Saturday official practice.
Today I would get to practice with the guys I'd be racing against, which would either be a very good, or a very bad thing, depending on how quick they were. I was reassured that my progress was fine and that I'd be ok.
The weather was very, very different to the day before though, and we could actually see some snow on the upper mountains in the distance, such was the reduction in temperature.
Even Wyatt the dog had to wrap up warm. After my first session, I was freezng my ass off, and couldn't get my head around riding the bike. It was clearly ok for riding though, and AMA superhero, Jason Perez proved it to me by coming around the outside of me in the flat out turn 8, with his knee kissing the deck in a chilly display of barely controlled lunacy. I was now extremely demoralised.
The chilly conditions didn't get any better, and at one point i went for a pee and nearly had a heart attack as I saw the size of my todger. I also thought I'd lost a knacker, such was the malteseresque nature of them at this freezing point in time. I couldn't lose my balls, I'd be needing them for the next day!
I had decided to wait until later in the day to fit a new set of tyres for the race and scrub them in. Sure enough, just as I was getting them swapped over (we only took one set of wheels) the heavens opened and it lashed it down.
After a while it became pretty obvious that there was no way I would be able to scrub the new tyres in and that the morning practice would be my only chance.
I had met a really nice bloke called Dave Moss at the track. dave's an ex pat, originally from Manchester. He now runs his own suspensionn tuning company, called Catalyst Reaction. He's gained alot of respect on the various race paddocks in the U.S, and works bloody hard, driving 60,000 miles a year to track days and race meetings. I wish him all the success in the world, he definitely deserves it.
Dave Moss, hardest working man in the paddock, and the only one in shorts! We scooted off to another Mexican restaurant, but as we were sat down to order, Shandra got a phone call from a young lad that had fallen off and broken his collarbone earlier in the day whilst she was instructing him on his new racer school. (Just to be clear, she didn't instruct him to fall off, he managed that on his own) He had been fixed up by the hospital sooner than she thought, and downed tools and went off to pick him up without a second thought.
Me, Amy and Shandra's parner, Chris ordered some nibbles and waited for them to return.
Kyle came back sporting a lovely little sling. It turned out that he was in the Marines, and at just over 20 years old, had already been to Fallujah for 7 months, right in the thick of it. Brave lad, never made anything of it either.
I hadn't managed to lap as quickly as I had the day before, but then neither had anyone else, such were the conditions. It had been useful just to keep learning the track, but not for much else.
Oh yeah, i forgot to add that when we got to the hotel on the Friday night, we thought it was on fire as the L.A fire dept were there in force!
We never found out what was going on, but there was a prom night or something going on, so we figured that one of the girls had broken a nail or had a false eyelash trauma.