I’m racing amateur supermoto at Infineon this weekend!
I'm racing amateur supermoto at Infineon this weekend. It's part of the West Coast Moto Jam, a big event that includes all types of motorcycle racing (motocross, dirt track, superbike, etc).
I'll be racing 3 classes:
- Saturday: Asphalt-only Open beginner
- Sunday: Open Novice/C and Open beginner
There is a 30% chance of rain on Sunday and I am not sure what I am going to do as I don't have rain slicks. I'm not sure I really want to cut my tires as they are pretty new and honestly I am not hardcore enough to really want to race in the rain.
I'm really excited about the races in general! I took Thursday off work to practice on the track and I loved it. The dirt section is a little gnarly though (there are pictures at http://mikedoran.zenfolio.com/p533645150). I'm planning on taking it slow and not trying to go fast through it though.
I also probably have some spare tickets if anyone knows me in real life and is interested (they are free and include starting grid passes!)
Signed up for 2011 Northern California Supermoto Series
I signed up to race supermoto in the 2011 Northern California Series! I got my racer card in the mail:
Why 161? The golden ratio. I might add in a very small decimal point and the proper trailing digits. Yes, it's nerdy...but I don't really have a number with personal significance so I figured I'd go with something significant in general.
The first race is April 2nd and 3rd at Prairie City OHRVA (near Sacramento). I have already practiced on the track previously, which will make the first race of the season a little less nerve-wracking. I'll be riding my KTM:
I'm really worried about the rain and am contemplating buying rain tires. I'm not sure I want to deal with switching out the slicks if it doesn't rain though. Throw in the fact that I likely need new slicks for the race regardless and I'm looking at possibly two or three tire changes...not fun. I was going to pick up another of the same bike I saw for cheap on craiglist to use as parts and to have a spare wheelset, but it looks to have sold. Oh well, I'll figure something else out.
I'll be racing 2 classes:
- Beginner
- Open C (novice)
The beginner isn't a part of the championship series but the Open C is. I plan on using the beginner races to get some in-your-face supermoto practice time in while concentrating on winning the Open C.
I have two goals for the season. First, to not crash. Second, to win 1st in Open C and move up next season. We'll see how both go...
Supermoto (part 1)
I've ridden street bikes and dirt bikes for a long time. I really, really enjoy motorcycles. Interestingly, in all the time I have been riding I have had zero interest in riding on a track or competing.
That changed when I recently reconnected with a high-school friend of mine on Facebook. He looked at my photos and saw some pictures from my motorcycle trips. He had started racing supermoto this season and suggested I come out and give it a shot. Now, supermoto in the past had never appealed to me. Street tires on a dirtbike? Worst of both worlds I thought. I was adamant that I'd rather have a nice dirtbike and a nice streetbike, not a bastardization of the two. Also, I thought supermoto bikes looked goofy and out of place.
That all changed when I saw the Aprilia SXV (VDB version):
Now that is a sexy bike! Once I saw the bike I started saving my pennies for the plain-jane Aprilia (the VDB version is way too rare). I lucked out and randomly found a once-in-a-lifetime deal on a used one. It is because I have so much fun acting like a supermoto hooligan on my Aprilia that I entertained my friend's suggestion of racing.
He reminded me I'd need sliders to pass the bike technical inspection. The sliders do a couple of things. First, they protect the bike if you crash it. Second, they protect the track's surface from getting gouged by the bikes when leaning over in a tight turn or during a crash. Luckily, the used bike I bought came with sliders. How convenient!
I went on the series website to see the other technical requirements. All vent and overflow hoses need to lead into a catch-can. This makes it so if your bike overheats or starts spewing oil for some reason it won't end up on the track and cause a hazard for people behind you. I didn't have a catch can so I decided to start searching around online for one. I also took stock of everything I needed to take off to convert the bike from street to track. Here's how my bike looks with all the street legal trappings:
I realized I would have to pull off all the lights and mirrors. The prepwork I had to do started to seem a little daunting. Also, I began to get nervous about racing the Aprilia in general. Parts for it are pretty expensive and there aren't many dealerships in the US. Most parts are generally twice the "standard" amount once you add in shipping. I realized my fear of crashing would probably make me slower than I normally would and make me pretty nervous while riding. So I hit craigslist.
Now, I'm somewhat of a craigslist-aholic. My roommates love to relate the time I found a large box of packing peanuts for free on craigslist and INSISTED we needed them. Needless to say I enjoyed searching for a cheap bike already set up for racing. I immediately noticed there was a clean 2003 KTM SMR 450 for sale for $3500. It looked very similar to this:
The bike had been raced previously so I knew it would have all the necessary modifications to pass tech inspection. Buying the bike seemed like a no-brainer and would make a large part of the uncertainty of entering a new sport go away.
Of course, I wasn't just about to fork over $3500 for a sport that I didn't even know I liked yet. I also knew that particular model and year of a bike was less-than desirable for a couple of reasons. First, it wasn't street legal. Street legal ditbikes / supermotos demand a premium. Second, it had a red sticker. That means it can't be made to be street legal at all--even if you added all the proper lights, horns, etc. Third, there were no dirt tires and rims, which means the bike couldn't be used for trail riding unless a lot more money was invested. All those reasons make it so the market for the bike is restricted only to those racing supermoto, which I surmised was a small market indeed. I also noticed the bike had been posted for more than a week, so he was likely willing to deal. I really wanted to low-ball and offer him $2600. Instead I offered to take it off his hands for $3000. He didn't bite, so I kept looking.
A couple of days later I found a 2006 KTM SMR 450. It was the same model bike but three years newer. The guy was selling it for $3600. I offered him $3000 and after some back and forth we settled on $3100. Though it was more than I wanted to spend, I knew if I didn't like supermoto I could get most if not all of my money out of the bike.
The bike was in the north-east bay. I went to pick it up the day before the race:
The bike looked brand new and was all set up for racing! It only had 8 hours on the engine and there wasn't even the normal scratches on the engine cases from boots:
The previous owner had also intricately drilled through and safety-wired all the bolts. The safety-wire prevents the bolts from dropping on the track if they happen to fall out due to engine vibration:
Such attention to detail is generally only seen on professionals' bikes!
Of course, while I was picking up the bike it began to pour. I decided it probably wasn't smart to have my first race on a new bike with race slicks in the rain. I flaked on my friend, informing him I'd make the next one.
I went dirtbike riding @ Upper Lake (Penny Pines) this weekend
My uncle, cousin and I went riding up at Upper Lake this weekend. Specifically, we used Penny Pines as basecamp. It was pretty fun, though it was a bit dusty. I unfortunately couldn't find the mount for my helmet camera so I don't have any videos. I did manage to take a couple of pictures with my iPhone though.
The creek was a lot lower than last time we went riding!
My uncle and cousin getting ready to leave at the same spot:
My uncle and cousin
And a quick video of the same scene:
Apparently the iPhone and YouTube don't play well together...
I got a new helmet cam and took it dirtbike riding on Memorial Day weekend
I got a ContourHD 1080p helmet cam. This trip was a dry-run of sorts to see what settings to use and the type of riding that would be interesting on camera. I also got to flex my iMac's muscles by editing the thing.
I'm riding my TM Racing 300. I went with three cousins and an uncle. Some broken parts (not mine!) but no broken bones which is always a good thing. Be sure to watch the video in 720p if it is not, though it should default to that quality.
Some observations:
- The camera is really nice and takes amazing videos for its size
- I don't even notice the camera when wearing it. I used the goggle mount as I didn't feel comfortable velcro-ing something this expensive to my helmet
- I can't quite go all day on one battery and one memory card. Time to get another of both so I don't have to worry about missing something
- Wind noise is horrible when going over 25 mph. Apparently it is a known problem with some less-than-ideal solutions. I'm going to just throw a sock over the camera and be done with it
- I don't normally ride with goggles. It was a lot hotter keeping them on the whole ride
- My i7 iMac still took ~14 minutes to process all the footage before I could edit it in iMovie 09. I guess that's decent as I have 16gb of footage, though the camera shoots in MOV so I'm not sure what it was doing
- I'm glad I got the 2tb hard drive option. At 16gb a day it will fill up quickly
- iMovie 09 is the most frustrating piece of software I have ever used. I'm very surprised Apple scrapped the critically acclaimed older version for this new one
- Automator's "Convert Movie to AppleTV format" or whatever was a lifesaver. Oddly, not every converted movie played on the AppleTV. Very unlike Apple, I expected it to just work
- The camera came with a somewhat decent Java app. I only used it to load camera presets, but it looked competent at least
- The camera isn't recognized as a camera when plugged in. It shows up as a standard FAT32 removable disk. Not a big deal
- It took 3 minutes to save the video in HD for YouTube. It took about one hour to upload it to YouTube with AT&T UVERSE via iMovie's YouTube integration
I have a motorcycle buying problem
One of my hobbies is motorcycle/dirtbike riding. I was introduced to it at an early age as most of my family rides. Recently I've been buying and selling bikes just as much as actually riding them. The way I see it there are way too many brands and types of bikes to pick one. Plus, how do you know you've found the perfect bike unless you tried most of them? I was randomly flipping through the pictures on my computer, saw a bunch of dirtbikes, and decided I'd chronicle my motorcycle ownership so far. So, in chronological order, oldest to most recent....
1991 KTM 300
The first dirtbike I bought myself, though not the first dirtbike I rode. I saved up enough money working at Longs Drugs to buy this bad boy. It was clean, had the perfect engine, and the previous owner recovered the puke-green seat (KTM, what were you thinking?)
2003 Yamaha WR250f
It was time to upgrade to something newer so I sold the KTM and bought a WR250f. It was a steal, super clean, and had an electric start! Unfortunately, it was a red sticker bike. I had never experienced the red/green sticker divide (mainly because I had old bikes that were grandfathered in to green stickers). When I rode this bike I quickly realized I hated the squishy suspension. The suspension plus the red sticker finally made me get rid of it.
2002 Honda CRF450R
While trying to sell the WR, I came across an extremely cheap CRF450R. These bikes were going for $4000 and the one I found was selling for $1200 (if I remember correctly). I guess it was so cheap because a) it was beat to hell and b) it had a cracked engine case (whoops!). I bought it anyway. I took the CRF out once, hated it, hated how much work it would take to make it cherry, and sold it to some guy at a profit. I made a point to show him the engine case crack (JB weld to the rescue) and pointed out it had a flat tire. I didn't want to take advantage of anyone. He bought it anyway.
2005 Husqvarna TE510
Next I bought a Husqvarna TE510. This bike was extremely clean as well. I got an amazing deal and was excited to have a green sticker, electric start bike! I kept the bike for a year or two until I decided I wanted something a little different. If the bike had been one year newer it would have been street legal. It was frustrating that I couldn't ride it on the street--the only difference between 2005 and 2006 was the color of the plastic. Well, that and in 2006 Husqvarna took the time to do the paperwork to certify it for the street.
2001 TM 300en
Around the time I bought the husky I found my TM300 for sale. These bikes are extremely powerful and extremely rare. I found one for sale near my parent's house that was very undervalued. My original intention was to flip it, but I loved it so much I kept it. I get tons of looks when I ride this bike, as they have a mythical quality about them (and have no US distributor). I'm currently looking to sell it as I am worried about getting parts here in the US if something breaks.
2001 Kawasaki KLX300
Next I bought a KLX300. For some reason I always wanted to own a KLX. The KLX was a hot bike at one time, probably when I was growing up and reading all the dirtbike magazines. Unfortunately, by the time I actually owned one the bike was extremely outdated. I thought I could let my sister or cousins ride the bike, but it was way too heavy and had trouble starting. I got it for under market value and it came with almost a 2nd bike in parts so I wasn't worried about losing money. I ended up selling the bike and the parts bike for a lot more than I paid. I never even took the bike out. The bike was hard enough to start in my garage let alone on a hill, which made me not want to risk it.
2002 Honda CR250
Next I found another undervalued bike. This time it was a 2002 CR250. This model bike is special for a couple of reasons. First, it is the last year of the green stickers. Second, the frame was all new in 2002 and Honda didn't change it for 5 years. Third, Honda's are known for their reliability.
Because of these reasons, this particular model is highly sought after. It is the most modern green sticker 2 stroke you can buy. I was browsing craigslist one day and came across a clean one for 1/2 what they normally cost. I called the guy 20 minutes after he posted it and he had already had 3 calls. I was working from home that day so I picked it up right away. Three people called about the bike while I was there loading it up.
2007 Yamaha YZ450f
I couldn't decide if I was keeping it or flipping it, but I later came across a guy on craigslist wanting to trade his 2007 YZ450f for the bike. I figured it was a great deal, met with him, and traded straight up. I was pretty stoked--I now had a bike that was both newer and had a bigger engine.
2007 Aprilia RXV 550
I then came across a guy who wanted to trade his Aprilia for a modern YZ450f, so I had to do it. I traded a red sticker run-of-the-mill Japanese dirtbike for a street legal exotic Italian dirtbike. The bike has supermoto rims for the street and dirtbike rims for the dirt. It's a fuel injected v-twin, which is unheard of for a dirtbike. I don't think I will be getting rid of it any time soon.
So, what next? I'm trying to get a KTM300 and am keeping my eye on craigslist for any good deals. If I find something I want I will likely sell my TM...having 3 dirtbikes is just too much!