awesome weekend to say the least. i met some new people, talked a little more with some i met already.
our trip stated off a little stressfully because my ride to meet with chris to hit the turnpike ditched me and i had to try to talk someone else into drivin me around at rush hour on friday. it worked out and me and chris hit the turnpike and made good time, but missed the exit and had to drive in a 25 mile circle to get to the motel, we then were graced with a smokey room and a hair filled shower. next day was saturday, my seventh trackday total and 3rd as a red group rider.
pitted up with a very nice croud and got out there for session one, my first lap took me by surprise because i came onto the straight and could not believe that was the whole track because it was so short. i took it really easy to learn the track for the first few sessions and picked it up quickly. i was having a great time with open track the first half of the day but then began picking up speed and spending all my time passing, but got joes help with finding a coach to check me out for blue group. i had a tough time being evaluated because i got nervous about being followed and kept running between 1:10 and 1:12 missing some apexes, and accidentally making 2 inside passes. i finished out saturday with the best time of 1:08 and still in red group with an unofficial bump to blue.
mexican food on saturday night! awesome time. sunday, i decided to run the first session in red instead of blue to get my bearings. i was too excited and running a little erratic and therefore stayed in red until the 3rd session, then ernie gave me the long awaited official bump to blue. my first blue session was immediately before lunch, and i was expecting to get spanked out there but i really had the track to myself. i got stuck behind someone for half of the track and was hesitant about making a pass going into 4 and while i was thinking about it, i got buzzed on the inside and outside by 2 riders, this was a nice welcome to blue group. when i pitted in i had knocked off a second and ran a 1:07 just by riding with blue riders. if anything i was a little too pushy after that and ended up slightly going off the track 2 times. i was almost plastered by some really fast guys twice because they whipped by me in the no zone as i was about to hit the exit cone in each of the kinks. this scared me a lot and put me in check because i ended up running a best of 1:06 and after these incidents slowed down to consistent 1:08's with a few 7's and 9's mixed in. i cannot wait until the end of september to go back and chase that 1 minute mark. thanks to chris for staying the rest of the weekend not being able to ride, i would absolutely do the same for you. you should write up your incident.
by the way, i saw more crashes in front of my face this weekend then i have seen in my life total, i ended up dragging my knee between some poor guy and his bike who lowsided into 10... quite the thrill
