. My fastest lap at Summit on my Lightweight Superbike was
a 1:23:33. I was turning 1:40s in practice and felt like I could
crash at any moment. None of this could have compared to the fear
and loathing that must have been gnawing at teams from other parts
of the country.
On race day it seemed we were the fastest 600 in practice although
the YZF started to run poorly. We first thought it was our 9,000
rpm misfire coming back to haunt us. We tried changing various
pieces on the bike but it felt as though it was cutting out on
one cylinder at high rpm. We were all faster on our B bike (an
FZR 620 motor in a 400 frame) so we decided to use it for the
race.
I actually led the class for the first ten laps or so until a
red flag brought us all into the pits. Ex-lap record holder Jeff
Atwell, having brought the old Virginia Breeze FZR 1000 up to
the track with new paint but an old shock, decided to park his
ill handling bike and volunteered his services to our competitors:
Excel racing. At the restart I couldn't figure out how the #92
bike could have sped up so much from one session to the next.
After passing a couple of heavyweight bikes I started to feel
my foot slipping on the peg and knew the head gasket was pressurizing
the cooling system and forcing the water out onto my boot. Pulling
off in ninth place overall and second in class was disappointing.
The YZF was running very poorly but John and Jim used it for the
remaining two and half hours to collect mileage points for the
team.
The autopsy of the YZF revealed the problems associated with deviating
from stock. We had installed a set of Megacycle's mildest cams
and the suggested R&D valve spring kit. We were told that
these valve springs would need to be replaced every 40 hours to
maintain reliability and that problems with the springs were very
rare. An intake spring on cylinder # 4 broke with 14 hours of
running time. This wiped out the piston, the valve guide, and
didn't do the Nicasil or the squish area of the head any good.
It also cost us a podium finish, prize money, points and about
$1,000 to fix the damage. This is in addition to the $400 spent
on the springs and the $500 cams which we would have to be pretty
stupid to install back into the motor. Not that we aren't pretty
stupid but fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on
me.
Having worked at a motorcycle dealership I am privy to the secret
mantra of the industry: "The customer is always wrong."
There are several ways of handling those annoying customers who
insist that the fault lies with a product not the purchaser. Standard
industry stonewall procedure, as with any good conquest, is to
isolate the opponent. The groundwork is laid with "You are
the only one to have this problem." This is followed by the
coup de grace "You must have installed it wrong."
A call to Megacycle in search of technical history or advice was
met by the clumsy attempts of their resident phone fascist to
employ the above techniques. She actually told me I should be
grateful that R & D exists, because if they didn't, I would
not be able to get springs to match Megacycle cams. I pointed
out that, on the contrary, our season would be markedly improved
if Megacycle and R & D did not exist as then we could finish
races. She did not seem able to follow this chain of logic. When
it became clear to me that I was not going to get any blood from
a stone, or information from the ignorant, I decided to talk with
R & D.
Remembering that R & D spring seats were poorly machined when
we first received the kit I did a little research to determine
if anyone else had experiences with broken springs. A not very
random selection of racers who had used R & D springs (everyone
I could think of with aftermarket cams) revealed that, in fact,
they had all broken R & D springs well before the 40 hour
mark. This included Excel racing (YZF 600, 1 at 30 minutes, another
at 15 hours), Virginia Breeze racing (FZR 1000), Steve Ward (SRX
600), and pretty much every FZR 400. Although I don't know what
brand of spring he was using (although R & D are the only
ones I could casually find for sale in the country), in 1995 Tripp
Nobles lost the Road Atlanta NASB race when he broke a valve spring
on the last lap. What do we all have in common? None of us know
how to install valve springs.
R & D politely, and without a trace of irony, informed me
that I was the only one who had this problem. When I related the
above list of shattered parts and dreams he switched to phase
II of the Industry Stonewall Protocol and said that he couldn't
be responsible since he didn't install the kits. He then suggested
that I send back the broken spring so he could determine why it
broke. This reeks of a company using its customers to conduct
research.
These sorts of encounters are all about credibility. Or, in the
immortal words of Johnny Rotten, "Ever get the feeling you've
been cheated?"
A heroic effort on the part of Steve Ward (of Battley Cycles) located a replacement valve guide in a day or so and Forrest Kerns installed it. Anything to do with motorcycle engines that involves heat and hammers always makes me a little apprehensive. Forrest's method to replace the guide involves tapping threads into the old guide in the head and inserting a bolt. The head is then warmed up and force is applied (via a punch and a hammer) to the bolt threaded into the guide. This centralizes the force and prevents the guide from mushrooming. The old guide came out so neatly that there was not even a smear of aluminum on it.
Gingerman
We changed the head gasket in the FZR, bolted the head back onto
the YZF and drove north to Gingerman in beautiful South Haven,
Michigan. Gingerman is a new track with a wonderful layout although
the pavement is already starting to be ruined by the cars. Almost
every apex of every turn has bad ripples or swells. It would have
been nice if we had devoted our practice time to tuning the suspension
to handle those bumps but instead we chased our age old electrical
problem.
The clutch basket exploded on the FZR which helped focus our efforts
on the YZF's weird misfire at 9,000 rpm. Mike and Matt from Excel
lent us all sorts of parts from their spares bins including carbs,
coils and black boxes. We finally got the bike running correctly
just before the last practice prior to the race by grafting Jim
Roth's entire ignition system onto our bike.
The smoother running motor quickly illustrated two particulars:
The bike could not handle the swells; I was lost and had no idea
which way the track went. My father and three of his friends had
ridden their bikes up from far off destinations to get to the
race and I felt a certain obligation to try hard in the first
hour.
The first ten laps were terrifying as I attempted to keep in touch
with the lead pack. I had no shift points, braking points or turn
in points sorted out and spent my idle time running off the track,
dead sticking into turns in high gear and basically scaring myself
silly. Finally I hooked up with Team Triad (bike # 82) and spent
the next twenty laps in an apparently crowd pleasing synchronized
dance. I could pass on the brakes into a few turns but this was
futile since he was faster through the swoopy turns four and five.
As we were currently lapping five seconds faster than my practice
times, following seemed prudent. Even though this stint was the
fastest riding we were going to do all day, it was only fast enough
to get us into seventh in class.
The obligatory red flag came out at about 45 minutes. I felt I
was going as fast as I could but was still a few seconds off the
pace. During the red flag we tried moving the gearing one tooth
taller and sent John out on the bike.
I was resigned to a miserable finish but John slowly improved
our position as other teams started pulling into the pits. Excel
was having a really bad time. They had switched from Michelin
to Metzler for the race and their rear slicks were disintegrating.
Half an hour of quick laps and another thirty minutes of slow
laps then a mandatory pit stops for new rubber. All while we were
steadily working on our first rear. This was to be repeated and
Excel eventually ate four rear tires in as many hours. We used
one. Granted they were riding a second or two a lap faster (which
is an eternity) but I'll put it down to skill, not rubber.
Team Action eventually had an electrical problem and had to pit
for a fresh battery and other teams had other misfortunes. The
net result was a war of attrition which landed us third in class,
tenth overall.
The pleasant glow of good fortune wore off quickly when I found
a broken gear dog lying in the oil pan of the FZR motor. Even
though it's our B bike, even though I had just replaced the head
gasket, even though the transmission was only two years old, I
had to split the cases and rebuild it. The gear that broke is
the sixth gear wheel. It is the thinnest cast gear in the transmission
and there ain't a lot you can do about it. If you've been keeping
track, that's the fifth motor we've had to build this year. I
have a day job too y'know.
With a little finagling and some delicate work with a porting tool we were able to fit a YZF 600 clutch into our FZR motor as well. For those following in the path, you will have to turn down the YZF clutch pushy thing that slips into the transmission shaft about .5 mm and grind a little clearance on the cases and clutch cover. It is a big improvement over the familiar grabby FZR unit.
In the week before Grattan we had used the YZF to instruct at a local track day. During that whole day the bike seemed to run happily with some minor carb glitches. Despite these assurances I begged and borrowed a spare black box for the next round at Grattan so we would not have another wasted practice day due to ignition problems.
Grattan
The bike continued to run a little funny (as in peculiar, not
ha-ha) at Grattan which I figured was carb problems and John figured
was black box. He was right. Swapping the black box cleaned up
the motor considerably. We lost some practice to rain but we all
got our times down to around 1:33 in practice. We figured that
was about three to three and a half seconds off the required pace.
Practice was further complicated by the appearance of multiple
turtles trying to cross the track at various points. One such
gutsy fellow was propelled like a pinched watermelon seed when
Jim failed to spot the errant reptile in a timely fashion. Our
team can sympathize with the hazards of being a turtle on a race
track and, as such, hopes the critter had a pleasant flight.
It is often noticed at the track that we always seem to have a well populated pit. The observant would notice that our assemblage is rarely consistent as we usually draw from friends who live near each venue. At this event a Canadian friend, Steve, rode on his prized Hawk from Toronto. Steve's transportation was eclipsed to an extent by the arrival of Brian, on a rather customized Moto Guzzi and Corey, on a rather stock Vincent Black Shadow.
I started the race and spent a little while getting myself sorted
out. After ten laps or so I hooked up with Royale racing and spent
the next twenty minutes having all of my track ignorance rubbed
in my face. He could pass me at will in what appeared to be any
turn at all. I was able to stay with him through the use of my
superior straight line skills. These antics lowered our lap times
down to consistent 1:30s and prevented further erosion of our
respective positions. The ubiquitous 50 minute red flag was thrown
and I tried to quantify all I had learned from Royale for John,
who was to restart.
John dropped into a 1:31 groove which was quick enough to keep
us up in the top twenty or so. As my 1:30s were on the slow side
of fast, the lead 600s started to pull away from us. After running
a long 80 minute stint John pitted and Jim took the track. He
was going pretty well and was running in the 1:31 to 1:32 range.
In the pits the talk was all of gas mileage and the gamble to
try to finish the last three hours of the race with only one pit
stop. All such speculation was deemed unnecessary when our familiar
black bike entered the front straight on its side.
The bike converted potential to kinetic energy via the alternator
cover until it reached the grass and mud. Realizing its slide
was almost over, it jumped six feet into the air and switched
sides before coming to rest. Jim had carefully positioned our
pit the previous day with this crash in mind, as such he completed
his slide in a puddle virtually at Tim's feet. Jim clambered up
out of the impact absorbing mud and ooze, staggered over the Armco
and declared:
"Next rider."
P:Doug Henry's Dad
Watching the bike's slow but clumsy tumble I resigned myself to the completion of our race day. Jim had other ideas and roused us from our momentary melancholy by simply stating "Fix the bike, we can stay in this thing."
It is moments like these that make hourly rates at repair shops seem ludicrous. We tore off the remains of the fairing, straightened the fairing mount (well, sort of straightened) replaced the master cylinder reservoir, replaced the shift linkage, replaced the left clip-on, and started cleaning off mud. There was a lot of mud, especially on the slicks. If racing is about sacrifice then Brian will be successful. He took his prized Ducati shirt and used it to clean scum off the tires, didn't even hesitate.
Jim's red flag helped keep it close but we were still five laps
late rejoining the contest. The bike didn't feel half bad but
it was a little weird riding it around and the wind blast was
pretty severe at the end of the straight. I kept waiting for a
bent wheel induced unrecoverable tank slapper to manifest and,
when it didn't, tried to up the pace slowly. I started the hour
at 1:35 and finished at 1:32 with a single 1:31 thrown in. At
first I was a little annoyed since I should have run 1:31s the
whole time but the 5 lost laps made the point mute. The crash
dropped us from 16th and 5th to 23rd
overall and 7th in class.
In the moments after the crash a video camera wielding disaster vulture was disappointed in his attempts to immortalize Jim's agony of defeat by Amy's less than optically pure palm. Apparently our frustrated documentarian filed a complaint with the race director concerning his mistreatment at the hands of our fair Ms. Pickering. It shows how progressive the times are when a 230lbs man has no shame about sniveling to the authorities about being physically censured by a girl half his size. After we all stopped laughing, Amy was sternly rebuked.
