762 miles – track day at Thunderhill
With the recent passing of my beloved sv650, I was left with nothing. Perhaps that’s a little melodramatic. I had the love of my family, and my wonderful wife, good friends and a cute house, a mediocre cat, and more cars than I have a right to. Oh, and a welder. Probably some things I forgot. I am still so grief-stricken at my loss that I can’t be expected to think clearly.
I loved that stupid motorcycle. Like a happy puppy it was always ready to play, and didn’t seem to care what we did, as long as we were together. And then, in metaphorical puppy style, it took a huge crap on the living room carpet of my psyche.
After getting tossed off on track, I was not only completely bereft of motorcycles, but it seemed I was – for the first time – totally horrified of riding. Some people would call that a good thing. A safe thing. Smart. It’s survival instinct. You touch the fire, or perhaps you engage in a tryst with an unseemly but amiable stranger with whom you share nothing more than an ability to rationalize nearly any decision, you get burned. Or perhaps more accurately, you get a “burning sensation.” Your brain associates the two, and you live a safer, if slightly more embarrassed, life.
Thinking that smart decisions are best left to smart people, I decided to buy another bike. A better bike. A new puppy if you will. (And you will. Do it. Come on. You have read this far, you are gonna start fighting me now? No. I didn’t think so. )
So, a new puppy. But, having been so badly scarred by the cuddly little guy I just buried, my subconscious prevented me from getting another cuddly little companion. I needed emotional distance. So I got a different kind of dog. Bigger. Meaner. A mutt – half greyhound, half pit bull, half Labrador, half-assed implementation of basic addition skills there, for sure, because that equals 150%. Whatever. This new bike just ain’t the same.
It’s an SV1000s, and it is more powerful, has better brakes, better suspension, wider tires, and generally more of everything that should keep my ass out of a ditch. Well, except for the more power part. That’s like putting a huge ass magnet IN every ditch I ride by. That is, if someone actually made ass magnets. Someone should. Man, talk about a million uses.
To combat magnetic ass, and my ever intensifying fear of riding, I decided more track events were in order. Days in which I didn’t lay the bike down at barely sub-sonic speeds. Days where the bike left the track in pretty much the same condition in which it arrived. Days where I could get my confidence back. Or get my hopes (and, potentially, my femur) crushed in a high speed incident.
So far – so good. See below.
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