ZX6R street conversion

Last year I wrote a blog post or two about converting my ZX6R for track/race duty. Well due to this C19 nonsense all my trackdays and race weekends have been cancelled up to June at least. If you read my previous vent post you know that the uncertainty and lack of control was driving my insane. So I ordered the cheapest fairing kit on ebay and decided to enjoy my Ninja on the street in the meantime. At the very least this would give me a chance to be mad at something more tangible (misfitting fairings, me being bad at fitting fairings, etc) instead of C19.

I started with the tail because its the easiest. I knocked that out on Friday after work. The hardest part was remembering how the locking mechanism goes together. Here's the funny thing: I ordered a Black-Matte kit, and my tank and solo seat cowl are shiny-black. So that it wouldn't clash I rebuilt the tail with my existing parts, which weren't all that damaged from my crashes.

Saturday morning after watching old races (two races were MM93 didn't win) and talking to my dad, I started on the main body.

I started with assembling as much as I could on the living room floor. The ZX6R has the benefit of being able to put the top cowl/nose and both mid-fairings together with the headlight. This is where I started running into the problem of 1. I'm bad at doing this and 2. I bought the cheapest kit possible. The kit didn't have all the right kinds of bolts/screws/wellnuts/quick rivets to actually put it together. My morning was spent back and forth to the garage to scavenge bits from the old trashed fairings (good thing I didn't bin them) and putting them into the new. Fit was another issue. For instance one side the turn signal fit right in, the other it didn't and I broke a bit of plastic. This particular kit was probably manufactured in 2010ish and felt super brittle.

This is also where I started running into the problem of being unable to fit certain trim parts because I suck and can't get the tabs and slots to line up. They must have a special jig for doing this in the factory. Anyways by mid afternoon I was able to get it into the garage and test fit it.

Thanks to having lots of spare bolts and connectors from other bikes I was able to start making progress. I eventually just gave up on most of the trim parts. The body is going to come off in two months (hopefully) anyways, screw it. Kawasaki in their wisdom put the R/R heatsink mounted on the inside the right fairing on the turn signal, which was a pain to put back in place.

Anyways I was able to finish good enough for a picture without mirrors(rainy outside so I stayed in).

Next week is forecast for some good weather. So maybe I'll get to ride the Ninja for the first time since September. Gotta take it easy, break in the tires, make sure nothing falls off, and most important remember how to ride it!

The Crown of Thorns

<This is another one of those posts where if you get offended about stuff you shouldn't read it.>

The best thing about winter is that it eventually passes. When you look at the calendar and say "Great, only a month left before it warms up enough to ride comfortably" its a defined amount of time. There is no question about it.

All winter long I got up early and busted my ass in the gym, I watched my diet, and I managed to get down to "race weight". Go me. I de-winterized my track bike and put on fresh sticky rubber. I splurged and got a new race suit and back protector. I even managed to save a few bucks to fund my track habit during the summer.

Then all this Covid19 nonsense happened and the world went mad.

March Trackday - Cancelled
April Trackday/Race - Cancelled
MotoGP - "postponed" until at least mid-May
WSBK - "postpond" until at least mid-May
MotoAmerica? Who knows

In Oregon the Governor shut down the state with a ridiculous stay at home order that makes it a misdemeanor (with possible jail time and large fine) to do "non-essential" travel. Even riders I know who would normally raise their middle finger to authority and say let's go ride are shaming others for wanting to get out.

I know what you're thinking, "but Tim, this is to protect the old and sick that could die from the Covid19".

Allow me to explain why that pisses me off. I have bad asthma. Like, really bad. In 2013-2016 I had multiple respiratory infections resulting from the flu. In 2018 I was in the hospital multiple times for it and we had to re-home our house cats just so I could breath.

The world didn't come to a stop. No governor shut down the economy of the state and ordered everyone home so they wouldn't spread the flu to an at risk person. People still stubbornly came to work with their colds and flus and coughed on me. You know what? I'm not the only person who's ever been "at risk". In Oregon all the deaths from this virus are people that were on seriously borrowed time already.

I digress. The worst part about this stay at home order is that its like the winter, except there's no end in sight. Unlike winter I can't go to the bar. Unlike winter I can't go snowboarding. Unlike winter, I'm not a badass for going riding, I'm a criminal that my own friends will shame and might turn in.

In closing, here's a picture of my white elephant. Can't use it, can't sell it. It just sits there in my garage as a reminder of what could have been.

Winter Doldrums 19/20

I realize I've been horribly amiss in riding and writing. This has been the kind of winter where, although there's been many warm days, the nice days happen midweek when I'm at work. The weekends are often frosty or cold rainy. I will admit also that the seasonal depression has got the better of me and I've spent more time staring at glowing rectangles than doing stuff that usually makes me happy.

I have gotten out to ride, just usually not more than a 30 miles loop around the valley and then back before the next rain storm.

As usual when I have too much time to think, I think too much. Life goes by quicker but seems simpler when I do more doing, than thinking.

Today I lucked out on weather and took the VFR to the coast to see if it was still there. With no surprise it was still in fact there. One of my favorite highways was fairly empty and not a lot of winter debris. Regrettably one of my favorite coastal restaurants has gotten rather popular and with it the wait times. Judging by the license places in the parking lot, the Google reviews must have given away the secret.

I kept my pace low enough all day to not earn a ticket except from the most hungry of highway tax collectors, which meant more time to think. My mind wanders and I relive old arguments and past mistakes. If I'm going license remover speed there isn't enough brain left to do that. Its better to do that on the back of a motorcycle than in my office staring at a glowing rectangle. Still if I could shut off the fear, the self loathing, and the reminiscing about past mistakes I would. I've learned my lessons, can I move on please?

I had an epiphany a while back that I've been struggling to commit to words. Its one of those feelings and realizations that is hard to really convey verbally but I'll try for the sake of getting it off my chest.

When I get nostalgic about something/sometime/someone, I'm not feeling about the time/place/people/action/thing, I'm feeling about how something could have been. I'm feeling about how the world at the time seemed like so many good things could happen. Ultimately none of it happened. Loves were lost, I never got the perfect assignment, I started racing too late to be any good at it, and I ended up where I'm at. The past seems brighter some days than the future, simply because the future doesn't seem as open as it used to. There was a time when it seemed like something really good was just around the corner. Now many corners later I know what comes next, and that having the dream of the grass being greener on the other side is just an illusion that caused me to go when I should have stayed, or stayed when I should have gone.

Fortunately we're past the Winter Solstice and the countdown to the beginning of the good weather is under way. My first trackday is scheduled, my OMRRA membership is renewed, my race tires are ordered, and I have MotoAmerica at The Ridge to look forward to.

Motorcycles and Photography

I wouldn't be the first person to say that the only thing I enjoy as much as riding my bike is taking pictures of it and showing them. Well maybe not "as much", but its up there. In 2016 before my Laguna Seca trip I bought a DSLR (Canon Rebel, go ahead and laugh). Since then I've taken a handful of pictures that I really thought were "good", among thousands that were bad or just OK. In the last year I've started a more concerted effort to learn how to shoot and post process better. One of the biggest frustrations is realizing that the field of computational photography (my Pixel 3a for instance) often produces better photos than I can using a DSLR shooting in RAW and post processing. If only I could attach a 50mm prime lens to my Pixel 3a I'd have the best photos all the time.

There's limits to my gear for instance (Canon Rebel with kit lenses) and my software (Canon Digital Photography Pro) but also that I'm not that great at post-processing. Photography is a hobby like motorsports that can consume all available income if you let it. If I bought a better camera body I'd get a better image sensor that can do extremes of light better, and if I bought better lenses everything would be better. If I bought Lightroom and Photoshop I would have features that DPP doesn't have, but would I really make a better photo because of it?

Like my club racing I'm trying to keep it simple and not let it consume every dime possible.

Without further ado I present, Some of Tim's favorite motorcycle photos. Not necessarily the best and not necessarily all of them.

The classic "everything important has been moved into the new house". The quality of the photo isn't anything to write home about but all these years later I like the composition.

I don't remember if I took this with a smartphone or a point and shoot. My current Pixel 3a would have shot these colors and HDR lighting so much better, but I like the composition and the result nonetheless.

Top, CBR, bottom, VFR. I tried to recreate the oroginal photo several years later. The top is with a smartphone I believe. The bottom image was with my DSLR in automatic without thought of focal length or anything else, really just a high-res point and shot.

Racer at work on his bike. I kind of accidentally got this one right from a focal length/composition point of view. If I'd been shooting RAW back then I could have corrected for the highlights, but alas here we are.

I rushed this photo (and it was with a phone). But the composition could have been really great if I'd had my DSLR and taken my time.

Shot on an overcast day so the lighting was good. Composition wasn't fantastic because I didn't work on setting up the bike with a good background.

Action shots are tough. This one though was one of my better shots from the Alaska trip. If you look close though you can see the chromatic distortions from my crappy kit telephoto lens.

Victory lap at Laguna Seca 2019.

Fields run 2019, somewhere in Nevada.

On a ride recently I shot some action pictures. That's not me obviously. This was golden hour/behind a mountain so the light was failing but since I shot in RAW I could correct somewhat in post.

I liked this one as a candid more than the technical aspects of the shot. An OMRRA racer and his daughter.

Middle of the summer in the shade of very bright light. The light is just about as good as you can get. From this angle you can see the pretty tail, exhaust and the just slightly tinted windscreen.

Tom Luthi's Marc VDS bike at Austin MotoGP 2018

VFR in the rain. Rainclouds make for the best diffusers. (cell phone)

HDR image where my phone (Motorola Moto-e-4) went overboard on saturation. I like it anyways.

Eugene Laverty Laguna Seca 2019 (Canon Rebel)

VFR near field of sheeps. (Canon Rebel)

ZX6R in race trim. (Canon Rebel) Yes I know the paint is awful, its rattle can, and no I don't care.

Thoughts on Club Racing

I started club racing middle of the summer 2019. Mostly I'm doing this as a bucket list item, to see what I can do, and with no real desire or care to win races. You could say that I'm a dilettante in it. Given my times in the August/September race rounds, unless I make major gains its unlikely I'll ever graduate from the Novice program. This post is written from the point of view of having completed NRS and two race rounds, but also having been around the paddock for several years. I am a rather green Novice racer in that regard. As always your individual results may vary and if you take offense to this post, first examine your own reasons for taking offense before you act upon them.

The Good:

People are generally helpful in the paddock. Do you need information, or to borrow a tool, or a hand with something? Most people will help you. Don't expect that help on the internet though. You'll get derided for everything you ask and probably won't get an honest answer. The lack of people willing to give a Novice real information outside the paddock is realistically a problem.

The quality of riders is generally higher than in B group trackdays. Getting passed in a race is usually pretty safe, getting passed in a trackday is kind of adrenaline inducing. I say generally because shit happens and bad decisions still get made, they just seem fewer.

Racing has a few aspects you don't necessarily get from trackdays, such as race starts which are pretty exciting. Other than that its just track time like any other.

There's some other good aspects, but I have yet to experience an "ah hah!" moment during a race weekend where suddenly it all makes sense.

The Bad:

Expense. Yeah, riding is expensive and gets as expensive as you want to make it. Converting my bike cost roughly $1300. Once I start using more expensive tires as I get better the expense will go up. For a Saturday race day with two races, that costs $220. For that $220 I get two practice sessions and two races. So four sessions on track for the cost of a trackday. The time on track to money ratio is skewed with racing. Add in to that other expenses (that may not necessarily apply to my typical track day) like motel stays, and meals. Generally I do the Friday trackday, stay the night, and race Saturday. If I stayed Sunday I would only get one practice session and two races.

The hurry up and wait. If you're only on track 2-4 times in a day, you have a LOT of time to kill. But there's opportunities to hurry up and wait like the tech-line and riders meeting. I don't particularly care for this aspect.

If you suck, you don't get to ride as much. I got this notice during the September round. In OMRRA Novices can enter in the Sportsman class as well as the Novice class. The thing is though that if you're outside 20% of the top lap time in Sportsman, you aren't supposed to enter in that class. The Novice representative let me know after the Sportsman race that Race Direction didn't want me entering in the class anymore, its a safety issue. From one point of view you'd think they would want Novices to get more time on track to get better, right? But alas no, if I can only enter in the Novice race class, then I'll only get three sessions on track Saturday, and only TWO on Sunday. To add insult to injury the Novice races are near the end of the day, and the practices are in the morning, so I'd have all day to sit around doing nothing, then rush to get ready for one ten lap race (which is only 8-9 laps for me because by the end I'm getting lapped), then have to pack up my shit and drive 2-2.5 hours home.

You lose friends. Once you start racing it sort of consumes your time off. In that regard you tend to lose your street riding friends (even if you still ride street). The converse is true, that you lose your friends that start racing as well if you only ride street and Trackdays! Granted you gain new friends in the paddock, but you only see them once a month. This point will get argued not just because people like to argue, but because it hits home and people get defensive about it. Before I started racing I saw it happen more than a few times, someone starts racing and you never see them again. When you do see them they act fairly high and mighty, know it alls that deride you for still riding on the street. I'm trying real hard not to end up like that, not just because I still very much enjoy the street, but also because I feel there needs to be someone who lives in both worlds to bridge the gap and get more street riders to the track (be it racing or trackdays) for their own safety and enjoyment.

The OMRRA club isn't in the greatest of health and may simply cease to exist. Its no secret that membership is declining and the number of people showing up for race weekends doesn't always generate enough money to pay the bills. When this subject comes up, plenty of people in the paddock will wring their hands and place blame on manufacturers not giving concession money, trackday orgs stealing riders away, insurance costs/government regs, and anything else except for one thing: isolationism. Occasionally I'll raise my voice and ask, "what was the last time any of you went to bike night and talked to street riders?" to which I get shouted down with statements like "I hate those squids and crotch rocketeers" or "I don't ride street anymore" or some other defeatist and isolationist statement. You can't use peer pressure to recruit new members, if you aren't a peer.

Why disrespect all street/trackday riders just because of some hopeless squids? In reality a club like OMRRA is dependent on a constant influx of new riders to replace the attrition losses. Those new riders aren't going to just go from non-rider to "I'm going to club race" overnight, they have to come from somewhere. The manufacturers will only keep selling race replica bikes as long as people are buying them. If only club and pro racers were buying them, the manufacturers wouldn't sell enough units to bother making them. Realistically how many new bikes are purchased by club racers each year? In order for the economy of scale to keep rolling, there has to be a certain number of bikes getting sold. To paraphrase Ken Hill "If you want to help racing, go to a dealership and buy a new bike.".

I'll just point out that trackdays are a better use of time and money. The same cost and same logistical effort, for more time on track. Additionally the bar is lower, you don't have to permanently modify your bike or use tires that are not street legal, so you can go back and forth. If you only ride your race bike once a month you lose familiarity with it, and have to spend time each race rounds relearning that bike, as opposed to a street legal bike you ride every week. When I pitched the idea of letting novices use street legal bikes I got shouted down. Well excuse me if I think it impractical to maintain any kind of decent skill level on a machine I only get to use once a month, six months of the year.

In closing I'll share my plan for 2020. I'm going to grid up and race the first three rounds next year. I've accidentally gotten a handful of my street/trackday riding friends interested in it and I'd like to grid up with them. At this point I'm also planning on starting my season in March down at the California Superbike School. If by the July round I'm not fast enough to race in Sportsman then I will do the honorable thing and hang up the number plate, having completed what I set out to do. I intend to revisit this topic at that time.

Fields Oregon Trip

My dad was reading a travel post on some forum or blog or whatever, and said "Hey Tim, lets go to Fields, Oregon". So we went.

Editorial note: this was in August but I've been too busy having fun to bother writing about it...

Our plan was to meet out there in Southeast Oregon for lunch on Saturday, then stay the night in Lakeview. I would start a day earlier and go by way of John Day. The first half of my Friday was mostly playing stuck in traffic out over the mountain (Central Oregon is the playground of Western Oregon and basically all routes are crowded as heck around weekends) and on to Prineville. The last time I'd been to Prineville was more than ten years ago, back then it was a small town like any other, now it looks like its been Portlandified like Bend, Sisters, and Madras. Organic vegan bicycle shops and the like along with Portland traffic everywhere. Too bad.

Past Prineville the riding opened up. Road 380 meanders out east past ranches, ranches, and more ranches. Traffic is minimal and you can easily find yourself (at least on my bike) going license remover speed without really planning to. Without the frame of reference of traffic, you just go as fast as you can. I like Eastern Oregon for that.

It was fair weekend in John Day and I was lucky to get one of the last rooms in town. The Dreamers Lodge is a nicely refurbished motel run by a polite and hospitable Indian fellow. As I was the last one to check in, when I walked into the office he greeted me by name! Nice fellow. John Day was a nice change from Sisters and Prineville. It still seems like a real small town. I wandered around and saw the sights, had pizza and beer, and turned in.

Saturday morning I grabbed some breakfast and hit the road. Highway 395 also has the opportunity for going entirely too fast, the problem is there are speed traps. One such trap near Seneca Oregon I saw coming and slowed down to the posted speed, and gave a friendly wave to the OSP officer waiting just behind the 25mph sign.

A few miles later I was cooking with gas again and made fantastic time down to Burns. The road south from Burns gets less twisty and fun and is more long straight stretches where its difficult NOT to go a million miles an hour. Since I was making too good of time I stopped at FrenchGlen and bummed around for a few minutes.

Hops growing all over an old covered wagon.

A few minutes (or was it hours? I can't remember) past FrenchGlen I got to Fields Station. There's really not much more there than a few houses, a few hotel rooms, the Station itself, and a Forest Service outhouse. I set about waiting and drinking Gatorade while Dad caught up. The burgers at Fields station are pretty good, and so is the milkshake. If you go, do yourself a favor and share the shake with a friend because its HUGE. In case you're worried about gas, they have clear premium as well as 87/e10. I noticed one of the guys working there was wearing a coyote brown beanie, in 90 degree heat. I commented "You must have deployed to Iraq. Only Iraq war vets wear a beanie in this weather". He laughed and said  "yeah, don't underestimate the tactical significance of the beanie".

We seriously didn't plan wearing the same MotoQuest shirt and Honda hat.

Just south past Fields I was fighting the urge to go 90+ when oncoming was an OSP truck. Hah, dodged another one. We crossed into Nevada at Denio Junction (pretty much just some run down houses in the middle of nowhere and a Gas Station) and headed west on Highway 140. I can't overemphasize how easy it is to go too fast out there.

We stayed at another Indian owned motel in Lakeview and chatted with the owner, other riders at the motel, and explored Lakeview on foot. The next day working our way Northwest through more ranches and grass land we saw of all weird things a tree next to the road that was filled with bras. I parted ways with Dad when we hit the traffic cluster-fuck known as highway 97 on a weekend. I got stuck in the worst of it for most of highway 58 until I spotted just enough clean pavement to leapfrog past the endless RVs and heavy haulers into open air for the last leg home.

Wet and Wild

I had this strange feeling when I stepped out of my car at the grocery store. It was about 65 degrees out and raining pretty steadily. But unlike the kind of rain that makes me want to curl up on the couch with a bad movie and a strong drink, this made me think about riding. Weird huh? Not just any kind of riding, but the kind where I put on my waterproof textiles, mount my hard bags, and disappear for a few days to somewhere else.

Of course I badly need new tires for the Interceptor to pull that off. I'm pleased to say that my Pilot Road 4 rear is at 7 thousand miles and has just reached "bald" in the center. The front is kind of chewed up too and reached the wear bars. I've been agonizing (like I do) about what to put on next, but when I looked at the mileage today and realized how far the PR4 had gone, that kind of made up my mind. Now I just get to agonize about whether I take it to a shop to mount or do it myself (which was a frustrating pain in the ass last time I did it but is marginally cheaper).

If only I could bargain with the weather. Oh dear weather, please rain all you want now and don't rain during the September OMRRA race weekend.

Speaking of racing, I got some help from OMRRA racer #404 rebuilding my forks. As we thought, the shop had overfilled the hell out of the forks and they were locking up. Now they move like they should and I have a better understanding of the inner workings of BPF forks. I also added more paint to give the ZX6R a more even rattle can look.

Looks good in proper lighting from the right angle huh?

We found some rain during a group ride this weekend. The coastal range was properly wet, but we ripped the highways anyways.

When I got home I traded ballistic textiles for cutoffs and sandals. There'a certain visceral pleasure to washing a motorcycle clad only in cutoff shorts while drinking cold adult beverages and getting rained on by a warm summer rain.