Management rant: Since I've become a manager, I've found a secret hack. It is the same amount of work to take a week-ish off as it is to take 4 weeks off. There's a process to make this happen. The first is that you book your calendar out like, 3 months out. And then you go tell your boss "Hey, I'm taking 4 weeks off in (month)", and you start figuring out who should cover your stuff in the process. And you build a plan, and you tell everyone that it's an important business continuity exercise, because any single person being a single point of failure is a recipe for burnout and pain, and it's an important growth opportunity for people to have the chance, in a reasonably constrained way, to make decisions in a larger scope, and learn new things about what their management does. 

And the thing is, you can't reasonably catch up on email backlog. You can burn through it and sacrifice a whole day(s) or more of reading digital dead trees, which is the productivity equivalent trying to push a water wheel upstream, or you can just put in an OOO that says "if you want me to see this after I get back, put "we must imagine Sisyphus happy" in your email text and I'll search for that string and read your email". (Or forward to a special email alias that only has you in it, or use a gmail + address, or whatever. But give people a means to flag things to you).  

And then when you get back, you search for that string, maybe search for a few people who are important to you for whatever reason, and archive all the email that existed while you were out. If it was important, they'll resend it. Go on vacation. If your company falls over cause you went out of office, that's actually the company's problem, not yours. I like to ask people what would happen if someone called in rich one day. They liked their job or whatever, they just had enough money to be financially secure and stable, and were about to take 1-3 quarters to rip through their bucket list, are you gonna fire them? And if you fire them, don't you already have the problem you were trying to avoid in the first place?  Capitalism is silly as hell cause it frames these problems of ongoing organization resiliency as some kind of unsolvable mystery, but the answer is pretty simple, just go on vacation for 4 weeks. It's good for everyone. 

Anyways.

I intentionally planned this vacation to do "nothing, except a couple of events (one trackday, one moto camping trip, one 12 hour endurance race, one videogame)".

I got 3 out of 4, which is as solid C, and the fact that productivity culture would lead me to even grade my vacation is a sign of how badly I needed to go on vacation.  

My vacation started as they always seem to do, which is a madcap sprint to get my some motorcycle prepped. Last year, I'd built my own version of the KTM RC8C. The KTM RC8C is a wonderful, track only motorcycle, that is purpose built to go as fast as possible around the track. It looks like this:

Unfortunately, this bike is quite expensive - it runs about 40k. If you can buy one, cause they only made 100 of them in the first production year. 

However, KTM does make the Duke 890, which shares a motor and general design with the RC8C:

So I did the only reasonably thing, I bought a Duke 890 R and ran it through my shop of mechanical horrors and ended up with this: 

Yes, yes, they're the same picture, I know. I built this bike with a very focused goal - when I was racing back in 2007 on my SV650 racebike, the fastest I'd ever gone around Thunderhill East was 2:00.2. I've owned a lot of other motorcycles since then, but that was always the fastest I'd navigated a track. Obligatory picture:

This very simple, straightforward motorcycle was the one that took me to the fastest I've ever gone. ~75hp, no electronics, stripped down to as light as possible, no windshield (because I felt like a $120 916 windshield, that would match the plastics I fitted to the bike, was highway robbery). 

I've had a lot of fun over the years on different bikes, but I'd never really been able to ever recapture that magic lap in the 2:00 range. I could got on almost any motorcycle and turn out a 2:04 at Thunderhill, but I couldn't actually go any faster that. After years of riding fast bikes slow, I decided it was time to try to try going faster than I had before. The thing is, because I'm not a purist, I'm also fine with entirely stacking the deck. My SV650 was ~375 pounds, 75hp, DOT race tires, and all the very finest technology of 1995 (carberators). My Wish.com RC8C has is 342 pounds with a full 1.6 gallons of gas in the custom fuel cell, custom fairing mounts, a custom subframe, a very minimalist exhaust, and basically everything not absolutely required for going, stopping, and turning removed from the bike. It puts out a healthy ~100hp, has traction control, selectable ABS, a dual direction quickshifter, and basically every other toy that you could want.  

However, I also moved to Washington between now and then, so I was going to have to make my times at Ridge Motorsports track, the Pacific Northwest's premier track destination (probably). It's hard to compare lap times from track to track, but the lap records are roughly the same at both tracks, in the 1:44 range, so I figure that my target of sub 2 minutes was still reasonably applicable. I got the bike all prepped, rolled into my friend's trailer, and we went out into the rain to the track. The night before, as is my tradition with new tracks, I walked the track to get a sense for how it goes. 

Walking the track is nice, mostly because you can inspect the camber of the track, find small variations in pavement quality, figure out your braking, turning, and acceleration reference points, and otherwise figure out where your body will land when you accidentally don't slow down enough for a corner.  

The day dawned wet but sunny:

I, being poor of sense, went out on my race tires while it was still pretty slick just to get a sense of the track and lemme tell you, race tires designed for dry and hot weather do not do well in the wet. Even with the traction control turned up to maximum, the bike would still spin up the rear alarmingly at the slightest provocation. But after a few sessions of rolling and a dry line forming, we eventually ended up with the day looking like this:

I don't have many pictures from the rest of the day, but I managed to get my laptime down to a 2:08, which is solid middle of the road time, and one I was quite happy with for my first time out at this track. Ridge is also a beautiful track, where you spend a lot of time leaned over, which rewards bikes that focus on corner speed, light weight, and good drive out of the corners, which happens to be the sweet spot for this bike.  

We rolled the bikes back in the trailer, headed for home, and I (unsurprisingly) started prepping another motorcycle. 

Look upon my stack of tires, ye mighty, and despair: 

The Vancouver Island Grand Loop

We did a quick trip down to the basin, and then a cut into the woods, as you do:

As the bike worked just fine, I loaded up to drive up to Bellingham where we'd cross the border and head into Canada:

Highly recommend being a motorcyclist on a ferry, you get to skip the lines and they usually put you on the boat first and let you off first:

We got the Good Weather.

The riding is mostly fun to do and less fun to describe, so this is mostly about how when you go moto-touring, you get to spend all your time finding the neatest camping spots, as long as you're willing to ride in and out of them. 

On these trips I inevitably find myself doing the hipster bicyclist thing, where I sprint from beautiful campsite to campsite:

I liked these leaves:

Also, it turns out that when I set up the bike I initially over-adjusted the brakes slightly, so they ended up dragging, overheating, and locking on. Not my favorite experience, but a relatively easy fix with a couple of tools:

There are worse places to break down, after all. 

The other thing that you really start to appreciate after being on the road for a bit is walking in to a resturaunt in a town and ordering whatever the local thing is:

Find a beautiful place, take a picture of it:

Find a beautiful place, do a wheelie:

See some elk in the woods:

Make a steak in the woods on a firebox:

Enjoy a beautiful campsite under a cloudy sky:

One of my favorite things is riding across bridges, this was a pretty good one:

Unfortunately, shortly after this photo, my friend discovered one of the known weak points on our bikes. I was out front, and the roads often had small bridges over creeks and rivers. Most of them were only somewhat sketchy, but there was one where for some reason the dirt had built up on it to a reasonably sized jump with a pretty aggressive kicker on it. I saw it, slowed down, and hit it at a reasonable speed, but my friend unfortunately got blinded by the sun reflecting off the dust from my bike, and didn't see it until it was extremely late, and aired the bike about 30 feet, landing flat, and snapped the upper mount that holds the headlight and gauge assembly. So we ended up cutting short at the halfway point. This also led to the first time he caused a ride to be cut short, rather than me. Disappointing, but hey, I know how it goes!

The remaining pictures from the trip are mostly on asphalt as we were cutting back to the ferry:

Quick coffee stop:

Found this wallpaper in the bathroom very amusing:

Pictures just didn't do this sky justice, but I tried:

Arrived back at the ferry, dirtier and somewhat worse for the wear, but on our way home:

These motorcycle trips are like landings: Anyone you ride away from is a good one, and we both rode away, so really just a wonderful time across the board. Also, should you find yourself in the woods, always good to pack a trashbag and carry out some trash. Never a bad time to help clean things up a bit.  

We can close this chapter with a shot of Vancouver Island. It rained on the ride home. The border patrol were surly and unkind, what else is new, welcome back to America!

Let's go endurance racing!

Say it with me now: Time to prep a bike. 

Ahh, no, not that bike. In fact, that's enough of that for a bit. Let's just sit in the yard:

Oh, a frog. 

Okay, I don't really feel like working on the endurance bike. Let's do something else, and put a graphics kit on my 890. 

Much better!

Anyways, what were we doing? Oh, right, endurance racing. 

First, some text. Endurance racing in this case is minimoto endurance racing, which is small displacement bikes around a gokart track. The reasonable approach to this is: fold yourself on to a child's motorcycle, and ride it in circles for 12 hours. The unreasonable approach to this is you buy a purpose built motorcycle that has no reason for existing but for adults to beat other adults riding childrens bikes. 

My riding crew's approach, of course, is take an angle grinder to the front of a motorcycle's frame, install a Chinese 190cc air cooled 4 valve single cylinder motor, and then make custom forged carbon frame spars using 3d printed molds. 

Here's the bike, partially completed:

I handled exhaust fabrication:

A glamor shot of the custom made carbon and exhaust parts:

Also, in the middle of this I picked up a long term dream bike of my wife's (a Husqvarna FS450 Supermoto), and one of the new KTM 350 4 strokes to compliment my woods bike, and give me something to offer to friends when they come to visit:

The two dirtbikes together:

Okay, enough fun, back to prepping the endurance bike - oil cooler mount:

A short break to ride the new 350:

Go to the woods, look to the mountains:

See a beautiful place, do a wheelie:

NO MORE FUN, BACK TO ENDURANCE BIKE PREP. 

Validating oil cooler capacity:

After more work, electrical mounting, making sure everything was reasonably well secured for 12 hours of abuse on the racetrack:

The reason we had to cut the front of the frame off, and the custom frame spars to fit around the head:

Ahh, this clearance is a bit tight:

This was supposed to be me and my friend working on the bike together, but unfortunately he got sick the week before the race so it fell to me to finish putting everything together with some additional help from the rest of the riding crew. But we managed to hustle it all together, and get out to the track, and get the bike on track for the first time:

So, of course, our custom made frame and everything worked perfectly, right?

lol. lmao. 

The epoxy that we'd used to bond in to the frame didn't actually hold up, and the mounts pulled out from the frame, which we noticed after practice.

I'd been worried about this and had proposed pinning the mounts into the frame, but we hadn't had time to do it. So I ended up doing it anyways, but at midnight the night before the 12 hour race in the pits with a borrowed drill and bits. 

In the sun the next day, I could see my work:

Nothing to do but change the oil, keep an eye on the torque on the motor mounts, and run it:

We set up our rider strategy - 30 minute sessions, filling every 1.5 hours, and trying to avoid crashing:

I had the joy of starting, because I had the most experience push starting the bike - did I mention that when you do this kind of swap, the kickstand fouls on the footpeg so you can't kick start it? Anyways, push start only! Oh, and it's a LeMans style start, so you sprint across the track in full gear, and you go!

The glory of these races is that you have an immense diversity of riders, bikes, and skill levels out there:

We were thrilled that everyone had gotten a spin on the bike the day before in practice, everything seemed to be working, we did our first 4 rider swaps without major issues, putting in good, consistent times, and found ourselves second in class and 3rd overall. The bike was working well, although I found I needed to often retorque the carbon motor mounts, because we hadn't had time to install the mounts with proper bushings to let us torque the bolts on to a metal surface instead of carbon. But all in all, minor issues, until...we realized our rear tire wasn't going to last race distance. We needed to do a tire change in the middle of the race - we didn't have a spare wheelset, so we were going to bring the bike in, do a tire change as fast as humanly possible, and then send the rider back out and hope we don't lose too many laps. 

I mentally walked through the process for the tire change, prepared all my tools, and we called the rider in. They came in, we put them on the stand, and as we're pulling the rear tire off the bike, they red flag the race. This is a gift beyond basically anything we'd expected, as all other teams are stopped and we're losing zero time, as long as I complete the tire change within the window of the redflag. I manage to change the tire in 4 minutes, it takes another 4 minutes to seat the bead, and we have the bike back together in under 10 minutes. Red flag flips to green, and we're still in the running! 3rd place in our class is making up time on us, but we're 6 hours in and still holding steady at 2nd in class and 3rd overall. 

The sun is going down and we're still holding steady...

And then disaster again - the rear tire goes flat. We pull the bike back in, and I prep to do a tube change. And...another red flag. A second lucky break! I get the tire changed, we lose a few laps, but are still running very competitive times, although we drop back to 4th overall, and 3rd in class. 4th in class is gaining on us, though, and our rider had mentioned there was a struggle with the transmission. I can hear the bike down the front straight slipping out of gear, and I decide that we need to do an oil change - we signal on the board, pull the rider in for the oil change, and I discover oil is leaking massively from the oil cooler. Thankfully, we had the foresight to bring the bypass assembly for the oil cooler. After 23 minutes of struggling, I have the oil cooler out of the circuit, the oil changed, the bike safety wired again, and ready to go out. Our rider goes out, and via some pitside semaphore, we discover that the oil temps, while high, are within safe margin, and we are good to keep going. 

My session is up, I take it out on track, and I immediately notice the motor mounts are not doing well - the bike is making a large amount of noise, and I can tell from the vibration of the motor that it has banged itself pretty loose. 

At this point, frustration has been growing for me - we've been competitive, we've done great, but the cracks of 9 hours of racing are starting to wear on us all. I'm frustrated at the things that could have been prevented, our decision to follow the manual instead of doing what we knew was right and running high quality, modern synthetic oil, and the general frustration of parts failure. I pull in to the pits, retorque the motor mounts, and things feel solid. With the fresh oil, the bike has stopped dropping out of gear and shifts okay. 

And then one of the other riders in my class puts a hard pass on me, and that frustration just pours out on to the track. The other riders in the open class have been consistently faster most of the day, but I'm flatly done with thinking about strategy, I've been responsible about how I approach the race, but we're 9 hours in, everyone has had a chance to ride the bike, I trust the bike will hold together, and I'm done getting passed by people I know I can pace with. I have 30 minutes in my last stint on the bike, and I am going to make them count. The track configuration is fast and flowing, and while we're slower on the power than our competitors due to a stock motor, our bike has the advantage in suspension, tires, and overall grip. 

And I make that work. They're faster driving out of the corners, but I've got better brakes into the corner, more speed midcorner, and I've got enough hours on the bike now to trust it. And so I push: aggressive lean, as hard on the gas as I can be, late and light on the brakes, trailing deep into the corners, trusting that despite the cooling temperatures that the front end will stick and the bike will hold up. And it does. This is racing, we're in the open class, hard passing is on the table, and all I have is block passing, because I'm not making my passes on the power. 

In these situations, racing is a waiting game. I know I have the pace, but where we carry speed is different, so I have to wait for the opening, and seize it when it comes - for the first rider, they get poor drive on to the back straight, and I block pass them into the last hairpin. I expect them to come back by me down the front straight, and they draw even with me, but I haven't given them enough space to take the ideal line to the outside, I make sure I don't touch the brakes until after they do, and force them behind me into turn one, leading into the part of the track where the strengths of my bike mean I can start to draw out a gap. 

Now I'm wedged between two fast riders, and the goal becomes to not let the rider behind me get by, while also waiting for my chance to take the spot back from the other open rider in front of me. I notice they run a wide line into the infield section, and after confirming they do that consistently, I take advantage of the extra space on the inside, turn the bike sharper and harder, and block their line with my bike on the exit. I know I'm faster in the back section, and I maximize my speed through the corners, pulling a sufficient gap that they can't motor me on the straights. And after that I'm free of having to think about the other riders and all that I can think about is stringing together the lap I know I can do without traffic in front of me. My times drop, and I put in the fastest lap we've done on the bike so far, a 53.029. I debate if I should keep pushing harder, but the bike slides both wheels in the middle of turn one, I save it on my knee, and I decide that we've done what we can. I dial it back a few clicks, and pull in at the end of my session, exhausted, but once again happy. 

I've gone out and challenged myself, ridden harder and faster, the bike is still in one piece. There's an hour and a half left of riding that our last two riders will handle. We're not going to take a podium, all we have to do is keep the bike upright for another hour and a half and we'll complete the 2nd longest asphalt race in America on a bike we built ourselves. I've done my part. 

And that last hour and a half counts down, and my friend who built the bike and had the whole crazy idea of taking an angle grinder to the front of the frame rides it across the finish line. He managed a 53.052 on his last session, and we ended up completing 602 laps total. 

Racers talk about "podiums that feel like a win", because you overcame some specific bike or setup problems, or you just had a bad race but you made the best of it, and this was a 7th place that felt like a win. We had problems, but we worked through them, and everyone successfully did their part. 

The race strategy that brought us home:

After a quick awards ceremony and some much deserved sleep, we took a look at the bike in the light, and noticed that our motor mounts had failed but had failed much more progressively than I'd expected:

We went home and immediately put the bike in a corner and didn't look at it for 3 weeks. But I did take something as a memento with me to add to my shop wall:

Okay, endurance race is in the bag, time to prep a bike. 

Back to Ridge!

I have very few pictures of this day, but it was hot and beautiful. I had a target of scrubbing another 3 seconds of laptime and getting to an equivalent lap to my fast laps at Thunderhill. Anything in the 2:04 range would make me happy. And I rolled out and almost immediately put in a faster time than my previous best, and ended up closing out the day with a 2:03.1 in the books. The only noteworthy thing I discovered is that the bike can indeed get louder - this screen did do something before it decided it was tired of being part of the exhaust:

And there's no more pleasant place than sitting in a hammock on the track and watching the world go by on a beautiful day:

I took a quick detour to a friends place on my way home, helped him fix his lawnmower, and then took the ferry home at the end of another beautiful day:

Let's go into the forest!