Thunderhill Raceway - September 10, 2003

Write up by Jel (scroll down for the pics)

A month before this trackday I had 10 riders signed up. Of those 10 only 5 had paid. Only 5 confirmed attendees!! Now I'm thinking, this trackday will have to be canceled, there is no way it will fill up. But as luck would have it, I filled all the spots by Sept. 2nd and was actually turning people away. This trackday was a GO!

The weather forecast called for mid to high eighties. They were right this time, but they didn't bother to tell us about the wind. With a steady breeze the heat wasn't an issue at all. With the wind blowing N to S turn 7 was definitely interesting with the wind trying to blow you down. Turn 1 was affected as well with the wind coming from behind and trying to keep you upright when you want to be leaned over. Overall the wind wasn't that much of a factor.

We had our normal riders meeting and there were quite a number of new faces along with our regulars.

The Strafer members in attendance this time were myself, Dave Grace, Glen Egan, Rich Lortz, Megan Kau, Clayton Wishoff, Peter Shepherd, Doug Horne, Simon Williams, Mike Freeman, Mike Thompson, Jay Dance, Alex Junio, Vince Ornum, and Danny Louie. Dito Milian was also there but he was there to shoot photos.

There were a few members of the NorCalYZF600Rs (of which I'm a member) along with quite a few riders who are on the BARF (Bay Area Riders Forum). Gregg Desjardins of Gregg's Customs was there as well riding one of his customized R1's. Its so cool to see bikes that are show quality out there being ridden hard.

For our professional photo work, we had our normal photographer, Darron Spohn, of Photobitstream.com come out. He brought along, Strafer member Dito Milian, who is an aspiring motorsports photographer and for the short time he has been shooting, has been doing excellent work. You can check out his stuff at GotBlueMilk.com. With 2 guys out there taking pictures, I'm sure everyone will be please with the sheer quantity of pics they'll be receiving, not to mention the quality of the images. Top notch by any standards. If you attended this track day and were not able to pay for your pics at the track you can still get yours by contacting Darron at dspohn@photobitstream.com. We also had another photographer, Dennis Anderson, taking photos in the pits. He also had a PC and printer setup so he could print your pictures right there. Very sweet!

**action photos will be posted as soon as I receive them**

The day went pretty well overall. We did have a few incidents though. In the morning we had a rider on a MV Agusta blow his oil filter on the back straight entering Turn 14. Two riders behind him went down from hitting the oil that was being sprayed out the bottom of his bike. Fortunately for the MV rider he was able to keep it upright and road off onto an access road. The rider was extremely bummed and apologetic to the 2 riders who went down behind him. fortunately no one was hurt. What sucked was both bikes were not rideable. What was a bummer was that one of the riders was Peter (aka BlackThundercat). Damage was minimal with some scratched plastics, scuffed muffler and a bent clipon. Peter sustained no injuries and was just fine. After shutting the track down and having that section "grease swept", the track opened up again. About 2 minutes later, 2 more riders go down because of the oil. According to one rider the affected area was hard to see. We shut the track down again for a second clean up. At this point it t was close to lunch so I suggested that we just take our lunch break now while they were cleaning up.

The afternoon had 1 incident in Turn 10 where 1 rider was hit from behind when he slowed down to avoid hitting another slower rider in front of him. Both riders went down. The rider who was hit faired better than the other guy as he was able to check out the other downed rider, waited till the ambulance came and then picked up his bike and rode it in.

There were a few guys who went on a little off road excursions, but were able to hold it upright and come back on without problems.

Megan, who just happened to fly in from Hawaii the previous night, was railing out there. 2 of my cousins Allan and Carlo both were trying to keep her in sight. Glen went out on Dave's RS 125. He comes back after 2 laps and says, "How do you ride this thing?" Tommy's friend Rudy Wong was just jamming out there on his new Kawasaki ZX-6RR. Doug and Simon were just kicking ass out there and both dipped into the 2:01's. Bastids!

Overall we had a great time! Thanks to everyone who came out and joined us. I hope to see you all at our last trackday of the year on Oct. 23rd at Thunderhill.

Jimil aka Jel