Raced today and i pretty much sucked all day.... The track was very muddy in practice but they did grade the whole track after practice. The ground was so wet that the Maryland clay is so slippery you literally can't walk on it. There were soft spots that stayed slippery all day, in my sons moto there was a downpour wich ruined the track again. My bike was running terrible all day and I'm not sure what is wrong with it? was able to get great starts but it would just blubber in corners so I had to have it wide open at all times...kinda sucked. Even with all that, I bad day of racing is better than a good day of work and we get to do it all again tomorrow! I'm exhasted... got to get ready for race day #2
I have some race photo's coming that were taken with a real camera, not Flug quality but better than my Bberry. Day two saw much better conditions with no rain and some sun and much warmer. I only raced the +40 evo class as I wanted to get out of there at a reasonable time. I felt much better on Sunday but was not riding very well, my corner speed was off. I just could not deal with the ruts in the corner and I think one of the problem was my bike was blubbering in the mid range, I either had to be full on throttle or nothing. As Chad Reed has said in many of his earlier post race interviews " we have a lot of work to do before the next race" The ride home SUCKED! over 7 hrs long and traffic was a nightmare, stop and go on I95 all the way, backups for miles at every toll booth. Thats the life of a racer...
Thanks Jason! That would be fun. One of the guys(TW) we went with hurt his back in the first Moto of the weekend so did not race but got some great shots of the racing, so I am waiting for those from him so I can post em up!
I have had to concentrate on work and did not even get to wash the bike for a week after Budds... Bike took a beating, the stem in the triple clamps has never been correct since i put the 82 465 front end on the 125 and it loosened up enough to be moving back and forth which stripped the threads so I can't even tighten it up any more. So it has to go to a machine shop to be re fit. Bunch of other items have to be addresed before round 2 at Evansville Raceway in Burwick Pa. in two weeks. 30 yr old metal just doesn't hold up that well any more, kinda like my 51 yr old knees..... My friend has this up for sale and I have been dreaming of it, 89 CR125.
:huh I'll be that bad boy will haul the mail. too bad I'm over 180 now or it might do it with me on it...
Thanks for bringing back all those memories of the good old days. Here is a shot of me on my 1980 CR125 at Claverack.
I basically grew up at Claverack..... My parents let us do what ever we wanted as long as we paid our own way so my older brother who was 16 at the time would drive he and I up there and with lawn mowing money we would race. I remember eating ice cubes off the grass at the end of the day when people would dump there coolers because we had no money left to get a soda( they didn't sell water in those days for the youngins). I remember draining the gas tanks on the bikes so we had enough gas to get home.... I remember the windshield wipers breaking on the way home (it always rained at Claverack) and we tied a rope to them and ran it through the vent windows and i had to manualy move them back and forth all the way down rt 22.. I remember Stu Anderson and The proffesor Gary Bailey battle like it was a world championship, I had never seen a battle like that before and can still remember it today. I was standing on the sweeper before the long straightaway into the back, I was in Arizona a couple years ago and met someone who was standing in the same place as I was and remembered it as clear as I did. I remember the "silver cloud" which was a school bus that was owned by a Bultaco dealer(not Hughs) who supported us. The sons name was Jeff Sumerlin? I remember Jeff throwing up in his full face helmet(which was a new thing at the time) Many a time... I remember my brother braking his collar bone (might have been at Millerton?) and the ambulance guys wrapped him up and told him to go home only problem was that he was 16 and I was 14 so the only way to get home was for me to drive, and I did....2 hrs down 22
After not being to Claverack for 20-25 years my brother and I went up to check it out and although even today the track is the same as it was in the early 70's we couldn't figure out why it looked so different until we realized that there are trees now, 30 year old trees. I believe there is a race there this weekend!
My parents or my buddy's parents would drive us down and drop us off before we were old enough to drive. Claverack has been around since the 60s while many other tracks have come and gone. On a different note I remember a 125 expert telling me he used 3 or 4 bikes a year because they were beat to crap that quickly.