2006 Castle Rock Season Opener - TT and Short Track Double Header
[First of all, click on any of the images below to see a larger version.] Wow. What a weekend. Saturday we jumped into the Mothership (our name for the team box van) and headed off to Castle Rock for the season opener. I love racing there and the weather was supposed to be fantastic and we were all excited. We got our usual parking spot in the pits and had plenty of time to wander around and look at some of the great machinery. Joe Kopp had his fleet there. He had a beautiful framer Rotax and a stock framed CRF450. (He also had a framer CRF450 stashed in the back of the box van that he pulled out for Sunday!)

Things did not start off well for me. Sitting in staging for the first practice session I asked the guy running staging which group was going next so I could have the bike running and ready. He pointed to the group of 450’s next to me. Perfect. I sat in line and did not start the bike thinking I would be in the next group. He lets that line go and then points to my line! I give it a kick and it does not fire, so I push out of the way and let the rest of the line go. It starts on the next kick and I jump out at the end of the line and get on the track with about a half a turn lead before the fast 450’s are barreling down on me. 

Now you have to know that Saturday night is a TT, which means it has a right and left and turn. What they do is bring you to the end of turn two, and instead of continuing down the back straight like you would if you were riding the short track, you take a pretty tight left and go into the infield where there is a right turn and then they bring you back on the track at the start of turn three, effectively cutting out the entire back straight. Then the track is normal through turns three and four, the front straight and through turns one and two before you make the tight left into the infield again. (Story continued under the pictures!)

Practice Saturday afternoon. (Gotta work on getting that leg a little further out there!)	This is the first corner for the Evolution class TT heat race. #44 in front was really fun to follow. He would just lay it over and style it into turn one and turn and the start of the dogleg. It looked great, but really wasn't the fastest way. I just did my good old steer it in to the corner and was slowly reeling him in.	He opened up a bit of a lead, but I was slowly chipping away at it. I had the best seat in the house to watch him though and that was fun!
Still gaining on him just a little at a time!	Still there!	This was as close as I would get though. He won with a nice little gap. Lots of fun and I felt like I rode well. That is third on top of my helmet. #4 Kawasaki 400cc two-stroke. This guy has the nicest girlfriend in the stands.
Mad Dog Homolka puttin' to the kids! Jeff races his pumped up TTR125 as a test bike project for ProCycle. He runs it here and then also at as many supermoto events as he can. It is really fun!	Everybody works in the Team FlatTrackStuff.com and ProCycle pits! This is Susan loading up the bike Saturday night as she is ready to get the heck to the motel and have a shower!	Mad Dog Jeff Homolka (with his lovely wife Susan) and his third place trophy for the evening. We did our best to collect all the plastic we could for the weekend. It looks good in the showcase at the shop!
Aww...is that too cute or what? A kiss from the trophy girl. If only we could have some fun doing this stuff!!	Practice on Sunday and if you look behind me, I am actually leading Vince Holt!! Yeah, it was not earned, but I have photo proof it happened. Vince is REALLY fast and it is my goal to beat him once before the year is out.	Practice with Brock on that big TL1000 tracker! I was actually catching him for a bit. Had a nice wave for the fans.
Jeff in a heated battle on Sunday!	Start of the Evolution race. Just gettin' off the line. Everybody pretty even at this point.	Going into the first corner I am inside and have a good drive going.
Holeshot!!! This is the Evolution heat race and I stole it from here on out. This was really an exciting thing! My first win in flat track racing. Then went on to do the same in the Main event and take that as well. Happy Mother's Day Mom!!	Back straight and I am already opening up a lead. I have no clue of this and am actually thinking that they are all on my butt and I am riding as hard as I can.	If you click on the larger picture, this is the start of lap two and I have a good lead going and will hold it to the checkered flag!
	The Booty! They say only SCUBA divers and Pirates get the booty, well, so do flat track racers! We had a great weekend - 6 Main Events and 5 trophies! Not a bad haul.

 
I made the first cautious lap to see what the track surface was like, how the tires were working and those kinds of things. My second lap I started to pick  up some speed and went into the dogleg and before I knew anything was wrong, I was bouncing down the track holding onto the handlebars doing my best  Superman impersonation. Its amazing what goes through your mind in those few seconds. It really can seem like minutes as your mind processes all this information and you have a chance to react and think about it. I remember my back took a little tweak and went POP! Nothing terrible, just a little self-adjusting really, but I remember thinking, “that is going to hurt tomorrow!” When I stopped bouncing, I jumped to my knees and looked back over my  shoulder to see who the hell was going to run me over. Thankfully, they were all able to get around me. I picked up the bike and tried to push it off the  track and it did not want to move. I could feel something with the rear wheel was all screwed up and it was not rolling. 

“Great” I thought to myself, “another blown motor. This will not be cheap.” I managed to get the beast pushed off the track and out of the way. 
Then I started looking at the bike. I looked down and saw the brake pedal wrapped around the peg like a piece of spaghetti. Not a good thing. That was the  cause of the problem, not a blown motor!! I tried to loosed the adjusting screw at the back of the rod, but it was so tight that there was no way it was  coming lose without tools, of which I had none on me of course. With the help of an aid worker, I was finally able to get it off the track. Then Mr. Miller (another kind racer) came over and brought his wagon that we put the back end in and rolled it back to the Mothership. That sure made life easier, though it was fun steering!

Jeff was waiting and running his second practice during all of this, so once I was at the truck, I got out of my leathers, and was pretty bummed as I  thought the weekend was over. I had tried jumping up and down on the brake lever and nothing budged it, so I thought it was unrepairable. Jeff came in from  practice and yelled, “Why don’t you have that thing apart yet?” I told him I could not bend it so I did not think it was fixable. Besides, the forks were  slightly bent, we had ripped a stop off the triple clamps, cracked a section of the tank (not where the fuel was though) and bashed up the pipe and it had a  severe crack in the mount.

He ripped off his leather coat and said that we could get it in shape! So we hopped all over it. We took the pedal off (it was REALLY bent!) and he went to work on that while I worked straightening out the front end and tried to get the pipe off the shock. Now don’t ask me how he did it, but that guy used the  mount, the trailer hitch receiver on the Mothership and the hitch itself to tweak, bend, hammer and force that pedal into a shape that could work again!!  We got it all together, adjusted and ready for my first heat race! Oh yeah, he raced his Maddog class heat race in the middle of all of that too. This guy is amazing and truly is my hero!

So I went out for the first heat and did OK. To be really honest, I will still a tad apprehensive going through the right hander. Still a bit afraid that  the pedal would catch and BOOM! I would be back on the ground. Even with that, I managed a second in the Evolution class heat and a third in the 40+ class heat.

Went back into the pits and tweaked and bent a little more just before heading out to the main events. Jeff had a great battle with a customer of his.  Well, actually the son of a customer! The two of them raced back and forth and put on a good show. This big guy racing this little kid. The crowd loved it.  Jeff walked away with a third.

In my Evolution class main, I got off the line in fourth (dead last!), not so hot. Worked my way up to third about halfway through the race and eventually got second at  the finish. I was happy with this. Now Jeff would not have the only trophy going home! My next class was 40+ and Vince Holt was in this class. Yikes! Anyway, I NAILED the start and actually led the first three-quarters of a lap! Then Vince got around me and that was that. But again, I held onto second and a pair of deuces is how I finished the night. Not bad considering I thought the weekend was all over after the crash! 

With Joe Kopp, Sam Halbert, Kyle Ragsdale and a host of other throttle cable stretchers in attendance, there was lots of good racing going on the rest of  the evening! Brock, the AMA official was running his TL1000 flat tracker and had a great night! Was fun watching him run that big monster around!

We left the the Motel 6 in Kelso and had breakfast (Moms and Families everywhere as it was Mothers day!). As we drove up the on-ramp onto I-5, we heard a big POP! and then a hissing sound. Sounded like a flat tire. I looked over at Jeff though (in the Captains seat!) and it did not appear to be handling funny. We pulled over, jumped out and all the tires were fine (Good thing as we did not have a spare I learned later!). Popped the hood and we had blown the air hose off the turbo cooler. No big deal. That was good news. As we were working on it, who should stop to see if we needed help? Mr. Joe Kopp! We had the back doors open for tools and he could see the bikes and stopped to make sure everything was OK. That was cool. I love the flat track family!

Sunday and it is short track time. Went out for practice and the track was a bit rough, not the usual pavement smooth Castle Rock. They fixed most of it  before the races though. It was a beautiful day for racing. Temps in the 80’s and not a cloud in the state of Washington I swear. Perfect. 

Jeff went out for his heat and took another third. First and second were little kids that were just too damn fast! Good race for him with his client buddy  though.

I went wire-to-wire for the win in my Evolution class heat race. Got a great start and just held it to the finish. Now, this is my first flat track win of any kind.  I was pretty stoked. You’d have thought I won the National here. (By the way, Nationals will be here in August!!! Doubleheader!! Don't miss that!) Anyway, it was very cool. I never looked back, just rode my butt off thinking I was going  to get passed any second. When I looked back after crossing the finish line, second place was just between turn three and four!! I had a great lead. Very exciting for me to say the least. 

Feeling good, I got ready for my second heat race. Sitting in staging in the infield, I went through my usual nervous routine: check both petcocks to make sure  the fuel is on. Then I always check the choke lever to make sure that is off. When I did that, I bumped it on. I quickly flipped it off, but it was too  late. The bike did this neat little BURP! thing back through the carb and belched it right off!! Blew it right out of the intake manifold! No way to push it back into the manifold as the clamp was too tight and there was no screwdriver for 200 hundred yards. DAMN. I waved to the flagman that I was out and let the race go. There were only four on the start line, so  I was not too worried. I figured that I would get the last position in the main and be OK. Hah! When they posted the races for the mains, there had been two 40+ heat races, and I was the last guy on the second row! Dang, that hurt.

Went our for the Evolution main event and managed to do that same wire-to-wire thing as in the heat race. It was exciting. I rode like there were flames on my rear end. Lots  of fun. I kept wanting to peek over my shoulder, but did not dare. I did finally look back after the checkered flag and I had a big lead, not quite as big as the heat race, but there was nobody going to get me at the line that was for sure. After finishing the race it was kind of emotional. My Mom passed away a few years ago and she never got to see me race motorcycles again (I raced MX as a kid) and I was always really sorry for that. So here it is Mother’s Day and I won my first race. Took a few minutes for the sweat to leave my eyes  and the lump to leave my throat. I miss her a lot.

Lined up on the back row of the 40+ class and I am still not terribly worried. I had been getting good starts all weekend and I thought if I could nail it,  I could move up pretty quickly. (Still high from the first win and all you know!) It worked! I got a good start and was fourth into the first turn. I stayed  with it and passed for third in a lap or two and was reeling in the guy in second. White flag came out and I was really close to him and did all I could through one and two and the back stretch and was closer! Went outside of him in three and four hoping he would bobble and he did just a little. We went  down the back straight and I had the better drive, but he had a bit of a lead. He held onto second by about 3 inches. Good on him, it was a great race! I got third. Vince Holt was  the winner of course. 

So, all in all, a great weekend for Team FlatTrackStuff.com. Jeff had a trophy for third in the TT (finished fourth in the short track) and I had a first  place piece of plastic, two seconds and a third. Best of all, I had ridden well, the bike was AWESOME and had overcome the crash. Great weekend. See you  there Memorial Day weekend for another doubleheader at The Rock!

Here’s to you Mom!!!