Friday night we had a peaceful plate of Enchiladas Suizas at the Golden Cantina. I bought some water, nail clippers, leg cramp pills, and a shower pouf at the drugstore.

Saturday morning was race tech, followed by a pretty full day of practice. I was having trouble figuring out what gearing I liked for this track. The gearing is changed easily, and affects when you have to shift, as well as how much oomph you have getting off certain turns in certain gears. So we tried a 45, and a 46. I wasn’t super thrilled with either one. I didn’t want to have to shift a lot, because my left toe and top of foot was bruised and bothering me, and that’s what does the shifting.

Around 11:30 a.m., I was braking down the hill into turn 5, tipped it in, and mid-corner heard what sounded like a footpeg dragging along the ground for about a half a second or more. I wasn’t anywhere near leaned over enough to be dragging hard parts, so I let off the throttle and put my hand up to let riders around me know I was doing something unusual and unexpected (it’s expected that after the middle of the corner, you get on the gas and go, and if you don’t and someone’s following you, it can cause problems).

A man in a black suit on a red bike went immediately whizzing past me on my right. He started waving his left arm and pointing off the track. He seemed upset.

Whatever, I exited the track, shut my motor off as soon as I could and coasted back to my pit. I probably had broken another motor. Nikki and I tried starting the bike again and it made a bad sound. We had Louie from L&L Motorsports come over and listen to the bad sound. He concurred that my motor was broken.

Super.

Fortunately, we had Nikki’s race bike with us as well. She has a strong running 2007 R6 that used to be raced by a friend of ours. Our fast friends told us that it pulled on the straights better than their bikes did. Ross, the rocket scientist mechanic, rode her bike once and was delighted by how well it ran and turned. While I was disappointed that my bike had broken, I was feeling pretty grateful that I had a good friend who could loan me her good running race bike.

I was also feeling grateful that:

1. I didn’t crash while my motor was breaking; crashing can definitely occur
2. The guy behind me actually did almost hit me when I rolled off the gas; he thought I was being an idiot, but understood when he found out I’d likely dropped a valve into a cylinder
3. Louie, a motor builder and a friend of Fastline Alex’s, was leaving the track at noon; my motor broke at 11:30 and he took it home with him to diagnose and possibly repair

Really, I couldn’t have broken my motor in a more advantageous way.

We pulled Nikki’s bike out of the Sprinter van and started getting it ready. Louie trucked my bike away. We had to cover Nikki’s yellow novice number plates with white duck tape to indicate expert status and pass tech inspection.

I rode it around in practice that afternoon and I liked it. The brakes came on sharper and harder, which I liked. Other than that it felt pretty good, and more planted and soft through the bumps. I still wasn’t happy with the gearing, so we changed it again. Eugene came to visit, and helped with the gearing change:

I wasn’t unhappy about the motor situation. I mean, how could I be? It happens. We had a plan B, I was feeling really gosh darned thankful that I have good friends with race bikes, but really, what more can you do? It’s just time to get down to business, and figure out what needs to happen to get the team’s racer as comfortable and safe on the new bike as possible, so that the race can be finished, finished well, and the championship won. Being irritated or anxious about the broken motor, or the new bike, well, that would just be a waste of time and energy.

I was more anxious about my leg cramping, and how many girls were going to be in the race, where I needed to finish, and not wanting anything to happen to Nikki’s bike.

I only got one session in on Nikki’s bike, then we had to pack things up and have another quiet evening. Only it ended up at the Golden Cantina, with margaritas and a big group of AFM racers who were all down here competing in the CSC: Martin Szwarc, James Randolph, Steve Metz, and their respective crews of Mike Canfield, Drew, Nikki, and Gene. It was a typically fun racer dinner, but I had two large margaritas and it made me really talkative. This interfered with my plans to go to bed early, but I got enough sleep.

Sunday’s mission: don’t crash Nikki’s bike, finish the race, do as well as I could against Krystyna “The Queen of Willow Springs” Kubran, and hopefully place first or second.

There’s a place downtown,
Where the freaks all come around.
It’s a hole in the wall.
It’s a dirty free for all.

Ke$ha, Take it Off

This song always reminds me of Willow Springs International Raceway, and some of the scenery in the video reminds me of it too. Racetracks are notorious for being in god awful places. So called “normal” humans don’t want to listen to the glorious sounds of an inline four motor screaming at 16,000 RPM, so they put racetracks in places where people don’t live. Hot, ugly places. Bad places.

Places like Rosamond, California.

So not only is Willow Springs in a typically awful, unglamorous place, it’s a gnarly, mean racetrack. “The fastest road in the west,” with the fastest turn on a road course west of the Mississippi, turn 8. Imagine being on a motorcycle with the throttle turned all the way around to where it won’t turn anymore. In fifth gear. And then, don’t brake, just lean the motorcycle over, put your knee on the ground and look ahead for the next corner.

If you’ve never ridden a motorcycle before, it’s kind of like flooring the accelerator. Not so scary in a Toyota Tercel, but imagine flooring a Ferrari. Or your boyfriend’s M5. I can’t even do it in my Toyota Tundra, a huge, V8 truck with a beast of a motor.

So you’re on a motorcycle that’s like the speed equivalent of a Ferrari, flooring it into a turn at well over 100 miles per hour. A funny thing about crashing a motorcycle, it’s not always such a big deal at the racetrack, at least it hasn’t been for me. I take crashing extremely seriously, but the times I actually have crashed, it’s almost always been a non-issue. I slide, or I bounce, and then I get up and collect myself and my motorcycle.

But, every time I’ve seen someone crash at Willow Springs, it’s like, once you and your predictably sliding motorcycle leave the racetrack and hit the dirt, you fall into this evil blender that twists frames, breaks ribs, and does other very bad things.

The turn after turn 8 is turn 9, also a very fast turn, but it’s really just turn 8 tightening up. Then you’re on the straightaway, crossing the finish line, and looking for turn 1 again.

My best laptime at Willow Springs was a 1:30. It’s a 2.5 mile course. That’s an average speed of 100 miles per hour. See all those turns? A freaking HUNDRED miles an hour.

But I’m just trying to scare you, and maybe scare myself a little bit too. It really doesn’t seem that fast when you’re out there in it, and race bikes don’t usually have working or accurate speedometers. But turn 8 seemed as fast as it was, and trust me, it was very scary. Friday practice, my first day there in about a year, I either moaned a little bit or maybe even said “oh god” every time I tipped my R6 into that huge, sweeping right.

The California State Championship was created by Shandra Crawford, and her vision was to encourage western U.S. road racers to travel outside their comfort zones and try racing at some new tracks. There are a handful of race clubs out here, and kind of like clubs, people tend to just stick to their own. So the CSC races one round with WERA at Buttonwillow, one round with the AFM at Infineon in Sonoma, and one round with WSMC at Willow Springs.

Infineon and Willow Springs are like polar opposites. Willow Springs is fast, and Infineon is tight and technical. To do well at all three tracks, and in the overall California State Championship, isn’t really easy. People who race at Willow Springs typically only race there, and they are very good at racing there, but then they come to Infineon, my home track, and they struggle. And vice versa.

I was struggling with the speed, for sure, but it was mostly the fearsome nature of what lies beyond the racetrack edges should I venture off course. I was also exhausted. The night before, Nikki and I were woken up at our Holiday Inn Express in Lancaster by a high volume, shrieking sound. Disoriented, we both strangely first thought it was our air conditioner, or a computer, making the noise, but once we woke up a little more we realized it was a fire alarm.

We efficiently threw on some clothes and hustled outside. 2:30 a.m. A bunch of creepy dudes hanging around, and one was sitting his huge ass on the bench, smoking a cigarette. We sat quietly on the edge of the curb. After a few minutes, Nikki spoke. “No fire truck, no fire men, no fire. I’m about ready to burn this shit down.”

Eventually a truck actually came. And we eventually solved the mystery. A lovely lady who was clearly under the influence of a mind altering substance had pulled the fire alarm, convinced that her nephews were dying because of the drugs she was doing in front of them in their hotel room. At one point she started scaling the wall of the hotel to get back up to the fourth floor where they were, she said. Oh, and there was no fourth floor.

It really kind of set the tone for Willow Springs. It’s not a place a girl goes alone with her motorcycle; I had my mechanic, bestie and racing teammate there so we could look after each other. I was hoping to win the California State Championship Formula Femme, and finishing first or second in the women’s race would seal the deal. But to finish first…you must first finish.