Vanport Days: The Ballad of Lazyeye

 During World War Two a temporary housing complex for workers was built along Portland's north side. After the war some left, some stayed, and some new folks moved in. In 1948 the Columbia river flooded Vanport and it was never rebuilt. Intrepid automobile racers petitioned the city and started using the former roads of Vanport as a race track. Portland International Raceway was officially formed in 1960 and has been reconfigured several times since. In 1972 the Oregon Motorcycle Road Racing Association was formed and has used PIR ever since.

I've been interested in trying formalized Motorsports for a while now. Various things have held me back, injury, money, mental shape, and generally being slow as heck. In June of this year I got cut off at at trackday and crashed. For a while some of my racer friends had been insisting that the level of professionalism is better in an actual race as opposed to the GoPro Hero who decided the first session of the day on a cold/damp track in B group was an excellent time to put down some hot laps, cut me off, then drop anchor. While my shoulder was recovering I had a thought, what if the next crash is a career-ending crash and I never get to try the stuff I've been putting off? My health generally gets worse every year (I have pretty bad asthma), what if I put it off so long I can't physically hope to ever do it?

I made the decision to do it and signed up for New Racer School in July just before leaving for Laguna Seca. I had to be sure my shoulder had recovered enough to do it, and I was crippled by indecision. To say I had many sleepless nights along this path is an understatement.

 The first part of NRS is classroom held at MotoCorsa in Portland. They go through the rules and the expectations for how to race safely. Part two is held during a Friday trackday at PIR and is combined classroom and on track drills/evaluation, culminating in a race simulation. If your bike is ready and you pass, you can race that weekend.

My bike wasn't ready, so I was just in it for the class.

Thursday night I couldn't sleep. It was noisy and brightly lit at PIR that night and my mind wouldn't calm down from work stress, Portland stress, and worry. Friday seemed to drag on and on in only the fashion that a challenging day after little sleep can.

The drills include how to keep your line while in close quarters with another rider, passing safely, race starts, red flag procedure, and other things I've already forgotten. The race starts were probably the most fun. At the end we had a race simulation that was cut short when one of the students went dirt biking out of turn four and went down.

In the end I demonstrated that I can be on track safely, and I earned my novice race license and the number "793". I can't pick a number until I graduate from the novice program, which by my track lap times is probably a statistical unlikelihood.

After a month of further prep my bike was ready for the August OMRRA round (see my build article). I Signed up for the Friday track day, Novice 600 race and 600 Sportsman race on Saturday. The last little bits of bike prep like numbers and kickstand removal I did at the track Friday evening before wheeling my bike over to tech. One thing I had been agonizing over and literally losing sleep over was whether my bike would pass. The Motorcycle gods smiled on me and it passed. With nearly the last thing to worry about done, I left PIR, checked into a motel, cleaned up, ate a hot meal, and passed the heck out.

I knew that I was not competitive, this first weekend was all about just showing up and not crashing. In that regard race day was all easy mode because all I had to do was show up, ride two practice sessions, and ride two races. All the prep work was done.

While collecting my transponder I had one of those WTF moments. A kid was riding his scooter around the paddock getting all the racers to autograph his helmet.

I was more or less right, although I made plenty of mistakes. Here they are in non-order:

-In my first race I went to the wrong row on the track and then...

-Stalled my motorcycle

-Forgot my fire extinguisher (kind of a required item)

-Didn't bring enough water (ran out mid afternoon)

-Didn't loctite my brake lever guard and it fell apart

There's a few other mistakes I made which I've already forgotten about. But I didn't crash or cause anyone else to. During the Sportsman race someone ran off during the warm up lap, and there were several other minor crashes, but I didn't crash.

There was one major problem with the bike that cost me time and confidence. I had the forks rebuilt by a local shop and they did something wrong. I was only getting half my suspension travel and horrible stiction. Oh well, something else to fix. At the end what I set out to do I accomplished.

While cleaning up my pit I saw these ladies posing for a third who was taking pictures of them. I snapped a few and sent them to my trackday buddies, to which one responded "That's it, I need to start racing". I wonder if this is what OMRRA president Chris Page wanted when he asked us to use social media to get more new racers...