Calabogie

On Sept. 9th, a week after I flew to Salt Lake City for the AHRMA Bonneville Vintage GP, I drove north to Calabogie.  This was the VRRA's first event at Calabogie, near Ottawa, and it was excellent.  The track is really challenging with 20 corners, many of them decreasing radius, double apex and/or blind, 3.14miles long and in excellent condition with good traction and not a single bump.  It was a lot to learn and I only got 2 laps on a bicycle Fri. afternoon.
Fri evening, I rode my '68 TC 200 Suzuki into town to get something to eat.  While I was waiting for my order to arrive, three racers who were pitted near me showed up and joined me.  Andy D'Ornellas, who is from Guyana and rides a very clean CB350 Honda, Paddy Fitzgerald, who is from Ireland and rides a Norton Atlas, and Colin Paul, who sounded American but assured me he was Canadian and who rides a RZ350 Yamaha.  They are a great bunch and represent part of what I love about Canada: it's diversity.  We had a good chance to get to know each other as the service was very slow and it was a long time until we got served.

Andy D'Ornellas' CB 350 Honda, one of my competitors in P1-350

Paddy Fitzgerald with his 750 Norton Atlas

Colin Paul heads out on his P-4 F3 Yamaha

Then, Sat. morning, the ERTT didn't want to start.  after futzing with the points for about 40 minutes, I finally got it running but had missed my one and only practice by then.  So they let me go out in 'fast' practice on my P-1 350 with all the vintage superbikes, not knowing where I was going.

I'm #71 in the VRRA

One guy showed me around for a lap, then my face shield came adrift.  We had been warned that there was a strict noise ordinance at this track and I had fitted a different megaphone and pop riveted a silencer on the back with a hanger from the frame.

I lashed on a silencer for Calabogie

 But, the pop rivets were aluminum and they broke on the 3rd lap and the muffler dragged on the track while hanging from  the frame.  I got in 1 more lap and had a vague idea where I was going.
As it turned out, no one was tested or hassled about sound.  I got some steel pop rivets from Rodger McHardy and, after dollying the end of the silencer that had dragged, replaced it and I had no further problems with it.

The silencer replaced with steel pop rivets after dollying the leading edge

When I started the bike for the P-1 350 heat, I knew right away that I had a clutch problem, but had no time to do anything about it.  By the end of the first lap it was slipping badly, but I stayed out because I needed the practice.  Back in June at Rd. Am., my shift linkage came apart while in 4th gear and I severely abused the clutch finishing the race.  After I fixed the linkage, the clutch seemed fine.  But, at Mosport, one of the friction plates delaminated and I replace it with a NOS plate and, again, it seemed fine.  I should have replaced all of the friction plates after the event, but didn't and one failed at Calabogie.  Luckily, Dick Miles had given me a whole set of used friction plates at NJMP, so I put them all in at Calabogie with the help of Gary McCaw, who wasn't racing.

So the bike worked well in the heat for the bump up class, P-2 Lightweight and I got a 3rd in the (wet)heat, definitely still learning.

This is probably from the P-2 LW heat on Sat., probably turn #16  Tim Voyer 840 leading Dave Mascioli 103 and Stan Nicholson 70 with just my helmet showing.  I got by Stan and finished 3rd. Norm Voyer photo

exiting the last turn.  When I see photos on me on the bike, I always think that I look so big and the bike so small, but it doesn't feel that way when I'm riding it.  Nev Miller photo

After Sun. practice, I geared it up and won the p-1 350 final and was 2nd to Tim Voyer's well ridden, fast CB350 in the P-2 LW.  The motor does stumble on the exits of hard cornering, which I figure has to be related to the remote float and I've tried to stabilize it and various float heights, but without success and I just ride around it.
As near as I can figure, Calabogie represents the 116th race track I've ridden on and it probably rates in the top five along with VIR north circuit, The Ridge, and Mid-Ohio (in the dry).

another view of Paddy Fitzgerald's Atlas

The flowers add a homey touch to this sidecar pit.

A nice original G-80 Matchless

A beautiful Seeley G-50 that didn't get to race because the magneto failed in practice

Bonneville Vintage GP

After having got back from the Isle of Man Wed. evening, I flew to Salt Lake City on Fri.  I had originally thought that I was going to race Gary Roper's '51 Velocette MAC and Mike Bungay's 350 Harley Sprint, as I have for the last four or five years.  But, Mike called me a few weeks ago to tell me that he was selling his race bike for health reasons, and neither he or his bike would be coming to Utah Motorsports Campus, formerly known as Miller M/S Park.  So, it was just Gary's Velo that I would be racing, and Gary himself was taking the plunge, taking the rider's school on the Friday with the Velo, then racing his newly aquired Indian Sport Scout.

When I arrived at the track Sat. morning, Gary told me that he had graduated and was now a real racer, and the Velo had worked fine.  I took it out in the first practice and it seemed better than ever, except the gearing was tall.  Gary had a couple of things to attend to on his Indian, so I got stuck in changing the rear sprocket on the Velo, adding a tooth.  This took long enough than I missed the second round of group #1 practice, but I slipped out with group #2 and was happy with the bike.

The race before my race was the 500 Premiere, 500GP, 350 GP, 350 Sportsman and Vintage Superbike lightweight.  Walt Fulton, riding Karl Engellener's sister bike to Bungay's, got into a good dice with Paul Germain (DT-1 Yamaha) and Jim Neuenberg (short stroke H-D Sprint) and Helmi Niederer (Seeley G-50 Replica, riding in the 500 Premiere class).  Paul eventually gapped every one, and first Jim, then Walt passed Helmi.  Jim seemed to have a fair margin on Walt as they went out of sight on the last lap, but somehow Walt got by and finished 2nd.

I was up next in the Class 'C' foot shift class, which was gridded behind the 200 GP and Novice Production lightweight classes and ahead of the Class 'C' Handshift, which Gary was in on his Indian.  The Class 'C' bikes were in the third wave, so we started considerably behind the other two waves.  Alex McLean, on a 500 cammie Norton, narrowly led me into turn #1 and slowly pulled away from my 350 MAC.  We quickly dispatched the Novice production bikes and started picking off the 200 GP bikes.  Alex ended up 8th overall with the fastest lap of the race and I was 10th O.A. with the second fastest lap, a full three seconds faster than I had gone on the same bike last year.  The bike was still geared a little tall, so I added another tooth to the rear sprocket.

Sun. I decided to enter the Classic '60s class also, as it looked like potentially I could finish 2nd to Alex in that class also.  The  500 Premiere/350GP race Sun. was again a good scrap, with Germain again getting into the lead, only to have his Yamaha seize on the 2nd lap.  He was able to coast and let the motor cool, then restart the bike and nurse it, now in 4th place behind Helmi, Jim and Walt.  They started the last lap in that order but Jim missed a shift, letting Walt through and Helmi left a gap on the 2nd to last turn and Walt shot through to take the O.A. win.

I was up next and again Alex narrowly led me through turn#1 and started to pull away.  But, on the 2nd lap, he threw up his had and pulled off the track to retire with a broken rocker arm.  This handed me the Class 'C' lead and I continued to pick off 200GP bikes.  The Velo seemed to be gaining revs quickly and I wondered if the clutch was slipping a little or if the motor was just running so well that it was accelerating that quickly.  I ended up 10th O.A. again.   Gary had pulled off when one of his sparkplug leads fell off his Indian when the cap broke.

There was one race between the Class 'C' and Classic 60s race and we checked that there was free play at the clutch lever, so I assumed that I had imagined the clutch slip.  I didn't realize that my fastest lap was two seconds slower than in the morning practice or the race Sat.  As soon as I went out for the warmup lap, the clutch was now slipping obviously and badly and I nursed the bike around the lap and pulled off into pit lane thinking that maybe we could do a quick adjustment and I could start from the pit lane.  But Gary said it would take far too long, so I never started.

So, it was a fun weekend and satisfying to go so fast on the Velo, to see Gary do well in his racing debut, to see Walt win on Karl's Sprint, but something was definitely missing without Mike there.  And, judging from my lap times on Mike's Sprint last year, I could have shown all those bums the way around.

Motorcycle Classic again sponsored a bike show and this Triumph Speedtwin was one of the standouts

a couple of Triumph Cubs

A Maico Bella scooter

A Moto Guzzi Ambassador 

Not in the show, but show quality, a BSA Alloy Clipper

The minimalist look is appealing

A JT-1? Yamaha brought back from Japan by a service man was in the garage next to us.

Fred Mork had this beautiful KSS Velo there, which didn't race, but Jeff Scott took it for some parade laps

That's Fred's mid '30s BSA V-twin in the background.

VRRA Vintage Festival

I was contacted by a documentary videographer, Daniel Lovering, a while ago who wanted to make a documentary on me.  I told him that this had already been done ('Roper #7' by Don Lange at Staightface Studio).  Daniel replied that he was aware of that video and thought it was good, but he had a somewhat different take on the story.  In the 'small world' department, it turns out that Daniel and Don had both worked on the same TV show years before and vaguely remembered each other and I had bought a Velocette Thruxton from Daniel's dad, Talbot, maybe 35 years ago.

I told Daniel my schedule and he asked if he could come along with me to the VRRA's Vintage Festival at Mosport, now officially known as Canadian Tire Motorsports Park.  So Daniel, who lives in Cambridge, Ma., drove down to Team Obsolete HQ in Brooklyn, videoed the T/O shop and conducted a interview with T/O founder and owner, Rob Iannucci.  Daniel then followed me home and videoed an interview with me at my house.  He returned the next morning and started shooting me doing the final load of my van.  We then headed off to Mosport, he following me in his car.  We soon got separated an went different ways but managed to meet up again just north of Binghampton, N.Y.  After eating on the fly, we got to the track close to 9p and I set up my pit area, Daniel recording everything into the dark.

The next morning, we awake to dense fog which still hadn't lifted after I got registered, went through tech inspection and attended the riders meeting.  They couldn't start practice because the corner workers couldn't see from one station to the next.  The fog didn't lift enough to start practice until about 12:30p and they scheduled one round of practice for each group.

The '46 Moto Guzzi Dondolino and '70 H-D ERTT with Daniel videoing in the background

My '46 MotoGuzzi Dondolino had run poorly at Road America and, while I found and fixed the problem with the clutch, I had no confidence that the minor changes I had made would solve the misfire problem.  Sure enough, while it would start easily and run fine in neutral, as soon as I put it under real load it would misfire, so I pulled in after one lap.  My H-D ERTT 350 Sprint on the other hand ran well.  I was entered in the first race of the day on the Sprint, the Magill Masters Lightweight.  This is open to any lightweight vintage bike piloted by a rider over 50 years old.  We assembled on the pre grid and while we waited, the fog descended again and they sent us back to the paddock.  Then it started to rain heavily with lightning close by and it was decided to cancel all racing for the day.  After raining with lightning for several hours, it let up and the sun even came out, so I decided to change the magneto on the Dondolino.  Guy Martin of Martin Brickwood Performance dove in to help and together we got it changed and timed.  The tapered armature has a keyway to locate the magneto gear on the shaft, but for some reason, if I install the key, I can't get the timing correct.  The motor has no vernier adjustment for the mag gear and the points plate is fixed in the magneto and can't be rotated to adjust the timing. So, I've just put the gear on the shaft at the correct point without the key and relied on the taper and nut to hold it in place.

When I went out on the Dondo for Sunday morning practice, it ran great initially with no misfire, but then started running slower and slower and I pulled off after two laps. 

On the Dondo at Moss's corner.  Alex Bilo photo

 I then went out on the Sprint and again it ran well.  But, at the end of the session, I did a plug chop and was coasting into the pits with a a dead engine holding the clutch in, when the clutch suddenly engaged and the cable all of a sudden had a massive amount of free play.  I quickly disassembled the clutch as I was in the first race of the day.  I found that one of the friction plates had de-laminated and jammed. I scrambled through my spares to find a new clutch plate, installed it and re-adjusted the cable.  I got it all done just in time to make the pre-grid only to be told that I didn't have my transponder on the bike.  

Alex Bilo photo

I rode back to my pit and screamed at who ever was close by to get the transponder off the Dondolino and put it on the Sprint, but of course they couldn't understand what I was saying or know where the transponder was located on the bike.  So it took a while to get this done and, by the time that I got back to the pre-grid, everyone had left and I had to start from the pit lane after everyone had passed.  I picked off 5 of the 10 starters, many of them newer and/or bigger bikes, and closed on Stan Nicholson's TD 2B Yamaha, but ran out of time to catch him in the shortened races they had to run on Sun.

Alex Bilo photo

I found that the ignition timing had slipped (to about TDC) on the Dondolino with the mag gear moving on the shaft and I had pretty much given up on fixing it before race race 6.  The only hope was to put the key back between the gear and the shaft, mounting the gear in the advanced position, then retarding the ignition to the correct time with the cable operated manual retard.  I explained this to my friend Mark Heckles when he stopped by and he volunteered to help and encouraged me to give it a try.  So we dove in.  It's fairly involved and a buch of stuff has to be removed to remove the timing cover to remove the mag gear.  Then  it took several tries to get the timing close before buttoning everything back up.  Mark was also in race 6, as oddly, the Pre 50 class was at the back of the grid behind the P2 Heavyweight that he was in on a CR 750 Honda.  Mark kept saying that he had to go to suit up for the race and I kept saying ' yes; you go', but then he'd say that he'd just replace this or tighten that.  We finally got it finished and we both managed to get suited up and to the pre-grid on time to make the warmup lap.  I got a good start and led the Pre 50 class most of the way through the back straight when Ingo Reuters came by on his Pre war Rudge as the Dondolino slowed, and slowed, and slowed, then started to seize.  I whipped the clutch in and the motor stopped as I coasted into pit in.  Then I realized that in the frenzy, I never turned the oil supply back on, having shut it off to remove the timing cover, a huge mistake.  I have a reminder that I attach to the oil valve when I shut it off, but I had forgotten to attach it in the frenzy.  A reminder for the reminder?  No, I need an electrical cut out that grounds the points when the oil valve is in the off position.  Oh well, the show must go on.

My last race was the P1 350 Class which was gridded behind the P1 Open bikes.  I got a good start leading the 350s and started picking off the Open bikes.  I ended up 1st 350 and 5th overall, having caught 4th place and, waking him up up from his stupor, he got me back and beat me by a little over an eight of a second.  A somewhat satisfying end to a fraught weekend.

Alex Bilo photo

Daniel was shooting footage until the end and he has a huge editing job ahead of him as he can only use probably less than 1% of what he shot.  It a little unnerving to be followed constantly with a camera, but Daniel is a good guy and I'm sure he won't show anything that will embarrass me more that failing to turn on the oil. 

Daniel never stopped shooting

Stuart Dey said he couldn't afford a TZ750 so he had had Denis Curtis of CRM Products build him a chassis for a TR750 Suzuki Waterbuffulo

NJMP Thunderbolt

For the AHRMA race at New Jersey Motorsport Park I entered the Friday practice to test Team Obsolete's MV Agusta 350 three cylinder, which mechanic Josh Mackenzie had recently finished going through.  In the first round, the tach stopped working and I had little front brake.  Josh fixed those problems, but in the second session I lost clutch release, which was just a matter of the handlebar adjuster backing off.  With that secured, the bike went well in the third session.  Having accomplished what we set out to do of making sure the bike was sorted and ready, Josh loaded up the bike and took it back to Brooklyn.

Team Obsolete MV 350 3 cal. on the bench and myTC200 Suzuki in foreground

Josh Mackenzie working on the T/O MV 350-3

I took my H-D ERTT Sprint out for one session and it seemed good.

Sat., my 'bump up' class ran first, the 500 Premiere class, which was gridded in front of 500GP, Formula 500 and 500 Sportsman and Vintage Superbike Lightweight.  There were only four of us in 500 Premiere and Tim Joyce on Maurice Candy's Manx soon cleared off.  I chased Helmi Niederer on his Minovation Seeley G-50, but he slowly pulled away.  Tim Tilghman, Rich Midgley and Kerry Smith all came by on their F-500 Honda 350s, but Midge got a flat tire and dropped out, so I finished 5th overall.

On the ERTT in turn #4  Etech photo

The 350GP class was gridded behind the electric bike class with Class 'C' foot shift and Handshift and Formula 125 behind us.  It took me several laps to chase down the electric bikes and I was able to win overall, but with only the 4th fastest lap, the electric bikes peaking early, then fading a bit.

Joel Samick brought his Retro Tours to NJMP Sat.  Joel runs tours on his Twins from the '70s and he had four guys with him and they were going on to Delaware on Sun.  They were riding an XLCR Harley, a TX 750 Yamaha, a RD400 Yamaha, a V50 Moto Guzzi, and a T100C Triumph.  He invited me to join them for dinner and I ended up spending the night with them in a condo at the track.

Joel told me that I had to check out this Corvair power bike in the swap meet.

complete with '60 instrumentation....

...and quad headlights

Sun. went much like Sat., though in the 500 race Helmi didn't ride and Midge didn't have a flat tire and Mark Morrow on his F-500 Yamaha and Brad Phillips on his 500 Sportsman BMW also came past me, so I was 7th overall.

In the 350 race, I was again able to chase down all the electric bikes and win overall, this time with the 2nd fastest lap.

Leading the electric bikes of Robert Berbeco 690, Art Kowitz 1, and Peter Nicolosi.  Etech photo

Eddie Fisher, age 91, winner of the '53 Laconia National, raced his Cub

My Hero

The inimitable Dick Miles showed up Sunday and pitted next to me.  Here he is working on the Norton Manx of John Lawless with his own Manx (44) in the background.

Scott Dell took the rider's school, then raced his '51 Vincent Comet

AHRMA Sonoma raceway

From Willow Springs, I rode up to Sacramento with Karl and Monday got working on the bike.  Mike determined that the swing arm pivot failure that we experienced at Willow was from a D shaped retainer, which the spindle socketed into, had broken free, allowing the spindle to back out of the retaining bolt on the other side.

 Mike started to work on repairing the fairing.

before

During

I discovered a broken spoke in the rear wheel.  Mike had another wheel with a broken spoke and I harvested two spokes from a third wheel to repair the two.

harvesting spokes

Tuesday, we took the bike over to Karl's and he came up with a plan to fix it.  This involved Mike and me finding some 2" diameter steel bar stock.  This took us to a neat old welding supply store in Auburn in a building that dated back to 1865.  We dropped the bar stock off with Karl, then drove to Davis to pick up some supplies from Mike's storage facility.  Back at Mike's house, I started cobbling a bench to put the bike on, because at my age I don't want to work on my knees.  After dinner, we drove over to Karl's and put both bikes in his pickup and took them back to Mike's.  In the morning, we finished the bike (except for the final paint on the fairing), organized the tools and spares, loaded everything up and headed for Sonoma.  There we rented a garage and unloaded the pickup and waited for the track day to finish to move in.

Garage mates Don Lange arrived from Seattle and and his old musician buddy Kenny Cummings arrived from NYC via SFO.  Several years ago, Don had become intrigued with Kenny's hobby of racing vintage bikes and started coming to the races and filming.  After a year or so, Don bought a street bike, a Honda CBR300F.  After another year or so, Don bought a race bike, a CB 175 Honda.  The weekend before the AHRMA Sonoma race, Don took a race school and made his race debut at Pacific Raceway in Kent, Washington.  This allowed Don to race at Sonoma and he invited Kenny to share his bike, racing it in 250GP, while Don rode it in the CB160 class and 200GP.

Kenny Cummings on left and Don Lange or right with Don's CB175.  Don's made a brilliant start to his RR career.  photo by Stacie B. London

On the first lap of my first practice Thurs., the gas cap flew off when I braked for turn #9.  I came right into the pits and we were able to bodge a solution with tape and an aerosol spray can top and a zip tie and I was able to get one for one or two more laps.  A couple of laps into the 2nd practice, I saw my teammate Walt Fulton III on a sister bike had crashed at turn #2, but was up and looked OK.  A couple of laps later, I was given the black flag at start/finish, and I pulled off at the next corner worker in turn #2.  I couldn't see anything wrong with "my" bike, while Walt's was a bit rough, and we both came back on the crash truck.

Always could be worse, but bad enough to put it out of commission for the event 

I found the black flag was for exceeding the 103db noise level.  I was told that track policy was three strikes and you're out: exceed 103db three time and you could no longer put the bike on the race track.

Mike and Karl, with the help of Andrew Cowell, fabricated a crude deflector to try to direct the exhaust away from the noise meter.  It was decided that "Walt's" bike was too badly damaged to fix up and that he and I would share "my" bike.  Therefore, I changed my entry from 350GP to Sounds of Singles 3, the single cylinder class for the smallest bikes, so Walt could race in 350GP.  SOS3 was gridded last behind Sound of Thunder 2 and Vintage Superbike Heavyweight in the first wave, and Triumph Thruxton TransAtlantic Cup and Electric bike class.  The other bikes in SOS3 were Mick Hart on a RS125 Honda, Mark Hunter on a Morwaki 250, Kurt Hipp on a pretty standard RC390 KTM, and Austin McCabe on a tricked out RC390 with reprogrammed ECU, special twin exhaust, special yokes, etc.  Austin led from the start with me second, but Mick came by in turn #5 on the 1st lap.  Mick got by Austin at some point , but they were well ahead of me and I finished a mere 0.008 seconds ahead of Mark.  We had passed one of the SOT2 bikes, two of the Vintage Superbikes, three of the Thruxtons and all of the e-bikes.  Good fun, but when I came in, I was informed that I had again exceeded the noise limit.  Strike Two.  

So it was decided that I would sit out the 500 Premiere race that I was entered in to ensure that Walt would get to ride in the 350GP.  Walt's significant other, Nancy, rode her bike to an auto parts store in Novato and got some radiator hose with elbows and some hose clamps and Karl and Mike made a better deflector for the exhaust.  The 350GP was also a second wave start and Walt, focused on a new to him starter, screwed up and launched with the first wave.  He immediately realized what he had done and stopped and waited until the entire second wave had left to start himself.  He consistently closed on the 350GP leader, Jim Neuenberg on Fred Mork's short stroke H-D Sprint, and came up less than 3 seconds short, but with a fastest lap more than 2 seconds quicker than Jim.  When Walt came in after the cool off lap, the radiator hose deflector was missing having fallen off sometime during the race, but he never tripped the noise meter.
At Willow Springs, I felt that the Grimeca front brake didn't make that much difference, but one doesn't brake much at Willow.  At Sonoma there are many hard braking areas and the Grimeca was definitely better but both Walt and I felt that the weight of it made it much harder to heave the bike from side to side through the esses.

This big Grimeca 4LS front brake definitely stopped better than the previous A1R, but it's weight also made it harder to change direction.  There's no free lunch

Karl took the exhaust pipe home with him and made a more secure connection for another radiator hose elbow.

Mike drills while Karl directs to attach radiator hose deflector to exhaust

Friday, I figured we had the noise problem licked, but in practice I short shifted by the noise meter to be safe and didn't have any problem.  In Friday's SOS3 race Austin McCabe didn't start, nor did Ari Henning, who showed up with his well developed KTM RC390, but both of them raced SOS1 and SOS2.  This may have to do with their bikes being of at least questionable legality for SOS3.  The rules say:"Single-cylinder machines with production chassis (with street-legal VIN) must retain stock bore and stroke, stock frame, forks and wheels.  Eligible machines include KTM 390RC and Duke."  Austin had told me that he bought the race version of the RC390, which may well have not had a 'street-legal VIN'.  Ari started with a street-legal RC390, but I don't know if it had stock forks and wheels and, in any case, he never entered SOS3.
So, in Friday's race, I was running 2nd to Mick Hart when, starting the 7th lap, I got the 'meatball' flag.  I assumed it was for noise again and wondered if I should pull off.  But, a couple of corners later, Zack Courts lapped me on his SOT2 FZ-O7 Yamaha, so I knew I would get the checkered flag the next time around and something in the back of my mind told me that I had a couple of laps to respond to a Meatball flag (as opposed to a black flag).  So, I didn't pull off and took the checker, finishing 2nd in class to Mick Hart and 15th overall of the 27 finishers and ahead of one of the SOT2 bikes, two of the Vintage Superbikes, two of the Thruxtons, and all of the e-bikes.  But, when I came in off the cool off lap, I was told to report to tech.  Cal Lewis, the AHRMA referee, told me that I had indeed gone over the sound limit again.  I told him that in practice I had short shifted by the sound meter and had been alright.  He told me that until the track said that I couldn't go out again, he would interpret the 3 strikes rule as per day.
So in the 500 Premiere race, I led off the line from pole position, but Ari Henning and Jon Munns came by me between turns #2 & 3 on their 500 Sportsman 350 Hondas.  I had a big slide on the exit of turn #5 which cooled my jets a bit, and then I really short shifted by the noise meter and lost touch with the two of them, but stayed close enough that I was able to watch a really good battle between them.  My fastest lap was more than 1.6 seconds slower than in the SOS3 race, largely because of short shifting for the noise meter, and I finished 3rd overall and 1st in class.
Walt got the start right this time for the 350GP, though he follow Jim Neuenberg for a few laps as he had ridden at all Fri. up until then.  He passed Jim and won by just under a second.  Walt didn't short shift by the noise meter and never exceeded the limit.  Did we take different lines, sit on the bike differently, shift at different points?  Who knows, but I tripped the meter 4 times over the 2 days and Walt not once.  Life isn't fair.  My best lap time this year was 2:02.434; last year I did a 1:58.490, almost 4 seconds faster, and that was on a frame that turned out to be significantly bent from the crash the previous week at Willow Springs, and was subsequently straightened.  It's not entirely valid to compare times year to year as a lot of things change, but 4 secs.  The brake might have been a bit of that and maybe the tires were getting a bit old, but 4 secs?  It can't be because I'm getting old, can it?

Lenora Cox, editor of the Velocette Owners Club newsletter, rode this MAC to the track

Lenora let me ride it around the paddock and it's badass

Jeff Scott fettled the MAC and made this exh. clamp

An interesting character assembled this tableau outside our garage

Saturday, I did a 85 mile road ride with my good friend Parra and three other Roadoilers.

With my old friend Parra in what could be mistaken for his native Ireland.  Great photo by Robert Bleeker

 Last year,  I rode Parra's TR5T Triumph, but it played up with a leaking fuel line, so I road his Dick Mann Special TT500 Yamaha.

With the Dick Mann Specialties TT 500 Yamaha (despite what the tank says) Robert Bleeker photo

Dick made nearly 200 frame kits for the XT/TT500 between '76 and '81.  Parra had initially cow trailed the bike but later converted it to road use.  It has Betor forks with Marzocchi yokes, Kosman front wheel with a Lockheed caliper and a Yamaha MX rear wheel and fuel tank, and Works Performance rear shocks.  Gus rode his '58 BSA Goldstar,  Robert rode his '83 Honda VF 750 Interceptor, Parra rode his FT500 Honda Ascot, and Jim rode his 2011 XT250 Yamaha, which may have been the smallest bike, but it was also the newest and Jim is an old roadracer and he led and set a great pace.

L to R Parra, me, Jim and Gus.  Robert Bleeker photo

 Parra, Robert and I left Parra's house in Forest Knolls and met Jim and Gus in Pt. Reyes Station.  From there we headed north through Marshall, then headed inland through Fallon, Valley Ford, Two Rocks, Dillon Beach and stopped in Tomales.

I critique the DMS TT500 for Parra.  Robert Bleeker photo

Robert headed back to the East Bay and Gus, Parra and I left Jim there and headed back to Forest Knolls with Gus peeling off at the end.  It was a gorgeous day and Marin was quite green after some recent rain.  The roads were fabulous and what an eclectic collection of bikes.
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