Road Atlanta
July 6 - 8, 2001

Two weeks prior to the race at Road Atlanta the transmission in my bike died at Kershaw, Sc. I had taken the bike to Speedwerks, but there was no telling when it would get fixed. In the meantime Steve (from Speedwerks) offered me their backup Suzuki SV 650. Without hesitation I took the offer. The bike wasn't pretty, but it ran and ran fast.  Jen and I left Wednesday night for Dave's in Hickory, Nc. Along the way we stopped in D.C. at Brian Roach's to pick up the SV. We got to Dave's about 5 am Thursday morning. We crashed out on his living room floor while he went to work for the morning. We got up around noon, then followed Dave down to Atlanta that afternoon. The trip to Dave's was about nine hours. The trip to Atlanta was another four. Friday was an all day practice day. Saturday and Sunday was left for racing.

My Dad showed up again for this race, but brought my Mom with him this time. I never thought she would come to motorcycle race as she would never even watch me on a skateboard. Here I am before a race trying to calm my nerves. This was my first trip to Road Atlanta. It had some scary and cool features to it. Turn twelve crested an off camber hill, so you went over it in the air leaned over. You weren't sure if your tires or knee would hit the ground first.

Jen's got the tire warmers on the bike and everything's ready to go.

Most likely after a race or practice session.

Here I am packing up Sunday afternoon to head home. I built this trailer the year before, but over the winter made some improvements. The tongue was originally just angle iron. I made it square tubing and strengthened it by welding more angle iron opposite to the pieces already there. I also added the rack up front to hold my bins and tires when I had them. On any weekend I had the back of the truck packed full and the rack on the front of the trailer. Most was for the pit area, but I also had a lot of spare parts in case I crashed and needed to get my bike back together.

My Mom pretending to be a racer I guess. The wood on the front is the ramp for the trailer. I devised a way to secure it to the front of the trailer for storage.

Here we all are before Jen and I left. We got out of there around 7pm with a 13 hour drive ahead of us. I think I drove till 9 or so then Jen took over. At 2:30 am I took over and drove the rest of the way home. We picked up the dog at Jeff's in Philly and got home at 8 am, took showers and went to work. I probably wasn't very productive that day. And yeahit was hot. There were all kinds of wrecks that day due to dehydration and heat exhaustion.