Going Around In Circles

Well last Saturday the dog and I loaded up the VW and headed out to El Mirage to try and relearn out to make one giant left turn. Getting there was an adventure as any time you drive a VW van over a mountain pass it is an adventure. The stop at Staters Brothers market in Phelan was a flashback as several girls had a box of real cute puppies (free) balls of fur wanting to play saying take me home. Well we fell that for that line in this same parking lot several years ago but knowing better not wiser I left without any new additions though our mutt was very willing to take them with us.

It was warm, in the high nineties, windy with lot of dust blowing across the lake bed. The purpose of the trip was to try out my speedway bike that I picked up from another rider earlier in the week. The bike ran alright but I was not sure if I could still ride it. The dog refused all attempts to help me start the thing. Starting and riding it was not a problem but getting it to slide smoothly one corner after another was. The lake bed is super smooth but the surface is far from the dirt that one sees at a speedway track. Speedway motorcycles are just like other motorcycles except for a few exceptions: they don't have any gear box (transmission), they don't have any brakes, they only really turn left, you have to push it to start it. Most people seeing one for the first time usually ask what hell it is.

My neighbor across the street came over to the garage and asked what it was. A couple of years ago my teenage mutant and I would drive north to the fair ground track in Auburn to race there. At the rest stops along the way people would walk up to our pickup truck and stare at the two race bikes and say "Are those trials bikes ?" Trial bikes are also kinda skinny and have similar tires but are made for going over obstacles which a speedway bike will not do though I have seen many jump over a crash wall. For some unknown reason we have had seven of these things over the last eight or nine years. We buy them, race them, loose interest, sell them, then an evil spirit drifts by and I start over again. Since I don't own any firearms I can't shoot my self in the foot but with speedway bike the result are almost the same.



These thing get dirty just sitting there so after a trip to the dry lake it had to be cleaned again. I have signed up to race next Wednesday at The City of Industry and really need some seat time to figure things out again. My first thought would be drive all the way out to El Mirage again but the bike is clean now. So this Saturday night I will take it to Victorville and race there instead of using the dry lake for practice. The drive is about the same distance and after I done the cleaning will start all over again.