A Weekend of Highs and Lows: The Low

It was Friday afternoon. I'd been waiting for this track night for ages. It was going to be one of those rare opportunites to do the short track at Barbagallo Raceway, under lights. I was buzzing! I was ready, I took off from work early to get to the track. I was excited.



What a fucking mess that was...

Six laps into the first session I came off. The R1's front end washed out and I slid. I slid for a very long time. Long enough to grind about a third of my footpeg off.

This will be *the last* time I tell this story.

The "basin" is turn 6 at Wanneroo Raceway; a fairly long right hand corner, where if you take the correct line through it, it sucks you in like a drain, with awesome G-forces acting on you as you power through it.

I had come over skyline as usual, keeping to the black tyre lines from bikes that had gone through there previous, but I had run a little wide into the basin. My entry was a little off centre track, where usually I would be around the one-third mark. I'd say that any other day I would have made it. But it wasn't my lucky day. My tyres were warm, I was on the pace and I was doing well. I was about one third of the way through the corner, I was looking out to the ripple strip, aiming for it, looking up into the distance and up the hill...

I had collected some sand or dirt. I hit the road with my right shoulder, scraped with my elbow and slid on my right hand side. My helmet made contact with the road for a poofteenth of a second as the scratch was only the size of a twenty cent piece. I remember the feeling of the large tarmac grains scuffing my leather. All in silence. I didn't hear the bike skid, I didn't hear anything breaking. It was all in silence. Once I'd reached the end of the bitumen I put my right hand down and that had pushed me into an upright seating position; with both legs in front of me, body upright with my hands on my knees skittling into the yellow sand on my ass.

When I had slowed down my feet dug into the sand and I did one last tumble forward and ended up on my elbows and knees facing the ground. I looked up and saw all the dust in the air surrounding my bike. I pushed myself up off the sand and two things entered my mind. In order of appearance: "I'm OK, I've crashed, and I'm OK" then "N'aaaaaw, I broke my bike". I only looked at the bike for two seconds, then I turned away and started walking straight to the tyre wall. I didn't want anyone else to get target fixation and come off the track either.

Once I had reached the tyre wall, I signalled to the flag marshall with two thumbs up. I was OK.

The red flag was out and I could see everyone over Skyline slowing down for the red flag. No-one was expecting it to be me. I could see the faces of those that rode past. They knew, and I knew; it wasn't supposed to happen like that.

The flaggie ran down towards me once the rest of the bikes were off the track and I got a dinky back to the pit lane. Until then, I was relatively OK. Then I saw the sad faces of Robin and Glen, they were so sad for me. I started crying. "Robin.... I broke my biiiiiiiike"

I was checked out by the medical team at the track, and all I got was a scratch on my shoulder where the velcro in my leathers had rubbed on my skin when I hit the ground, and a little short term memory loss. I was offered a Corona (with lemon <- that was the clincher) and sat around for the rest of the evening. I was bitter that I couldn't go back on track.

My body positioning was fine, my speed was fine, my throttle control was fine, my line was wide, but I had positioned myself to make the corner. It was just on the dirty part of the track. I was shitty. I couldn't even blame myself for stuffing it up. The bike was there, it was feeling good.. then it was gone...