Wacky Weekend at RFR with SBK775

It started off awesome and ugly all at the same time. Toe, Dove, and myself showed up on Friday around 11am for the first of three days of RFR’ness. The track wasn’t to go hot until noon anyhow. There were 9 people there.

Awesome. Ugly.

From a selfish riding standpoint, it was epic; open format at RFR! My favorite track around! From a financial standpoint…ugh! I was gonna take a serious financial hit!

Regardless, we were there, we were gonna make do best we could.

First thing’s first.. we had to give people a chance to get warmed up and whatnot. We unloaded everything, got the computers all set up, and geared up to ride. :) I did 4 laps and suddenly felt bored. I just wasn’t feeling it like I thought I would, I guess. I pulled off the track, changed back into my photo-clothes, and headed out to shoot for a little bit. Toe and I went out and shot for about 45 mins… running all over the track, covering a TON of ground in a very short amount of time..I mean, there were NINE people on the track.

Bored. But hey, there were birds…

pelicans birds of some sort

I radio’d over to Toe and says “let’s go unload, grab our helmets, and go dirtbike riding.” There was no argument from Toe.

We grabbed the CRF150 and the YZ250F and headed for the hills. We did a bunch of straight cross-desert riding before we found any semblance of trail (horse) or road. We rode about 35-40 miles of high desert, headed up to the radio towers that are on the high peaks west of Fernley.

crf150 fernley mountains radio tower

We got back to the track around 5pm. It was Golden Hour and the light looked amazing. I told Toe to gear up and head out on the Fail Bike, cause I was headed out to take pics! It was the first time I’d ever seen the track open till 6pm, so I was going to take full advantage of the rad light I had available. He went out and tore it up.

fAIL bike fiat replica

fail bike replica fiat

My “hero shot”, as I call it, under the warm orange light of Golden Hour came out pretty epic, methinks.

golden hour knee drag fernley reno raceway

I shot until a few minutes until 6 before heading in to get everything unloaded and sorted in case people wanted to come check out pics. No one came. Ugly. But Toe and I at least had a good day riding around on dirtbikes for a few hours. Dove had put a ton of laps on the gixxer through out the day as well.

Saturday was different. There were about 50 or so people on Saturday…kinda more like RFR has been lately with the whole downturn in the economy. It’s a little dissapointing seeing such a small turnout…not strictly from my own selfish business standpoint…but because RFR is such a fun track! Lots of people are missing out!

Anyhow, Toe and I got straight to business.

This location…

joe photos fernley raceway

..gives you photos that look like this…

Myron and chad fernley gsxr zx6r

While out shooting, I happened to notice a few bad lines, so I offered up towing someone around to show em my lines. Yeah, I’m not the FASTEST person out there, but I go alright…I thought it would help…

fernley raceway sv650 gsxr front end

So after lunch, I grabbed Rory and we headed out. On my way out the door, Dove warned me about the rear. Just as we’re about to pull out of the pits, I stopped Rory and told him “My right side rear is donezo, so I’m just gonna be cruising out there…” and off we went.

*sigh*

1.08 laps later, riding at a calm ~25% pace, looked like this.

joe highside gsxr t5 rfr

Highside surprise! I landed pretty hard. Knocked the wind outta me pretty good. I elbow-knee crawled to the dirt, trying to get clear of the track…slowly…trying to breathe… The last thing I wanted to do was cause a redflag and a delay. But it was to no avail…the red flag came out just as I managed to catch my breath and do a quick inventory of all my vital bits and get up.

I picked my bike up, and rolled it outta the way as the ambulance showed up. :(

Sorry everyone!

I was definately sore in a few spots…shoulder, ankle, hip…but I knew I was fine. I’ve hit the deck harder before. All I wanted to do at that exact moment in time was get the track rolling again. Medical asked if I was okay, I said yes. They said for me to get in the ambulance, and I told em I didn’t need it. They said they would have to have me fill out some papers in the paddock then…so I hopped on the gixxer and rode it away via access road. It started leaking brake fluid half way down the access road, so I just pulled it over, parked it, and walked the rest of the way to the pits.

Meh. Pretty dissapointing. That was my 3rd crash on the track in just over 5 years. I guess it’s not really that terrible in the grand scheme of things… I mean, I’m not SLOW… I’d like to think that I do pretty well at not falling down. Hell, I’ve only ever even had 5 or 6 off track excursions ever before… but that doesn’t matter. I felt like a total douche. The track was shut down for about 5 minutes while they cleared the ambulance. It coulda been worse…but I still felt like garbage about it.

I got back to the pits, changed back to my shooting clothes, filled out the mandatory ambulance papers, then went straight over to Jim’s pits…the guy that I highsided RIGHT in front of. I felt pretty terrible and apologized to him for that, and thanked him for not running me over.

I smoked a cig, drank a Redbull, then headed back out to take more pics…sore. :/

Sunday, I was hurtin good.

“Suck it up, tough it out, do the best you can.”

I got a buddy who has that as his signature on the forums.. I thought it was fitting.

gsxr zx14 fernley

wheelie sv streetfighter fernley

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4 Comments

    1. I’m really enjioyng the theme/design of your blog. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility issues? A small number of my blog audience have complained about my blog not working correctly in Explorer but looks great in Safari. Do you have any solutions to help fix this issue?

  1. Glad u r ok and thx for sharing. As a noobie who is getting into the track world, can u give me some recommendations. I am attending the CSS course in Nov. Thx again!

  2. I always enjoy your write UPS and wish I had the money to ride more and do track days with you Joe.
    Thanks for being there for us all even when you lowe money. For me I know you truly do it 4 the riders.
    Thanks for being you and you too Tosef…
    Hugs…-cM

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