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Mid Ohio :
I was hoping to have onboard video from this one, but we thought the camera was on when it wasn't. I'll get some next time.
It was cold! Not as cold as Road America but record cold for July. It was raining off and on for a while too. Again I say, when is this Global warming thing going to kick in?
It was raining a little before the first practice and it was cold so I decided to wait until qualifying to go out. I was trying to conserve on tires as well. So I went out for qualifying. Thinking no big deal, I know my way around. Well little did I know that the spring collar on the shock had somehow backed off. That happened once before on me, during a race. What a surprise, I couldn't keep it in a corner. It was pushing wide everywhere. With the session only being a half hour long there isn't time to do much so I just did a couple of laps and parked it.
I worked on the suspension that afternoon, got it all set up. Then I changed the gearing to make it better. Ready to go. So I did just a few laps Saturday morning and all seemed well.
I started the race easy, I took my time to get up to speed after watching 2 guys crash right in front of me on the first lap. I realized then that a little more track time would have been nice. Then just about when I started feeling good and I started passing people, I can't shift. I look down and the toe peg is gone off the shift lever. It was close to time to pit so I just rode a few laps reaching down and shifting with my hand. When I did pull in we had to find some parts to fix it. I ended up losing about 4 laps. We finally found a long bolt and put two nuts on it. All ready to go, maybe.
Paul got on the bike and took off. But he had hurt his neck and didn't know if he could ride. So he only stayed out a few laps. I jumped back on the bike to finish the race, hopefully on that tank of fuel. What Paul forgot to tell me was the nut on the back side of the shift lever was hitting the shift rod and sticking. So every shift was two. You would push down, stick, then put your toe under and lift to un stick it. That is how I had to ride it the rest of the race. I guess that beats shifting with your hand.
Well that's about it, anyway we ended up 10th on that one. Topeka is next.
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