Seems like every time I go out of State, the gremlins follow closely behind....
Roll in Friday night just after dark, start setting up and find that the key milk crate with the lantern, cook pots, mugs, plates. bowls and all other eating-type utensils and accoutrements didn't make the trip. Got a vat of gumbo that just needs to be heated up, make some rice, good to go - nope - spent a half hour dumpster diving to find Gatorade bottles and beer cans of sufficient quantity to allow feeding to proceed.
Saturday morning breaks glorious. Fill some beer cans with water, get them heated up and make a fine cup of Joe. Going to be a great day. Try to start the bike and find that the battery is at about 3 volts (13.8 when I left the house). Check the battery and it's got a nice bulge and a cracked case (internal short) - OK, good thing it didn't decide to napalm the bike in the process. I'd almost brought the stock lead-acid as a spare, but had decided I wouldn't need it. By 11:00 it was determined that no appropriate spare batteries were in the paddock, so off I go to Palm Springs - almost losing my buddy's tonneau cover in the process, had to lash it down with straps to keep it on-board. Get a battery, back to paddock by 2:30 - no worries, I can still get some sessions in. Bike turns over fine, tries to start and dies (over and over) - smells like it's running rich.....check everything, retry, this doesn't make any sense - it's mapped for higher altitude, so if anything it should be running lean. This continues until dark. We'll give it another shot in the morning - I will get some riding in.
Sunday - same deal with the bike. Finally after track goes hot and no closer to a running bike I get frustrated and decide to just disconnect the Bazzaz and restore to stock. Sure enough - bike starts and runs just fine (even without the O2 sensor). If only I'd tried that yesterday.... Get in four sessions and a 100 miles before the desert unleashes upon us and visibility got a wee bit sketchy (a couple of guys just ahead of me lost track of where they were and went off without drama, but yeah...). Track got red-flagged soon after and we figured it wouldn't likely get better, so went ahead and packed it in. Apparently conditions improved later as Murphy would dictate. All in all, though, my first time at Chuck and I'll take my mishaps over wadding up right out of the box any day of the week. Really dug the chicanes, bowl section and entry/exit to front straight.
So after battling through sand and dust storms all through Cali, AZ and into NV we decide to crash at a buddy's house in Vegas rather than pushing through snow storms at night in UT. Well, turns out at least we didn't have to drive through snowstorms at night. Normally 6 hours from Vegas to home, it took 12...carnage on I-15... get back and see that Jesse had sent me a couple of PM's from the track. Jesse - I am weak on my remote cell phone to forum type stuff and didn't even think to check. I am bummed that we didn't hook up - turns out we even were pitted at the same end of the paddock.
Sorry no vids - got a few pics. Hopefully Jesse got some stuff when the sandstorm started blowing in.
