Well, the Team Skippy winter has been a bit all over the place. We headed into the winter with the hopes of having a bike ready for AHRMA’s March event at Carolina Motorsports Park (CMP) in South Carolina. I was quietly hoping for the AHRMA kickoff even earlier in February at Roebling Road Raceway in Georgia, but I knew that was likely not going to happen given the scope of work laid out before us. We were rebuilding our bike from the ground up: new frame, forks, brakes, pipes, etc. Pretty much everything except the actual motor.
As expected, February came and went. As March approached it became clear that wasn’t going to happen either. I had hoped to maybe roadtrip down to South Carolina with Vin Borbone who was going to campaign a new version of his A1R in AHRMA’s 250GP Championship. Sadly, the A1R seized (twice!) at Roebling and Vin was not going to be able to get the bike back together for CMP. So, it was looking like, despite my hopes, the TSR season would kickoff at the usual USCRA Thompson season-opening event at the end of May.
But then, I noticed a Facebook post from Nova Motorcycle’s Sayre Anthony saying that he’d be down at CMP next weekend hawking his Heidenau tires. “Road trip!” I thought. “After all, I’m retired and if I want to go down to South Carolina to get some warm weather, motorcycle sounds and smells and reconnect with a lot of racers, I can just do that now.”
So, I texted Sayre. Yup! Road trip planned. Then, on a whim, I posted a note on the USCRA Facebook Page, asking if anyone was going to be at CMP who might have an extra bike I could borrow for the weekend. Enter Joe and Kirsten Melchionda with a gen – u- wine GP bike, the Honda RS125. Yeah, that’s a real racebike! Valentino Rossi’s first ride as a professional.
In the course of two days, I’d gone from “maybe I’ll ride down to South Carolina with Sayre” to “Welcome to the 2026 Race Season!”
CMP is about 16 hours from Sayre’s house in Turners Falls, MA so we planned to launch at 3am on Thursday in order to arrive by 6pm in South Carolina. Turner’s Falls is a little under three hours from my house, so rather than leaving home at midnight, I shuffled down to Sayre Wednesday afternoon. I got into town around 4pm, hung out at Nova for a few hours while Sayre packed up and got my first smell of two stroke smoke when Sayre started his bike before loading it.
Bike, gear and literally every Heidenau race tire currently in North America packed up, we went to dinner and back to Sayre and Marcy’s house and went to bed early, knowing 2:30am would arrive quickly.
Arrive it did. Up at 2:30am for coffee, last-minute packing, a gas stop and we were off, rolling out at 3:06am
The drive south was largely uneventful – which we later found out was noteworthy. We passed NYC as the sun was coming up and that led to a lot of talking about Sayre’s time at Team Obsolete which led to talking about the recently passed Rob Iannucci who was Sayre’s entry point into the vintage motorcycle scene in the 1990’s. Sayre, a recent NYU graduate with a very unmarketable degree in philosophy replied to an ad by Team Obsolete for an “office worker.” Years later, he owns a very successful vintage motorcycle shop. Funny how life rolls out based on small decisions in time. Some other topics we touched on during the ride: adoption, tarot card readings, the pavement at NHMS, marriage, the process of importing race tires from Germany, raising kids, and more. It was a diverse conversation over the 16 hours.
At 11am I got a text from Joe Melchionda…
Joe: Where are you guys?
Me: Virginia? 400 miles to go.
Joe: We’re in traffic in Roanoke. Snow! You’ve got 6 more hours of this shit. LOL!
…along with this photo:
Ugh.
Sayre and I split driving pretty much along gas stops. He drove the first ¾’s of a tank, I drove the next ¾’s etc. We could have also split up the driving based on weather. Not raining: Sayre drives. Raining: I drive. In terms of what route we took, we’re a couple of 21st century guys so we typed “Carolina Motorsports Park” into Google Maps and did what we were told. This turned out to be a great decision because while Joe and Kirsten went through Roanoke into the heart of a blizzard, Google Maps routed us closer to the east coast where it was only raining/sleeting. And there was just about no traffic. I had to slow to 50mph a couple times, and we came across one car off the road, but compared to the blizzard and “at least seven cars off the road including a mini-van that had been ripped open by a tractor trailer and flipped upside down” that Joe described when we arrived, we had smooth sailing the whole way!
We arrived at 6:30pm and were able to pit next to Joe and Kirsten. Joe’s enthusiasm for lending me his bike was amazing. No talk of “now be careful, you want to kind of take it easy at first.” Right from the drop he was excited and told me he couldn’t wait for me to get the bike out there. In general, as the borrower of his bike, I expected him to more or less roll the bike into my pit and tell me what it needed. Quite to the contrary, Joe and Kirsten treated me like a factory rider for Honda’s Moto 3 team. Joe took off both wheels and brought them over the Bridgestone guy on site to have new tires put on them. When the tires were mounted, Joe put the wheels back on and had me sit on the bike to confirm how atrociously it was going to fit. Atrocious fit: confirmed.
Joe, Kirsten and I went out to dinner at a nearby Mexican place and Sayre hung back at the track to put new Heidenaus on his bike. (Clearly not a factory-rider.) When we got back from dinner, Sayre was deep into what appeared to be a losing battle with his rear tire. The temperature had dropped to 35F which made the rubber on the tire extremely rigid and despite his efforts, it seemed he was losing the battle. I stood around uselessly for about 20 minutes and then said, “Good luck” and went to bed. I was bunking down in my tent that I hadn’t rolled out since 2019 when I bought my toy hauler. Ready for the worst, I crawled into bed fully loaded up on warms clothes, winter hat, the whole nine yards, and I slept pretty darn well.
At 6:30am my alarm went off and I awoke to utter silence and complete blackness. Typically setting an alarm in the track is a back up because the combination of generators and pit bikes starting up with early risers combined with race-day jitters usually wakes me up long before my alarm. However, the pits were silent and the sun was nowhere near coming up. “Oh, right. It’s March 13. Sun up isn’t until 7:30am.” I crawled out of bed in the pitch black and walked over to the tech area and sure enough, people were lined up there getting their bikes cleared for the track. I got my bike and gear teched and was ready for the Rider’s Meeting at 7:30.
The Riders’ Meeting was the usual stuff with the Race Director Leasha Overturf going over the boiler plate info: track is cold; today is practice, you can’t win practice; shot out to sponsors, etc. I took note at one point when Leasha showed off some new “look at me” pinnies. She said that “Heroes are people who know they’re a little slower than the pack and are willing to wear a pinny to prioritize safety.” Knowing I was heading out on a GP bike that I’d never ridden before on a track that I’d never ridden before on new cold tires on a cold track, I stepped up as a hero and took a pinny.
I went back to our pit and told Joe that I thought I was going to sit out Practice 1 (cold tires, cold track, pretty fucking anxious) and just gear up and ride around the pits a little bit. Joe politely said, “OK.”
I put on my gear and saw that there was only one bike out on the 2.3 mile track. “Fuck it,” I said, “I’ve got the pinny. I’ll just go out.” I told Joe and he said, “Yeah, you need to just get on the track. You’re not going to learn shit putt-putt-ing around the pits.” (How right he was!)
We fired up the bike, let it warm as Joe gave me some info on how to start, stop, not stall the bike. A few minutes later I headed out and immediately saw what Joe meant when he said the pits were useless. Rabbi described it best later that night when I was talking to him and Craig Hirko about riding the RS. “If you don’t treat that bike right – and by ‘right’ I mean keep her above 9k – she just stops listening to you and starts filing her nails waiting for you to get your shit together and do it right.”
People always talk about how two strokes come on to the powerband and “just light up like a light switch” and I thought I knew what people meant; I didn’t. On my T500, if I let the bike spin down too low, out of the powerband, it just runs poorly. If I hold the throttle open, it’ll spin up and go forward quickly. If I need to come out of a corner at 6k, that’s not great, but it’s not a problem. And if I downshift on my T500, the bike jerks itself into gear pretty violently and I need to be ready for that. On the RS? Not so much. As soon as the motor spins down below 9.2k, you’ve got nothing. Do whatever you want with the throttle. Open it, close it, open it halfway, roll on slowly… Do what you want; she’ll be filing her nails until you downshift. To all questions, the answer is just about always “downshift.” And when you downshift, hang on, because you’ve lit the fuse and the rocket is taking off with or without you!\
The other thing that people say is “There’s no engine braking on a two-stroke,” and in a general sense, compared to a four-stroke, that’s true. However, there is, in fact, some engine braking when you downshift a vintage two-stroke and so, doing it mid-corner is pretty damn scary. On the RS, however, there is no, I mean NO, engine braking. Ripping up to T11 in sixth gear and banging the bike down four gears for the tight lefthander, had no effect at all on the bike’s chasis. The bike just settled into 2nd gear in the powerband waiting for me to do my thing. Silky smooth. Unreal.
All of that learning however took me the whole weekend. Friday as I rolled out onto the cold, empty track there was none of that learning happening. Frozen hands, helmet completely fogged up, scared of the bike everywhere except on the straights and frankly, pretty embarrassed.
I came in and Joe and Kirsten were both great and said encouraging things. All my questions for Joe were answered by him saying, “You have to go faster. That problem will go away if you go faster.” I took that to heart and spent the day working on my speed. AHRMA is set up so that each rider gets two practice sessions in the morning, then lunch, and then two more sessions in the afternoon. By the end of the day I was feeling so much better on the bike. Over the course of the four practices I got more and more comfortable, began to get a sense of how many downshifts were needed heading into different corners, etc. When I came in from the last practice, Joe said, “OK, now you’re getting somewhere! I can see that you’re getting comfortable and starting to ride the bike harder.” That was great to hear and when I was ripping through the kink at T10 I felt like I was actually moving at race pace. And the bike was just on song! The more I pushed the bike, the more it did. I knew full-well that I was not doing anything near what the bike was capable of, but I began to really see what it meant to ride a GP bike.
After practice I went over to look at my lap times. Lap times don’t lie. And I was pretty happy with what I found. My worst lap time of the day was 3:11. Admittedly that was my literal first lap with fog on my glasses and helmet visor and frost just off the race line on the track. Average speed: 43mph. My fastest lap of the day, during the final practice session was 2:18. Average speed 60mph
Friday night AHRMA had a chili cook-off competition. This is apparently an AHRMA tradition. Ten or so men and women presented a crock pot of chili which they served up to all comers in a very small plastic cup. (Think of the to-go container you get when you ask for ranch dressing with your pizza.) We had planned to go out to dinner after the chili cook-off, however after 4-5 tiny servings, Joe, Kirsten and I decided that 10 servings were going to fill us up and we weren’t going out to dinner. So, we texted Sayre who was working on changing his front tire. Twenty-minutes later Sayre was still wrestling with his tire so, cook-off completed, I grabbed an actual bowl of the best chili and brought it back to him.
Saturday morning I woke up to my alarm at 6:30 and this time was ready for the silence and the pitch black. I got out of bed and despite the fact that it was actually about 15 degrees warmer than it had been on Friday morning, it felt colder. How quickly the body’s expectations for warmth adapt to changing temperatures. I woke up expecting warm weather and got it, but it wasn’t warm enough.
Saturday was race day! (Woot woot!) So, two short practice sessions and then sprint races start up at 11am. I went out for Practice 1 and felt good on the bike. My voice memo after the practice was: “Practice 1 was good. I’m still the problem.” Having spent four practices on Friday trying to quickly figure out both the track and the bike, Saturday practice was the first time I was able to just begin thinking about things like shift points, brake markers, tip-in points, etc. There was so much to learn so quickly that I got frustrated, but I just kept reminding myself that the goal was simply to go out and finish the race without being in anyone’s way on the track.
Practice 2 was when I finally began to feel like I was riding the bike the way it wanted. Everything seemed to click. I was able to keep the bike in the powerband everywhere (more or less) and for the first time in the weekend I was able to really, genuinely enjoy the bike. (Rather than just appreciating what it could do and being frustrated by what I couldn’t do.) My fastest lap time during Practice 2 was 2:12; I had carved off another 6 seconds per lap. (Average speed: 63mph)
Quick sidebar: If we flash back one week to the previous Saturday when I saw Sayre’s post about going down to SC, my goal at that point had been to simply take a road trip to see people and motorcycles racing. Since then, my goals escalated to: Road Trip plus getting a bike to ride. I got a bike and my goals stepped up again to: Ride the same bike as Valentino Rossi well enough to finish an AHRMA race and not get in anyone’s way on the track.
Coming out of the last practice on Saturday, I was feeling so good about myself on the bike, that my goals escalated further still to:
- Finish the race
- Pass at least one person
- Not finish last
So, we had gone from “take a road trip to SC” to “beat people on a borrowed bike while learning a new track.” Oh, silly little boy. Enjoy your Donald-Trump-esque misplaced bravado while you can.
During the week leading up to the trip, many people had asked for photos of me on the bike, with references to “a monkey humping a football.” This reference was pretty spot on and by the end of the day Friday afternon, my left knee – which is scheduled for a doctor’s appointment to resolve what I think is (yet another) meniscus tear — was killing me. My father who I had been texting throughout the day, recommended removing the hard armour in the knee portion of my leathers in to allow my knees to bend more freely. Great suggestion which made a huge difference in my ability to settle on the bike.
I was going to be in Race 6 and so I settled in to watch a few races starts in order to know the AHRMA start procedure before my race. Race 1 was the AHRMA’s 2026 Vintage Cup class of 250GP. This race was great. USCRA’s own Craig Hirko was battling with Holly Varvey and Craig Light. It was a three-way fight and in the end Holly came out on top. At the awards ceremony that night, I saw that Holly was a very small woman who couldn’t have weighed more than 100lbs. I had visions of World SBK’s 2024 minimum rider weight controversy as I thought of her weight compared to those of her top male competitors. Regardless, she’s fast!
A couple hours later it was time to start prepping. The RS’s tire warmers needed to be installed and turned on 45 minutes before race time. I was proud of myself for thinking of this but when I went over to Joe and Kirsten’s pit to turn them on, Joe had, of course, already turned them on. I was indeed living the life of a factory-supported rider! As Third Call came over the loudspeaker, Joe and Kirsten pulled off the warmers, Joe gave me a pat on the back and said, “Just go have fun!” Sayre, Joe and Kirsten all gave me a whoop as I pulled out. The out-lap seemed good. I kept the bike in the powerband and made a point to ride at something like race pace in order to keep heat in the tires.
Before the race Joe had told me about the start procedure for the RS:
- Put the bike in first
- Wind up the motor to 9k
- Hold the bike back with the front brake until the flag drops
- Pin the motor and control the launch from the clutch.
Shockingly, I did all that and got off the line pretty damn for a first-timer. On Friday Joe and I had talked about doing some practice launches in the pits but it hadn’t ever happened. Once I was off the clutch, I pinned the throttle and ripped down to T1 at full speed. I was flying! Then sadly, reality hit. Three bikes passed me coming out of T1. Then a few more as I set up for T3. I gave it all I had, but everything felt wrong. There was so much going on that all the things I needed to be thinking about (turn in late, downshift to keep the revs up, get on the gas before the apex) were out the window. As so often happens, when the green flag drops, thinking stops and instinct takes over.
As I tipped right for the series of righthanders “back in the wooded area” another RS went around me on the outside at what felt like 30mph faster than me with probably 30 degrees more lean angle. “Oh shit,” I thought, “That’s what Joe means when he says, ‘Go faster.’ I’m not riding this bike at anything close to its limits. Fuck me.” For the next four laps – the race was 6 laps long and I got lapped by Robertino Pietri (yeah, that Robertino Pietri from Moto 2 and AMA Superbike) so I only had to run 5 laps – I did my best, but honestly, the whole thing was pretty humiliating. It’s so easy to fool yourself during practice into thinking that you’re making progress and going faster (which I was) and then reality hits when you line up with other racers on similar bikes. In the end, I did beat one guy, a guy who wadded it up in T1 on the first lap.
But(!), I did finish and I did see the checkered flag which is the important part (see below re: the rest of the season.) I rode back into the pits and Joe said, “Hey, you got a great launch! Nice job!” (Kind words from a kind man. 😊 ) Suprisingly, as horrible as I felt during the race, I did set my fastest lap times of the weekend including a 2:10. (For reference, Robertino Pietri clocked a 1:38. 🙄 )
Back when this plan was originally hatched, Joe had texted me and said, “It looks like rain on Sunday, do you want me to pack rain tires?” I had told him to definitely not bother with that. There was no way I was going to go out on someone else’s bike in the rain. So, with the conclusion of Race 6, the racing/riding portion of my weekend was over. I spent the rest of the day on Saturday watching Sayre, Joe and Kirsten’s races and talking with the other USCRA racers who were there.
That night the four of us went out to dinner with five AHRMA guys that Joe and Kirsten knew. We went to a diner that was noteworthy only for its reportedly excellent chocolate shakes, very dirty silverware and a menu which featured The Gold Miner, a sandwich with a half-pound of bologna, American cheese and onions. (My big takeaways about South Carolina culture are: God, Country and Bologna Sandwiches.)
Throughout the day on Saturday the weather report for Sunday had gotten increasingly better. Sayre and I had talked about maybe bailing out on Sunday and just driving home. He was there primarily to sell tires and he had achieved that mission. I was there to have fun and take a checkered flag. I had achieved that mission. When we talked Saturday night, however, buoyed by the improving weather forecast we decided to stay so Sayre could race in Formula 500 and Formula Vintage.
When I woke up on Sunday – woken by the sun, not my alarm as I had no Riders’ Meeting to attend – I began to think, “Hmmm…. Sun’s out; maybe I should register to race today.” I quickly thought better of it and as I considered the anxiety I’d be feeling as the weather changed throughout the day which is what it was forecast to do I was happy with that choice. Instead I had a really nice, relaxing day hanging out, watching races and talking with people.
Joe and Kirsten went out for their sidecar race and when they came in Joe reported, “Yeah, our rear tire is smoked! We were sideways in every corner… and not on purpose!” Sayre went out for Race 11: Formula Vintage, which Dave Evans ended up winning! Then the rain began to move in. Joe was in the next race on his new Kramer. As Sayre raced, Joe and I scrambled to get the slicks off his Kramer and replace them with the rain wheels. We got the last bit of safety wire reconnected just in time for Third Call for Race 12. At this point it was pouring and races were shortened to only 4 laps in order to just get the races done.
Race 13 was Sayre’s last race of the day and he got a good start off the line. His Heidenaus were performing fabulously. On Lap 1, the race was red flagged as a rider went down hard in T1. On the restart Sayre got another good start. Heading into T3 he managed to pass Jim Hinshaw on his H1 for the overall lead. Sayre ran a good clip for the four laps and took the overall win which of course meant he also won his class! Hell of an ending to a race weekend.
We packed up our gear as it poured on us, gave Joe and Kirsten hugs and high-fives and headed north in the rain. It was raining so, of course, I drove the first. The plan was to just gut it out and drive through the night. Joe and Kirsten shared with us their “through the night” secret which was to switch drivers every two hours. As Joe said, “Doesn’t matter how far you got or how much traffic there was. If your two hours was sitting in traffic, you just switch out when the clock hits two hours.” Sayre and I modified that to a three hour shift-change plan and I’ll tell you it worked out pretty damn well.
- 4:30pm-7:30pm I drove.
- 7:30pm – 10:30pm Sayre drove.
- 10:30pm -1:30am I drove.
- 1:30am – 5:30am Sayre drove the last leg of four hours because as soon as we arrived in Turners Falls, I had to soldier on for another two-and-a-half hours home.
I got home around 8am and fell into bed. The drive really wasn’t that hard. We had planned to bail out as soon as either of us felt unsafe to drive and that never happened. Stopping for gas and snacks every three hours and catnapping while the other drove worked out perfectly.
All in all, it was a fabulous trip. Saturday night, I told Sayre, “You know, on Tuesday, I was skiing in Vermont and today, four days later, I was racing a Honda RS125. Retirement is fucking amazing!”
And now the big bonus news! The AHRMA requirements that have to be met in order to race at the famous Barber Vintage Festival at the Barber Motorsports Park in Leeds, Alabama is that you take at least one checkered flag in two separate AHRMA events. I’m hoping that Team Skippy can head down to NJMP (8 hrs from VT) in June and maybeeven shoot out to Nelson Ledges in Ohio (10 hrs from VT). Making one or both of these events, coupled with my race this past weekend at CMP, would make us eligible for Barber. And that is a retirement bucket-list item!
Here are a few final shots from the weekend for the reader’s enjoyment…
