Epilogue: the Thrill of Glory, the Smell of Liniment

EPILOGUE: THE THRILL OF GLORY, THE SMELL OF LINIMENT

REMEMBER THE PART ABOUT THE LACK OF “CRASH-HAPPY maniacs” in Singles racing? As it turns out, there was one crash-happy maniac on the track when I returned for another round of glorious racing, and he was me. For some reason, the really fast Singles guys failed to materialize that weekend, resulting in the wide-eyed spectacle of my humble SRX running right behind the leader as we entered Turn Two after the start.

“Dude!, ” my overloaded brain said, “Pass this guy and we ’re in the lead! Big Trophy! Factory ride! Chicks! ”

I should have waited for an easier place to pass, but the guy in front (also on an SRX), whose butt I would recognize anywhere as Rick Thompson’s, kept hanging to the outside of the turn. I stuck my front wheel up inside Rick’s bike right after the apex.

Well, one man’s apex is another man’s pain. As I began a nice drift toward the outside calculated to put me in front, Thompson dove in toward a late apex (so that’s why he was hanging outside that way). Just as I was reaching forward to tap him on the shoulder and say, “Excuse, bud, could I please have my front wheel back?”, I was interrupted by the track jumping up and smiting me a biblical blow of the type that you don’t really feel until two days later, and don’t fully appreciate until a week has passed. My fault; the guy in front has the right-of-way.

Tumbling along the track at 80-ish, there was plenty of time to ponder the strategic advantage of laying in second place for a lap or two, the fleetness of fame, the worth of a good back protector, the scenic grandeur that is the desert sky... here comes my crotch to hit me in the face again...maybe I’ll just flatten out and slide for awhile.

Eventually I stopped and stood up. It was almost silent, except for a nice, even burbling sound. Strange. I looked down the track, and there, a hundred feet farther along, resting comfortably on its left side, lay my (for once) smoothly idling SRX: “Itolyoultolyoultolyou,” it said. I hobbled over and kicked it dead.

Well, my nice Bates leathers are no longer nice, ditto my $95 Held gloves, and my Mick Doohan-replica Arai is history-and the best $300 I ever spent. But I learned a lesson: Discretion is exponentially the better part of valor on a motorcycle, and, in the immortal words of Managing Editor B. Catterson, crashing sucks.

Happily, the bike only needs a new gas tank and clutch lever, both of which were included in my Denny Berg/White Bros, factory spares kit. I’ll be back, but frankly, at age 32, doubts are beginning to creep in as to

whether I’ll ever make it to the GP level.

John Burns