Abode of Clarus

Some of you, well really, only Meg, are curious about how my race bike is doing in the off season, getting ready for an exciting start of the year at Summit Point, WV.

I have already installed my new racing forks, and a nice pair of Pirelli Corsa race tires on the rims. Currently in shipping are my new racing plastics that will make the bike look pwnzor. As soon as they are on, I'll have a legitimate looking bike once again.

Also.. take a peek at the new race stands. That's what allows me easy acess to the tires and suspension (the bike is hovering off the ground.

I would like to start off this entry with a grand congradulations to Rizrar's very own Vadim Tsires for placing second at the WERA race season opener at VIR this weekend in the Supersport Lightweight Novice class.

Official times are posted here.

The other good news and reason for applause (for me), is that I have just finished a deal with my first sponsor! Let that settle into your mind before I tell you all the details.

Basicially it just means that this guy is going to paint my bike for cost and not charge me for labor if I let him sign my bike, but still, it sounds pretty kewl that I have a sponsor!

Here's a great photo of Vadim at VIR this past weekend.

Hoorah for Rizrar Racing!!!

Well I broke down and bought another track day. This one, will be my first of the year instead of my long trip down to WV at the end of April. I'll be riding at Putnam Park in Indiana on April 9th. I already have 4 spectators, so the real fun will be off the track. Feel free to make the drive out and enjoy some grillin' and good times!

Well I'm back from Indiana, and it was certainly a great time. It felt wonderful to stretch my legs out and enjoy a good riding of the motorcycle.

It was my first ride with "Sportbike Track Time", and I would definatly say I would do it again. It was a much more relaxed riding session, and I was certainly not turning the lap times that one would think, but no crashes, and good friends.

I got 3 more great pictures for you below:

Well I am back from Summit WV. Let me tell you how rough 9 hour drives can be; very rough!

We arrived on site around dark sat. night. We had just enough time to unhitch the trailer, take a walk around the short jefferson circuit track and then head out on the town for some Ruby Tuesdays.

Ohh yea, so Vadim crashes a bunch. Maybe you didn't hear the stories. Thank goodness that his crash percentage is higher than mine. But he did manage to grab some great pictures of his mis-haps at Summit 3 weeks ago.

Yep, that's everyone's favorite Russian, at 80+mph flying off his bike.

Vadim had a rough weekend, physicially. Had a nasty crash leading into turn 1 at Summit Point Raceway durring practice for the weekends races. He was a little too hard on the front brakes and ended up tucking his front wheel. Normally this is a rather standard 'low-sided' crash, where the bike just tips over to the side and you slide away staring at your bike as it leaves you. What happened to Vadim is that he was directly in line with his bike, and as the sand trap slowed him down, it didn't slow down his bike, which proceded to take turns riding him in stead.

Vadim was kind enough to upload a few picture for us of his aftermath. He's make quick progress of repairs, both on his bike and on hisself. If anyone ever doubts the protection that a helmet offers... read on.

When it comes to Motorcycle racing there are all types of people and teams.

There are those types of people who happen to have it all...

And there are those who happen to not have too much....

I've always known that motorcycle racing is dangerous. Vadim's broken a few bones, I've given myself a couple blows to the head that will take a while to fix, if ever, but one of the topics that I never had any touch to, was a fatality.

Well, we haven't congratulated Vadim recently. He has officially earned the coveted #1 plate in WERA LWT SS racing. Although he's not going to exercise his "championship record" in the expert class that much next year, it's still one hell of an achievement!

(BTW you earn #1 for gaining first place in the championship)

Yep, that's right. It's Racing season! Rizrar Racing will be entering it's third season, now riding the #909 Honda for the second year in a row. Currently at their West Chester facility, they are beginning preperations for the start of the season by doing a complete overhaul of the bike miraculously just 48 hours before the first race of the year.

Lets all wish them good luck at getting a Rizrar worthy bike ready in time!

Price of motorcycle : a lot
Price of all that gear : even more

Fitting it all into your car the day before : Priceless

Apart from the pasty white russian, note the sand everywhere!

VIR was a blast, with the exception of this gritty annoyance. High winds and dry temperatures meant that getting around without being covered in a film of sand a near impossibility.

The weekend started off as expected. Vadim showed up about 2 hours too late. With the 5 hour drive we had planned, leaving anytime after 5:00 would have created a less than favorable evening. It was great to see Vadim driving up at 5:30, with still a lot of packing and prep to do before we could get on the road. So, we did as usual, got out the tools and got right to work loading up the pair of bikes onto the Russian Volvo.
(Yes, that is Jay Wilson)

It's a quite life. Many a nights spent under the moonlight, working tirelessly on your bike. Over and over, draining the fluids, bleeding the lines, replacing the levers, zip-tieing critical components together, hoping it'll hold through the braking before turn 1.

One of the things you'll find with me, is that I grow a certain affection toward my "toys". Be it nameing schemes for my computer network, cleaning the leaves on my bonsai tree, or the way I appologize to my car eveytime I ride the clutch a little too long. Some people ** cough ** vadim ** cough ** don't feel the same way. They see mechanics and electronics as an object fulfilling a purpose. "The trunk of the car is there to hold pointed objects, why worry about the interior getting scratched?"

That leads to things looking more like their use would lead you to believe of them.. like, say.. this:

I originally posted this to the NESBA Bulletin Board, and realized that you might enjoy reading it as well:

I've been riding with Nesba for a little over two years now. I've had my share of track days up and down the east coast from BeaveRun down to VIR. Last weekend on Sat. I got my first bump into the "I" class after about 9-10 track days. I thought, since I have some free time at work (I work a govn't contractor job) I would share my experience of my bump.

It started off as any other track day, two bikes crammed onto one trailer. It was a tight fit, but let me tell you, they certainly looked good, and we got our fair shair of onlookers going down 95.

Vadim had a great weekend for Memorial day. A first place and a few third places as well. I'm not sure of the actual facts, but he certainly looks good doing it.

A few weeks ago (before the fourth of July), as Mincus was getting married Vadim was winning at VIR in Virginia. It took me a while to get back into the updating routine, but here you go. Six back to back First places in two days. It is a rather remarkable achievement.

Congrats (belated) Vadim.

I sort of slipped it under the radar, but two weeks ago I had a quick one day run at Beaver. Good Times. The weather was wonderful and ringing the bike out again felt great. I'll avoid my usual stories about it, because there are few pitcures to back it up with. Just was a good weekend.

Is it fate? Is it bad luck?

Whatever it is, Vadim has to stop painting his suzuki.

COLD!

I'll have you know, that in that picture I am wearing the following:
Jeans -> PJ Pants -> Long underware -> Boxers
Sweatshirt -> long sleve tee -> long underware
2 pairs of socks

I've been back in the US for a little over a week now. Trying to "do everything you missed" in the time you were gone is a noble thought, but can be damn tiring! So my first weekend home I allowed Vadim to convince me to go to a track day at Summit Point on Easter. (OK, it didn't take much convincing) I was grossly under prepared, wasn't in shape, hadn't even looked at my bike in 3 months and had it just sitting dry in my garage. Nevertheless Sat. afternoon, Vadim showed up, we did a last minute oil change and rolled the bike onto perhaps the greatest track day vehicle of all time!

So I posted this to Nesba, there are a few more facets to the story that I'll tell when the time comes.

Well Nesba, I promised a post back from my last track day in Early April... It seems so long ago since I last got to ride.

For those of you who don't know, or don't happen to miss me, I've been in the UK for the past month with no hope of return until anything north of VIR is covered in snow. I decided as a nice treat I can let you in on a few differences between your world of harleys and sunshine and my world of Aprilias and rain. Things are pretty neat over here, but nothing quite compares to hanging out with the nesbians at the track, so I find it quite lacking.

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to another World Superbike race. One thing that a bunch of motorcycle race fans know how to do is aggressively queue.

It has been a while since I last posted, but I'm a busy man, so wait your turn.

It's January, and while most people are thinking about ski trips, sitting by the fire, and new years resolutions; I have spent the past few weekends wrist deep in epoxy resin, covered in sanding dust and exhausted from being outside in the cold.

You know, even though my garage is underneath an apartment which is presumably heated, it can get rather cold in the garage.

Although my bike hasn't changed much from the pic below, I have begun the mental work of trying to scheme out what the final painted product will look like. When the bodywork returns from the shop it will have a nice matte black primer coat that will be a perfect surface to paint. Jenn has offered to do some design and brush work to make it a little more fancy.

After some extensive brainstorming, I think I've decided on a distressed Zelda collage theme similar to this shirt:

Well this weekend marks the start of another great motorcycle season. My bodywork is back from the shop and the work is amazing. The body work has returned to it's original if not better condition. There isn't any real paint on the bike yet, as it has only be painted with a primer.

As with any of my track days, there are always tons of stories to go along with this one. It was the first track day of the year and of course that adds a whole lot more of uncertainty.

So lets start off with getting the bike running. It wasn't. Thankfully my wonderful neighbor happened to hear my bike cranking over without any response and came to my rescue. 4 hours later after tearing most of the bike apart, shooting some ether into the cylinders, carbs, and airbox and replacing a few critical parts we finally got it running.

Well we're starting, a little late, progress on getting the final touches of paint added to the bike. The first step of that is a "Twilight Princess" wolf.

Painting is in full swing and continuing on my race bike. Jenn broke out the paints last night and started the first coat and first color of the Twilight Princess pattern for the upper fairing.

Jenn has started the next/last phase of painting the racing SV this weekend. This includes created the stencil cutouts to sponge paint the Hyrulian crest on the top of the tank.

Well here you have it, the finished product.

As you can see there is the addition of the Zelda Hyrullian shield on the top tank of the bike, which Jenn and I painted on last night, in addition to the twilight princess wolf from before on the side. It looks AWESOME.

Wow, what a great weekend!

This memorial day I took off Friday and spent all day getting myself prepared for a full weekend of racing and boy was I excited. Jenn and Vadim were on their way back from work, and I had the car all loaded with about 2 cubic feet to fit Vadim into. [poor guy]. Not only was this weekend a chance for me to get to the track, but it was my first CCS race weekend. [Checkered flags, trophies, the whole 9 yards]

I guess I'm really behind the ball with this update, but I was waiting on some more pictures from Vadim and they never came.

I hadn't been to VIR is something like 3 years, way back on my F4i. Needless to say I am a completely different racer now, so for all extensive purposes I was learning a new track on a race day. It wasn't my idea of fun.

I started off the day running a session lap time of 2:10 and ended up finishing the weekend with times around 1:50 flat. There was a lot of improvement as the weekend went on.

Some of you may know, and some of you may not, but Sept. 14th was the first Moto GP race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway ever. For the first time ever I got to witness a Moto GP race, on American soil no less! We had an entire team assemble for the trek out to Indiana. Four full days of Moto GP riders at their finest.

My favorite moments detailed in pictures taken by Vadim below: