04/06/06 With all the bike activity lately, seeing the sun peek out from behind the clouds made me want to take the 900 for a quick run. Well, why not. So I did. Took a while to get it started, as usual, but once warmed up the beast ran and sounded great. It sure is nice to have a great twisty road just five minutes away. Just a quick round trip and the day feels special. All the bikes are now out of their winter home and in the garage.

Yeah, my garage is a bit of a mess, I keep meaning to clean it up. Some day. In the meantime, enough vehicles have come and gone that it's time for another garage picture. This is the current arsenal. From this angle the mess doesn't look too bad.

07/31/06 Finally another trackday for the 900. This one is a bit different, a combined bike/car day put on by Motocorsa. So I decided to run the 900 the first half of the day and switch to the Mini after lunch (see also the Mini page). As is always the case for Motocorsa events, a bunch of fun machinery showed up.

The day started with a challenge when the tech guys refused to pass my old tires saying they're too worn. Fortunately there was a Pirelli tire shop in attendance and they installed a new set at a very decent price. I was supposed to get Diablo Corsas but only the rear ended up that way, on the front they mistakenly put a regular Diablo that is supposedly a 'prototype' of the new version of the tire and supposedly a compound equivalent to the Corsa. Hmmm... Well, considering that I don't really run this bike a lot it's not a big deal. What was a big deal is rounding up the necessary tools, with the 14mm Allen for the front axle being the toughest. Miraculously I was able to borrow everything necessary and the tire change was completed in about 45 minutes, only leading me to miss one session.

Perhaps due to frustration with how the day started the first session I was out my riding was too aggressive (and slow, too). To the point that I got a talking to by one of the instructors. Point taken, I backed off for the following two sessions and just focused on getting back up to speed. I really need to do more bike trackdays. I ran the GPS and it showed most laps in the low to mid 1:26 range, about 2 seconds off my earlier best efforts on this bike. Looking at the data I just simply wasn't riding very well. Braking was off, corner speeds were down, the drive out of corners lacking. Ah well. There will be other days. Perhaps this was a good reminder that I need to focus on the basics and that as a rider I have quite a ways to go yet. Still, the morning was fun and I was pleasantly tired when I rode home to get the Mini for the afternoon. Got to do this more often.

08/10/07 (Updated 8/12) Finally a bike trackday this year. Was beginning to wonder if it was going to happen at all. This is a Ducati Northwest event, what appears to be a bi-annual affair, and today only Ducatis were allowed to participate. This basically meant that the fast A group was nearly deserted and so I pretty much had the track to myself. The couple other people out there were instructors on 1098s and 996s so when I did encounter anyone I was being passed. Still, it was fun. I didn't run GPS but did try out a new video setup that worked quite well.

Reviewing the footage it looks like a lot of 1:25 flat laps, with a best of high 1:24. Which is about what it felt like. Nothing spectacular but OK for a first and so far the only outing this year, I guess. I was mostly working on hanging off more and making progress. The trackside photographer had some pictures posted up and a few looked ok. We'll see if they show up on the web. Definitely feeling it in the leg and shoulder muscles the next day! Here's a video (44M) of what it was like out there:

Among all the Ducatis in the paddock were a couple Hypermotards. Doug Polen was there riding one of them and he liked it. Needless to say he was quite fast on it too. Whenever he rode in my group he was on a 1098 so I only saw him for a few seconds disappearing down the straights. Would have been fun to see if I could keep him in sight for even half a lap when he was on the Hypermotard. I was actually in line to buy one of these but decided I have enough on my plate at the moment. When these things are done (Atom, production dp1, fixing the 748) I might revisit the Hypermotard idea. It's a cool design.

UPDATE:

Found a few pix online. Sadly the photographer keeps tilting the camera to make pictures 'more exciting' which annoys me and so I refuse to buy any of the full-res images but the cleaned-up thumbnails below give some idea of the progress I'm making in hanging off. Still more to go of course, but better than earlier efforts.

07/31/08 Originally we were going to just run the 748 (see its entry for today) but when it had had enough it was time for the 900 to play. It's been almost exactly a year since I last tracked this bike. I'm not good enough as a rider to retain the skills without constant practice and one trackday a year is nowhere near enough. So sadly I've regressed, being both slower and less comfortable on the bike than I've been before. Being in a fast group (today this was the only choice for me) on a bike that tops out at 127 mph on the front straight and 118 mph on the back is also demoralizing since most bikes around me were hitting 150-180 on the front and 130-150 on the back (I've been at the top of that range myself with the R1 way back when and David is there now). So to me the straights looked like the stereotypical sci-fi movie warp drive scene except in reverse. Corners were better at times but not always. This was a fast group out there today and I was slow. Nevertheless I managed to keep the shiny side up, have a lot of fun and generally enjoy the day and the company. So it's all good.

M did quite well for her first-ever motorcycle trackday (and only the 9th time ever on a bike). This is echoing the recent car trackday progression - yes, she's slow at first but I see her gaining confidence and skill quickly. I wish I had this kind of learning experience instead of having to figure everything out on my own over many years and acquiring many bad habits in the process. Well, at least I can help her now and that's gratifying. I expect that on bikes she'll be better than me eventually, if she sticks with it.

Tito also did well and the rest of the group had fun so it's a good day, definitely. There were the usual number of crashes (about 6-8) and the ambulance rolled three times. When you have several friends and a significant other out there, it's a particularly unpleasant feeling to see the red flag come out and the ambulance lights go on. Thankfully everyone in our group made it through the day without incident and so we went out to an excellent happy hour to celebrate afterwards. At the risk of restating the obvious - we have to do this more often!

09/09/08 Another trackday, a PSSR event. This time my day went pretty smoothly and it was M's turn to have mechanical troubles (see 748 and M's corner pages). For me the goal was to run the 900, work on hanging off more, relax and generally enjoy the day. Which is what I did, save for a lunchtime trip to Motocorsa to procure 748 parts.

I started out taking it easy and basically stayed with that. My focus was hanging off more and as the pictures below show, I'm getting better at it in some turns but could go quite a bit farther in others (images courtesy of XQSME photography).

Laptimes improved a bit, too, with a best in the mid 1:25s. Still nothing spectacular of course and I was one of if not the slowest guy in the A group, but I had fun and felt good out there. Had to switch knee sliders from side to side, the new pavement is quite abrasive and the sliders have just about had it. Rotating them like this will make them last a while longer.

As it turned out M got to do a couple sessions on the 900 as well. While I enjoy this bike very much she is not as comfortable on it and went out there somewhat reluctantly. Nevertheless she was able to make progress, although she would have done better on the 748. Maybe some day we'll have a trackday when nothing breaks and everything goes well. Until then, this is still better than nothing :)

09/09/09 I just realized that it has been exactly a year since the last post in the 900 section. That doesn't mean the bike has been sitting idle - since the 748 is still in pieces, the 900 actually got to do 4 track days this summer with both M and I running a number of sessions, and it is in line to do two more days at the end of the month. It's just that we always seem to post in other areas of the site about it. So, this note corrects the injustice :)