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This weekend was superbike fun.. I rolled 300 miles of track time at Autobahn Country Club in Joliet from Saturday thru Monday. I was riding good this weekend, and got promoted to Intermediate group in NESBA! Should be some pictures up at some point this week, will post a few up.
Very tiring to ride on the track. Think of doing 60 pushups (while braking from 150+mph) and 200 squat thrusts (swapping from one side of the bike to the other) 20 minutes per hour, for 8 hours, for three days.. plus using abs, legs, back muscles like crazy.. in 85 degree sun, all while wearing leathers, gloves, boots, and helmet. Closest thing I can think of would be doing a Karate workout in the summer sun in a snowsuit instead of a Gi. Same level of exersion, a LOT thicker clothing.
MAN my legs are sore. I drank over 30 bottles of water and Propel over the course of the 3 days, pushed in as much calories as I could when eating, and I'm STILL dehydrated and weak this evening.
There's six weeks of downtime now. Time to get caught up on everything around the house! Planning on getting some good Karate workouts in this summer once Jami is feeling better. Her neurosurgeon's secretary asked her a bunch of questions today while she was sitting at the track this weekend. Should meet with them soon.
I parked REAL close to the bathrooms so she didn't have to walk much this weekend, cooked for her, etc. She's a trooper. Tonight she bought me a cake for getting promoted to Intermediate group!
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Good grief.. it's Thursday already and I haven't got half the things done that I needed to do this week.
Jami and I went to her doctor's appointment on Monday, and the doctor read us the results of her MRI. It made me nervous with all the red underlining and highlighting but the doctor explained it all well.. she's got a herniated disc between L5/S1. It's something that's been getting progressively worse for some time, and at this point she has been referred to a Neurosurgeon for further discovery and corrective action.
In the meantime I've been hanging in there as best I can. Sometimes life puts a lot on our shoulders and all you can do is bend your knees and dig in harder. The first couple of weeks, all I could wish for was that it'd be over and life would go back to normal. It was very difficult to deal with everything - caring for Jami, 5 kids, a job and company that's on a downturn, etc. The last week or so, I've realized that "life is life" and we have to work with what we've got. So I wake up at 8AM, do what needs done, and keep on doing it until 11 PM or so when I can get some sleep.
I enlisted the help of the older kids, but now Trent Jr. and Taylor are off to their mothers in Wisconsin for a month. So it's just me and Dylan left to run the show. Since he's getting more chores than a normal kid gets, I've instituted an "allowance" system where he can get extra credit by doing unasked chores and being extra helpful. By the end of the summer he'll be fantastically wealthy (by 10 year old standards) and able to buy whatever stuff he want to buy.
Off to work. Kids good to go, work needs me. Ugh.
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Last week..
Moday: truck brakes
Tuesday: work work and more work
Wednesday: Took Jami to her MRI, traded in our Ford Windstar minivan on a 4wd Ford Expedition, worked on bike in evening
Thursday: work, and rest - Jami was hurting and I stayed up with her until 4:30 AM..
Friday: packed up gear and headed to track.
We arrived at Blackhawk Farms Raceway about 7:30 PM on Friday. My Ex-Wife drove down from northern wisconsin, and met us at the track so I could deliver our two older kids for summer vacation. Since Jami is still unable to walk or stand up straight, I coerced my ex to help me set up our tent. Our tent is big, and it takes two people to do it. Then I set up the rest of the camp, and we hung out with some of our new track friends. Since we didn't have time to get groceries on the way out, people obliged us with all sorts of free food and alcohol..
Saturday morning I was up at 5:30 AM and after running some cold water over my head, started working on the bike. It was raining, and kept raining up until 4 PM. The weather channel the day before was saying "clear" on saturday, then sometime overnight changed their minds to 70% chance of rain all day.... I got bored about 10 AM and swapped out my wheels for the ones with Pirelli rain race tires.
Ran a session in the morning, then three in the afternoon. There was at least one crash per session. My turn came around in the 2:40 session. I was running a pretty hot pace by then, and the track had started drying out some. Rain tires don't do so well in the dry. I had been stepping my rear out exiting turns for about 6 laps, it was nice and controllable, felt good. I was running lap times around 1:32, not bad for wet (about 10 seconds off superstock rain race pace). I was passing everyone except Jason Farrel, an AMA pro - he was blowing by me like I was standing still. He's .4 seconds off the lap record in the dry, and was running a race pace in the rain, passing me twice a session. :-)
Then..
Coming out of turn 6a, I turned in like normal, got on the gas gradually as I was standing up the bike, and it just went away. Couldn't roll off to catch it as I had been doing. Bike was down, I let go. Since I was still hanging off the bike I only had to fall about 6 inches .. I slid in to the bike, causing it to 180 on the track, then I kept sliding.
You ever do a slip & slide in the rain at 80mph? It's really fun! Just don't try to stand up. I patted the ground to make sure I was stopped, tried to stand up, then realized IMMEDIATELY that I was still sliding at about 20MPH and started tumbling. I tucked in my arms and legs until I came to a full and complete stop.
Anyway I stood up, realized that both myself AND my bike were still on the track, so I ran over, picked it up, and rolled it back off the track before anyone caught up. Had no right side peg, so I had to bring it back in to the pits to asses the damages.. a $20 foot peg and some scratches. Not bad. I sprained my wrist, but it wasn't bad so I was able to "put some tape on it".
My foot peg is still somewhere off in the grass in turn 6. I went looking for it Saturday evening, and found two OTHER footpegs out there that were different brands and not mine.. so no souvenier for me. I had the bike fixed and it passed tech by 4:40, but there was no time left to swap out for dry tires (track dried out). So I missed the last two sessions Saturday.
There were some fireworks Saturday night, and a beer pong tournament that left MANY a fool in pain the next day. Jami was hurting, so we retired early and watched some DVD's back in the tent.
Sunday morning I woke up and was feeling great - just a little sore. Swapped my tires for the dry DOT race tires, passed tech, and was on for the first session. However, bad stuff happens to good people. The last lap of the first session, I come out of turn 2 and see a girl in pink leathers laying unconsious in the middle of the track. I rode past her body, finished the lap, and pitted (standing red flag by this point). You're supposed to complete the lap and exit the track ASAP when this happens so the ambulance can get out, but it makes you feel guilty and scared riding a pace after that.
They're not allowed to release medical info so I don't have a lot of details, but she was taken by medical transport to Rockford Memorial. I saw the track director bringing her leathers to her friends; they had to cut them off track side to stabilize her for transport. It was her first day, first session ever on a racetrack.
Anyway .. fun weekend. Rest of Sunday went very well, and I came home tired. Riding a superbike is like doing kibadachi or one legged squat thrusts for 20 minutes at a time. 8 times a day. By the end of the day my legs were BURNING.
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Grr.. got deep in brakes today on my 3/4 ton chevy. With the truck jacked up the left wheel wouldn't turn at all, caliper was frozen. Once I got it torn apart, found some problems.. got nice & messy repacking bearings with axle grease. Ended up replacing both front calipers (other one froze when I compressed the piston), plus rotors and pads. Brakes were still spongy after bleeding the front, so Mike helped me to bleed the rear lines as well. That stiffened up the brakes but when doing testing in the road I was leaving behind brake fluid on the ground.
Round two.. tightened up the rusty rear bleeder valves more, and that took care of two brake fluid streaks. However on subsequent testing, on hard braking (lock 'em up type) I was still leaving a sploch of fluid on the ground in the MIDDLE of the truck. Master cylinder is leaking under the resevoir.
Crap.
I can get by on this for awhile as the leak appears to be on the seal between the resevior and the master cylinder itself, just have to check it periodically. If the brakes get spongy again I'll need to rebleed them again, but I'm hoping to get by a few weeks until I can replace the master cylinder. Have to bleed them again anyway...
I hate bleeding brakes. It sucks. But.. I've only got $148 wrapped up in an entire front end brake job (after core reimbursemets, PLUS a bunch of cleaning solvents and extra brake fluid), which is a HELL of a lot less than I'd pay to have all this work done at a shop. I remember paying over $700 for a similar job on my grandpa's truck when I was younger when he couldn't afford to do it.
I rewarded myself for the 6 hour ordeal with some new tools from Tractor Supply and Menards. Dude can never have enough tools, with 5 kids running around breaking stuff. Also.. the old brake rotors have orange targets stuck on them for some 50 cal fun. Those buggers weigh about 50 lbs each. Soon I'll reduce them to smaller, more manageable shrapnel. :-)
Why not get a new truck... well.. I've put about $500 in to it this year, total, and that's a whole lot less than if I'd made a half of year's payments on a new truck. That's one of the ways I can afford the toys I like to play with. :-)
Now that I've got a vehicle that can probably haul a trailer safely, it's time to get some of the stuff knocked out on the Superbike for some more weekend fun. I've got a LONG list of stuff I've got to get done on the bike before it hits the track again, and the truck has cut deeply in to my time this week..
On an aside note, I've decided that later this year, I might take advantage of the $4500 credit and trade up. Since they scrap the vehicle in question and I don't want some unscrupulous recycler making money off the take off parts on E-bay, I plan on well ventilating my truck before handing it over.
After all.. fenders and engines with 50 caliber holes still weigh the same when they recycle the metal. {Cue Evil Laughter}
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Had to go in to work Saturday to help a customer in Maine get a server's RAID array back up and going. Today I get a call from another customer who has a friend who had a server die. "Dude, I'll pay you to help get the database back up and going".. umm.. it's Sunday, and we didn't build the system or do the database, but whatever. Haven't made any other plans yet since it's (yawn) 9:00 AM and you woke me up..
At least helping recover SQL databases is more entertaining than family members asking to clean off drive space. I have a feeling work of this nature will pick up sharply as companies stretch equipment lifespans beyond normal in the bad economy.
I'm preparing a quote this week for another customer which includes some rather bad-ass server hardware. Four 24-cpu-core systems with 128GB of RAM, each upgradable to 48-cpu-core with 256GB of RAM. Mmmmmmmmm....
We are trying out a new marketing strategy this week to see if it's worth switching our company's sales model over to. With the recession in full swing, we haven't made a new system sale in about 4 months now. We've been surviving off of maintenance fees and short-run service work. I'm looking to buck this trend, and came up with a plan that involves charging nothing for our software and servers up front. Basically I'll pay for the equipment (servers) and labor (install) out of pocket and charge customers a fixed monthly rate. We'll see giving our stuff away fixes our sales problem and gets us more market share.
The model is similar to how people buy cars. How many people go out and pay full for a car? Not many - look at the dealers after credit lines tightened up. Our software systems cost anywhere between 15 and 50K each. That's an awful big pill for customers to swallow right now, especially ones who could really use the software to help streamline their business but can't afford the large cash outlay. So.. I'll self-finance the systems, eat the install labor costs, and we'll see what happens.
If it works, this will push us to be more efficient on server builds, refine our deployment methods and establish best practices on installs, and automate more implementation tasks. If we're forced to accomodate a higher volume of business without expanding resources, it will effect us to get innovative on deployment procedures.
Bottom line, rather than sit around and bitch about how slow things are, I'm inspired to DO something about it. If we were a large company it'd be harder to turn things around, but being small and agile I can shift our policies on a dime.
This all stemmed from a "how we're surviving" conversation I had with the guys on Friday. We switched to monthly flat rate billing on tech support / etc in March 08. If we hadn't done that, at that time, we'd be out of business by now because all hourly work has essentially stopped. At least we're surviving off of flat rate support. Furthering that concept, I started wondering "what would it be like if ALL of our services were done this way?" Sure, we make a LOT less money up front, but this could be the decision that keeps us all prospering 3-5 years from now, just like that decision I made last year has kept us afloat.
Painful at first but worth it in the end. Maybe. Time will tell.
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