And by “wrap” I mean both that the season is over and that we ended the season with both our exhaust pipes held together with plumber’s wrap courtesy of Frank and Matt Camillieri. But that moment is a lot closer to the end of our tale and I’ve got a lot of stuff to cover before that.
This post’s story actually begins three weeks ago as Amy and I began to prepare for our second trip in as many years over to the Isle of Man for the Classic TT and the Manx GP. Readers may recall from the final blog post of last year the story of how I connected with John Davies of Davies Motorsports who was running a T500 at the Classic TT. Since then, Team Skippy and Team Davies have become fast friends and we were invited over to hang with them during the TT this year as they ran our motor in their TT bike.
Three weeks ago, my motorcycle racing plans were glorious:
- Aug 25 – 28: Hang at the Isle of Man culminating in watching Paul Jordan ride the T500 in the Senior Historic TT on Friday, the 28th.
- September 6-7: USCRA Season Finale at NHMS
- September 10-14: Drive to Ohio to race at Nelson Ledges with AHRMA, thus qualifying for the Vintage Festival at Barber
- October 8-14: Drive down to Leeds, Alabama for AHRMA’s Vintage Festival which is basically every club vintage racer’s bucket list event.
Things began going a bit sideways before we had even left for the Isle of Man. The weather forecast for the end of the race week was, as they say, shite! So ALL the races were moved up to Monday and Tuesday. The Senior Historic TT, the race with the Davies’ T500 was moved from Friday up to Tuesday at 2:45. We were scheduled to arrive in Douglass, the IOM town where the TT takes place, at 4:30pm, just as the race was wrapping up. Sparing you all the details and machinations, after setting fire to our checkbook, we had a plan that would get me to Douglass on Tuesday at 12 noon with a couple hours to spare before the race started. If all went well… and it didn’t.
Sparing you more details, I’ll tell you that when Ken and I met up at the Dublin airport, his opening greeting was, “We’re fucked.” They had moved the 2:45 race up to 12:15. Our plane from Dublin to Douglass was going to land at noon. And then the flight delays kicked in. As we sat in the Dublin terminal waiting for our plane, we were able to listen to the TT broadcast of the Junior Historic Classic race over a Manx radio channel that another fan was streaming over their phone.
Finally, our plane took off and we touched down in Douglass at 12:15. We ran out to catch a cab and the cabbie had the Manx Radio TT broadcast on in his car. We told him that we had been working with Davies’ Motorsports on the T500 that Paul Jordan was riding and he said, “I gave Paul Jordan’s girlfriend a ride to the pits yesterday; hop in and I’ll get you there as fast as I can.”
We pulled away from the airport and the cabbie drove like a bat out of hell for the track. We listened as Paul launched down Bray Hill. The day before, during practice, he had run incredibly strongly and was up 10 seconds on the top competition through the first half of the 37 mile lap. He had then holed a piston, but we knew the bike was competitive. As we listened in the cab, Paul launched well and at the first checkpoint, Glen Helen, he had worked his way up to 8th place. By the second checkpoint, Ballagh Bridge, he was up to 6th place. Things couldn’t have been going better. As bikes began checking in at the Ramsey checkpoint, we waited — as the cabbie continued to tear through the city of Douglass to get us to the pits — and we waited. Bikes continued to check in and Paul dropped to 9th, 10th, 11th, and finally the announcers came on and said that Paul Jordan had pulled off with a mechanical failure. His race was over before we got to the track. Whomp whomp!
Regardless we were on the Isle for 4 days with Ken and his wife Sarah, as well as Chris and Loraine Kirkby, who readers of my book (hint! hint!) will know are the original racers of Team Skippy Racing. We had an amazing time despite missing the racing. Skipping all the touristy stuff we did, I’ll hit a few highlights…
We hung out with the Davies Motorsports crew a ton, helping them pack up their pit area, enjoying dinner together, drinking a ton with lots of bench racing. Team Principal John Davies took us on what the rest of the team called “John’s Death Tour” which was a lap of the TT course in his car. He drove us over the 37.73 mile course and talked us through the whole thing, “You’re WFO here for 2 miles…”; “If you mess up this corner you’re going to lose time through the time trap which is three miles away…”; “Unless you’re on a liter bike, you’re still WFO through this intersection at about 160mph…” Just jaw dropping stuff. And, of course, he catalogued all the friends he had lost at different corners around the track.
Before John’s Death Tour, I had been holding on to a fantasy of racing in the Classic TT, but during the drive, I realized that there is no way I’d every race there. Just too dangerous. (Which is good, because when we arrived at the Davies pit on Tuesday afternoon, John had told us that he was building a second T500 and asked me if I wanted to race it. I politely said, no, as Amy had preemptively executed her veto power over bad decisions I might make.)
We got to know the members of the Team Davies well over the four days. The photo below shows John Davies sitting next to me, Martin in the blue shirt next to John and then across the table from John is Kung Fu Clive (that’s a whole story that involves Martin almost getting beat up a few years ago and being saved by lying about Clive being a Black Belt martial artist) and Ken’s arms sitting across from me. Not in the photo are Keren who is sitting to my left and Colin Davies who left the TT as soon as the race was over because he was supporting a British Superbike racer who was at Cadwell the following weekend.
Some things that John Davies casually said like it was no big deal during one of our dinners or bar conversations…
- “Oh, yeah, I used to have an H2. I bought it off Yvonne Duhamel, for a £1,000 but then I sold it pretty soon afterwards to Ron Haslam. That thing was unrideable.”
- “When Colin was working on Schwantzy’s bike (Kevin Schwantz, 1993 MotoGP Champion), he used to say…”
- “So, John McGuiness stopped me yesterday and asked about the T500. He saw our speed trap time of 138.8mph and was asking about the bike. I told him we expected to be up around 145mph next year because Paul was rolling off to save the motor.”
Yvonne Duhamel, Ron Haslam, Kevin Schwantz, John McGuiness. If you know anything about racing at all, you know all those names. Heady stuff…
As I mentioned above, when we arrived on Tuesday, John had told us that he was building a second T500. This year the Davies team had campaigned two bikes, the T500 and a CB350. Next year, John is planning on running two T500s, the CB as well as an RS125. Then he casually says, “Colin can’t maintain that many bikes on his own. I’d like you guys to come over and be in charge of the second Suzuki bike.” 😳
So, yeah, it’s looking like Ken and I will be pitting for Team Davies next year at the IOM Classic TT! (Like seriously, WTF?!?!? Last yearvI went there as a bucket list, one-time, retirement vacation with my wife and two years later I’m going to be pitting for a TT team that is very likely to win the Senior Historic TT?!?!? And if you’re thinking, “Well, that’s kind of cocky to think your team is going to win,” well it’s not that cocky because the person who will likely be riding that bike is someone who has won several TT’s already. I can’t say who it is as I didn’t get clearance from John, but regardless, it is just unbelievable where this whole T500 thing has taken me.
Amy and I got back from the trip on Sunday, August 31st, five days before I had to pack up to head to Loudon for the final race of the season. Ken and Sarah stayed in the UK through September 10 touring England and hitting all the Royalty hotspots. So that meant that I’d be at Loudon solo without Ken’s support. Ken being Ken, the bike was all set up for Loudon with the proper gearing, battery charged up and bike ready to go before he left for the UK trip. The bike should be simply Gas And Go. It’s been a long season and we’ve definitely had our hiccups with the new bike but we were confident that we had worked out the kinks and the bike should be ready to go.
I arrived at NHMS on Saturday at 4pm; this race “weekend” was actually Sunday and Monday (Labor Day) with Sunday being a full day of sprint races and Monday being a condensed schedule of sprint races followed by the 3rd and Final Round of the Trackmaster Triple Crown Endurance Series sponsored by Rick’s Motorsports Electrics (“They make starting and charging components for all power sports” IYKYK)
While the weather for Sunday and Monday looked good, when I pulled in on Saturday afternoon, there was an incessant drizzle. Given the rain, I elected to hold off on setting up the timing loop and hardware. People began to rolling around 5:30pm and the by 7:00pm pits were set up, bikes were teched and the evening revelry commenced. Around 10pm, I deployed the Whiskey, whiskey Benadryl cocktail and headed for bed.
Alas, the WWB did not, in fact, do the trick and I had a pretty restless night’s sleep.
The drizzle continued through the night and into the morning. At the Riders’ Meeting at 7:15am things were pretty cold, the track was soaking wet and that made it an easy decision for me to skip Practice 1. The rain was supposed to finish up around 9am and hopefully the track would dry before the second round of practices began. The rain did stop and as the track dried up the crack timing/scoring team called for a 5 minute “hold” between practice sessions to give us time to layout the timing loop on the track. Cindy Epsaro caught the team in action…
Five minutes later, practices resumed!
My first race of the day wasn’t until Race 8 which was after lunch. The CBE crew had promoted the heck out of the last race of the season and as such had a TON of fans and supporters in their pit. I was pitted next to them which meant that I had a bunch of options for lunch foods. I chose one of the Jersey Mike’s sandwiches they had brought and then sat back to watch the CBE work furiously to get their bike ready for Race 8. Why were they scrambling you ask? Well, CBE rider Griffin Smith — who just keeps getting faster and faster every race — had ridden the wheels of “Pooh,” their 850 Commando and had won the EuroCup race. That was the good news. The bad news was that literally as he was crossing the finish line and pumping his fist in the air in joy, the header on the right side of their two cylinder bike cracked and blew off. While this was a crappy situation for them to find themselves in, the positive outcome was that team principal Jack Manning got to experience something I had told him about racing with the USCRA. “When the green flag drops, it’s every man for himself, but if you break down, the same guy who cut you off heading into Turn 1, will do whatever it takes to get you back out on to the track… so he can beat your ass again.” When Griffin came in with the cracked header, Jack thought the weekend was over. Thirty seconds later he had two offers of welders to repair the bike. AMA Pro racer and fabricator extraordinaire Frank Camillieri swooped in, took their pipe, fixed it up and the team had the pipe back on the bike in time for their next race. It does indeed take a village.
My first race was Heavyweight Supervintage. Going back two years and this class was an easy, reliable 2nd or 3rd place every time. I would always finish behind Vin Borbone (and Kevin Dinsmoor, if he was entered in the race) but I would easily beat all other competitors. Then Sayre Anthony put on his big boy pants and started racing hard enough that I had to work if I wanted to beat him. Then Steve Harry showed up on his monster Moto Guzzi. And now Griffin Smith was racing hard with the CBE “Pooh Bear” Commando. And now, as his only goal was to add to my HWSV stress, Matt Camillieri — son of Frank — had entered HWSV as well.
As we gridded up, I was genuinely nervous that anyone in the class could beat me and with that in mind, when the green flag dropped I was locked in. Griffin and Steve, both on strong four strokes, got better jumps than me, but as soon as the Titan wound up, I was faster than them heading for T1 and I went around both of them on the outside of the turn and put my head down. I never saw any of them again. (“Whew”) I took second behind Vin. With the thought of losing to friends clearly in my head, I managed to turn what for me are pretty respectable lap times of in the 1:33’s.
My second race of the day was Period 4 Open, a class which, this season, has typically been just me, Neil Jester and sometime Tom Bishop. Today though the race was packed. Vin, Mike Corcoran, James Brown, Matt Camillieri, Tom Bishop and me. I was sure that I’d finish behind Vin and James, but I really wanted to get ahead of Mike Corcoran on his Ducati 750 Sport. In the past we’ve been pretty evenly matched which made him a good marker for me. Right from the start Vin and James cleared off.
Coming over the hill heading for The Bowl, I had Mike in sight. Kevin Dinsmoor was between us and I could have passed Kevin, but I thought to myself, “He’s way faster than me and Mike. I’ll hold off for a moment and let him get around Mike. Then I can battle with Mike.” Well, that was a stupid goddamn decision. Kevin did not in fact get around Mike, but the two of them did slowly get away from me and leave me behind. After the race, I learned that they’d had a spirited battle that I likely (ok, maybe not “likely,” but at least “possibly”) could have been a part of. I did manage to hold off Matt and Tom and finshed 4th overall. I was not thrilled with this, but when I checked my lap times later, I saw that I had a bunch of 1:31 lap times. Up until today, my fastest lap time ever (which came in a battle with Andy Townsend) had been 1:31.71. Today I had run four laps faster than that! A good day indeed!
When I came in from Period 4 Open, the oil check team, looked over my bike and said, “you’ve got a broken pipe bracket.” I rode back to my pit as quick as I could, hopped of the bike and — wishing Ken was around — asked Frank if he was up for another round of welding. My last race of the day was Masters and it was race after next. Only about 20 minutes away. Unfortunately, Frank had used all his welding gas on the CBE bike and had nothing left. Vin said, “I bet we could truss that thing up with enough hose clamps.” And with that he went to work. 15 minutes later he had cobbled together a hot mess that looked awful — “Ken’s not gonna love this” more than one person thought — but seemed good enough to work. As he was working on the last two hose clamps, I threw on my gear.
Third call had been made and bikes were lining up in the hot grid. I rolled the bike onto the rollers and just before I hit the starter, Vin called, “Wait! The other side is busted too.” Ugh. I rolled the bike off the rollers and put it back on the stand. Done.
And then I heard from across the pit, “I bet we can get that side mounted with hose clamps,” from Brenden Jung. With that, he crouched down and started working on the other side. Brenden is a CBE rider who had just completed his Rookie Race and was officially a new USCRA racer. “Holy shit! You think you can do that?” I said. He went to work. A few minutes later, I heard the roar of all the bikes leaving the hot grid and heading out for their siting lap. “Keep going,” I said, “I can start from pit lane, if we can get it together.” Four minutes later, he had the other side trussed up. As we rolled the bike onto the starter rollers, I heard the other bikes all take off for the first lap of the race. Moments later, we got the bike started and I ripped out of the pits and down the hot pit on to the track. I came out of the pit row after T2 and put my head down!
Did, I win the race? No. No, I did not. Did I pass a bunch of people and get myself onto the podium? Also, no. BUT, did I catch the last place guy and manage to not finish last? Say it with me: “No.” However, it was one of the most glorious rides I’ve had on that bike. I had gone from broken down and prepared to hang my leathers up for the day to back on the track in less than 30 minutes with help from friends. Being on the track at that moment was just the peak USCRA experience for me. (OK, not the peak. The peak is beating people and riding the shit out of the bike, but still it was a great feeling.)
The post-race evening events were great. The CBE crew had brought a huge Blackstone grill and Jim Bentlage was prepared a pile of amazing shish kebabs and everyone in the pits was invited to the feast. Those CBE guys know how to win over a crowd.
Vin and I talked about a better fix for the exhaust pipes for Monday. We settled on the concept of a “hammock” that would hold the exhaust up off the ground/frame/chain, but would allow it to move around enough that it wouldn’t break again. I texted Matt Camillieri and asked him to have his dad bring some more welding gas and told him about our back up hammock idea. Matt said he’d bring all the stuff that he thought might be helpful the next morning.
Filled with good food and with a plan to get the bike ready enough for Monday, I called it a night. Given that the WWB plan had not worked out the previous night, I upped the dosage to TWB (Triple Whiskey Benadryl) and the cocktail did was it was supposed to. I slept well.
Monday morning bright and early Matt and Frank Camillieri rolled into the pit armed with plumbers’ wrap. Matt spent 15 minutes trussing up both sides and applying safety wire back-up in case the chain cut through the plumbers wrap, and just like that I was ready to race.
Because Monday was the final roud of the Trackmaster Triple Crown Endurance Series sponsored by Rick’s Motorsports Electrics (“They make starting and charging components for all power sports” IYKYK), all the sprint races were condensed into only 10 actual races. (Shout out to Doug Donelan and Eve Stein who somehow managed to cram all the USCRA classes into only 10 races!) The first race of the day was Master/SuperMasters/JrMasters/LWSV. Normally LWSV would not run in with these other classes, but with the condensed schedule that’s where it ended up. And I’m thrilled that it did!
Matt was in LWSV and having just repaired my bike with his plumbers’ wrap, he and I proceed to have a knocked-down drag-out fight that went right to the wire. (And it was almost a knock-down. We came very close to colliding side by side as we ripped down the straight out of T2 heading for T3.) In the end I beat him but it was a great battle. Another example of people helping out in the pits and then trying to kick your ass on the track.
My second race of the day was the HWSV rematch. At the awards ceremony on Sunday night I may have taunted Griffin Smith and Steve Harry about my having worried unnecessarily about them beating me in HWSV and that might have prompted them to go a little harder on Monday.
Anticipating this, I knew I had to get another good jump and not let them get a shot at me. Things proceeded as I’d hoped and I was pretty sure I had them covered as I came up out of T12 and saw the white flag waving at start finish. One lap to go. Easy-peasy. And then my motor spun up to the moon without the bike moving forward. I grabbed the clutch, threw my hand up in the air, and pulled off the racing line. I was moving well so I had enough momentum to coast the entire length of the front straight and pulled into the pit lane row. As the bike was coasting I heard some crunching from the motor and thought, “Shit, that sounds like the transmission.” By the time I got back to the pit, I realized that in fact the chain had jumped the sprockets. Once the bike was in the pit and up on the rear stand I checked the cylinder head temps and saw that the left cylinder had maxed out at 487°F. Oof. Motor too hot, transmission potentially broken. Day was done.
Coincidentally, soon after I pulled in, Amy called me from home with some information that meant I needed to leave the track ASAP. Not an emergency, but close enough that I couldn’t hang around and participate in the endurance race. So I packed things up and headed for home.
If, on Saturday afternoon as I was heading down to the track someone had told me, “By Monday, you’ll have broken both your exhaust mounts had a DNF and maybe destroyed your transmission. And that broken bike will mean you can’t get to Nelson Ledges in three days which subsequently means you won’t be able to go to Barber,” well, I couldn’t imagine driving home in a good mood. And that makes it all the more impressive that I was actually in a darn good mood. I’d had a great two days of racing with some great people, had overcome some adversity with the help of friends new and old, and had set a bunch of new best lap times for myself. Honestly, it felt like a nice wrap up to a season that had started back in May with the shitshow that was the TSR season kickoff at Thompson.
And that’s a wrap! (Get it! Cause Matt used plumbers’ wrap on the pipes? Get it?)
