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Man, that went quick. This might be a little lengthy, as I’ve been lax and we have a lot to catch up on!

The winter 2017-2018 Salem Speedway Flat Track season both started and ended on a typical Oregon winter night: a little cold, a little windy, a little rainy – but the track is covered so it’s always summertime under the warm lights of the Salem Speedway.

The season ender also landed on St. Patrick’s Day, and for me it was the culmination of a couple of hairy weeks. If you follow Last Moto on the social medias, you probably heard that my 76′ Elsinore was stolen. I’ll tell that whole story in an upcoming post, but in response to the robbery I decided to move some of my other bikes out of the wild west of Portland and into the safety of a top secret bunker (i.e. my Dad’s garage in Southern Oregon). Somewhere on that trip I caught what I can only describe as the cold-flu-strep-death, the effects of which I’m still feeling as I write this post.

The few days leading up to the races, I was still clinging to the hope that the Elsinore would show up somewhere in a ditch, abandoned by the hoodlums who didn’t understand the difference between regular and pre-mix. When it didn’t show up, I knew I’d have to get myself into a DayQuil haze and finish up the little Honda SL125 that I had been messing with over the last few months. It wouldn’t be a contender but I told myself that it didn’t matter — I hadn’t missed a race all season and some two-bit thieves weren’t going to rob me of a bike AND a championship race.

The SL125 was already mostly together. Over the summer I had stripped it down to the frame and gave it a paint scheme that I had always wanted on a bike: a sandy frame with a light blue tank. The bike already had some yellow Preston Pettys on it, so all I needed to do was pop the front fender off and replace the giant 21″ wheel. “No problem,” I said to myself. Before my trip to Southern Oregon I swung by Cycle Heap and talked with Casey, who found me a 19″ front wheel that shared the same skinny axle diameter, probably from a Yamaha CT or similar model.

I had a spare 19-3.50 Shinko Trail Tire in my inventory of treasures, so I figured I’d be set up in no time. Spoiler alert: a 3.50 will not fit in between those skinny little forks, and after monkeying with that for a few hours I decided I should move on to getting the thing to actually run well.

The bike idled well, but had no power once you twisted the throttle. I monkeyed with the carb a bit, but then Casey hooked up a timing light and pointed out that my advance unit was frozen. I didn’t even notice it when I replaced the points earlier. He hooked me up with a non-frozen advance and voila, a better running bike!

For a minute. It was happy on the first few runs up and down the road but then quickly bogged out in half throttle. The valve tappets sounded like an angry sewing machine despite any adjustment and for a 4-stroke it was smoking more than my Elsinore did. But it ran, so I grabbed a couple spare plugs and hoped it would behave long enough for a few trips around the oval.

On the morning of the races, I was hit with two more bits of bad news. Casey’s bike didn’t come together and Korry’s bike had seized in practice the night before. I was bummed my buddies couldn’t race, but it was time to go so I slapped my new yellow number plate on the 125 and headed down the road.

There was a good turnout for the last races of the season, and after a rider’s meeting it was time to practice. The bike was still chattering and smoking like a hipster in Antartica, but I was excited to see if it would do anything out on the track. Practice felt like a disaster… the bike slipped and slid around the corners and it had no power. In the pits I realized I hadn’t taken any air out of the tires so I dropped the PSI and gave the knobbies more squish then I set my sights on the valve tappets. I fired up the bike and started messing with the cam chain tensioner when I realized the adjustments were doing nothing… from one extreme to the other there was no change to how it sounded or ran. Well.. that would explain some of the poor performance.

All this wrenching took me right up to the first heat, so I didn’t have time to put on my GoPro or take any pictures. I ran the race, the tires gripped better in the corners and the bike plodded along. I placed somewhere near the back and tried to stay out of everyone’s way.

After the race I went back to pits and decided to double-check my timing to see if I could eek any more consistent juice out of the bike, but the timing was as “on” as the bike was going to get. I put the cover back on and decided to actually visit with some folks and watch some races.

This is a good time for me to talk about the people I’ve met this season. I was talking with my girlfriend and we agreed that it’s very rare to meet a group of people and not have one bad apple in the whole barrel. Not only has everyone been generous with their knowledge and encouragement, they are just a great group of people to be around. I’m looking forward to hanging out with the entire Vintage 250 class outside of the buzz of the pits and in the midst of warmer weather.

I have to give a special shout out to Casey Him who runs the service department at Cycle Heap. Without a doubt, I would not have been able to do this season’s racing as well as I did without his help. I owe him big and hope to be able to repay his kindness in helping me out with my various bikes. If you have a bike in Portland that needs service, contact him, you won’t regret it.

As the main event approached, I decided to throw in a new spark plug and push the bike to the staging area rather than ride it over. As I was sitting in staging I set my foot down on the shifter only to discover that there was no shifter on the bike. In my cold medicine haze, I hadn’t put it back on after pulling the side cover off. I propped up the bike and took off to hobble-run back to the pits. As I rounded the corner, my hotshoe did it’s job and skidded out from underneath me and I hit the ground hard. Even with my helmet on, I still felt a bit of ringing from my head and my left arm took a serious hit. I shook it off and carefully hobbled back to the pits, grabbed my shifter and a hex wrench, and came back in time to slap it on and start the bike up for the Main Event.

The main event was a fun race – the bike performed mildly better on a fresh plug and I had a fun little “battle” with Scot Baughman near the back of the pack. My left hand wasn’t able to pull in the clutch after the start so I just hot-shifted through the gears, trying to get as much speed as I could out of the struggling engine. I have no idea how everyone up front faired, but I was only lapped once by perpetual race leader Cory Churchill, so I’ll take that as a decent race run!

I came back to the pits and gingerly removed my helmet and gloves as I thought my wrist was sprained at best, fractured at worst. Happily it turned out to just be a pulled muscle or tendon in my forearm, and a few days rest and a mountain of ibuprofen has restored the arm’s ability to squeeze a clutch lever.

In the pits, congratulations and handshakes were passed around as the realization sank in that this really was the last race of the season. Hands down, this is probably the best thing I’ve ever decided to do on a “whim.” I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was barely double digits, and I had always dreamed of racing something. In my 38th year of life, it’s refreshing to find something that I could get into and that I could actually feel myself improving in.

In a world where I sometimes see myself falling behind the curve, it is encouraging to feel like I can grit my teeth, twist the throttle, throw the bike into the turn and see what I can push myself to do. Maybe it sounds like a cliché, but I sure as hell feel alive when I’m racing: mixing it up with my friends out there in the dirt and smoke.

Let’s race!