As some of you may or may not know, my line of work is rather interesting.  It's downright hilarious if you consider that I'm someone who spent the better part of his college years fitting as much pot smoke and beer as was humanly possible into my sizeable frame.  When I wasn't engaged in those activities, I was busy reading ancient novels and plays or writing slightly informed essays on literature hundreds of years old.

Now, roughly 6 years and 700 miles later, I've found out what most kids out of college do just after they leave the halls of academia: Of all the things you study in school, roughly .05% of it will be applicable in your everyday, adult life.

Most days you'll find me doing any number of things around my office that are in no way related to the academic experience I received while I was in school.  Mainly, I busy myself with typical, administrative type stuff.  I answer phones, I take orders and I talk to the various distributors of our products.  I, as my "title" so aptly puts it, direct sales.  On any given day, I might also be manufacturing the product we sell in a number of ways, either by running the CNC milling machine that cuts the billet aluminum we use to house electronics or by assembling those electronics in one way or another. 

Aside from all that non-English-major type stuff, my job as of late has gotten even less literary and analytical.  In addition to manufacturing the timing equipment we sell to amateur, club series racers and motor sports enthusiasts all across America, we also have a small motorcycle road racing team.

As the 2004 season came to a close this past November, we were faced with a mounting budget to keep the team afloat and stay in business at the same time.  Cuts had to be made and, ultimately, it was decided that the full-time mechanic we had traveling to all the events keeping the bikes running during race weekends was just too expensive and we let him go. 

Now, as the 2005 season is beginning, the mechanic's departure means I've somehow managed to land myself in the thick of all this racing madness... Me, the consummate C student... Me, the guy who can barely even change a flat tire and has used Cliff's Notes only to find that Thoreau is still immensely confusing... Me, the consumate, all-around klutz.  I have somehow, in addition to my everyday, office-bound self, become a miniature Crew Chief and will travel with the team to all the various events to help keep everything in order.

I say "miniature" because I really know no more than most of you about how a motorcycle actually works.  Fill it with gas, turn it on, sit down, twist the throttle and it goes.  True, I am learning more and more each day, but I still find myself asking dumb questions or describing pieces of the motorcycle as "that springy thing" and "that bar dealy" when I don't know the proper name.  Ask me for a wrench, and I'll probably hand you any number of different things, a screwdriver or pliers or an allen.  Ask me for a 10mm wrench and I'll probably just start crying.

Over the course of the next 9 months, I will travel to approximately 25 different race events scattered all over the country from Alabama to New Hampshire.  Whether there is any interest in our exploits as a team remains to be seen, but I spoke with Nacho and will try to maintain a column of sorts about our many trials, tribulations and (hopefully) victories over the course of the 2005 season.

The inaugural race for us this year was a combined 4-day event at Daytona Super Speedway in Florida.  Going into it, we were facing a number of hurdles varying in severity.  Firstly, Daytona is the only NASCAR track that we will race on all year, meaning close walls, banked turns and massive straightaway where speeds upwards of 180 miles an hour are possible.  Included in this straightaway is the turn that cut Dale Earnhardt's life short.  The track itself was probably the biggest and most threatening aspect of the weekend.  Secondly came the fact that our rider, (known henceforth as Riderman), had never been on this track before in his life.  Thirdly, we are riding on a different, structurally suspicious brand of tire this year and, fourthly, there's me... Klutzman.

Going into it, we were all just a big bundle of nerves.  Can we do this?  Can we get everything right?  Will everything fall into place?  Can we remember everything?

I suppose I should backtrack a little bit here and give you an idea of what, truly, was my very first weekend working on the motorcycles.  Somewhere in the middle of the season last year, I began going to racetracks around the Atlanta area with the team.  Initially, it was vacation time for me and filled my weekends with some excitement.  I'd been to many races, but hadn't actually done anything more than hand tools to people or wrap warmers around the tires.  On one particular weekend we were in Alabama at Talladega (Little Talladega, not the famous one) and my brother, Spanky, had come along to see what this whole "racing" thing I constantly yammered on about was like.

It was a Thursday. Thursdays and Fridays on race weekends are always practice days.  Days are divided into 15 minute segments of track time for each particular class of motorcycle.  First, there are the 600cc Novices, followed by 600cc Experts, then 750cc and up Novices, 750cc and up Experts, etc.  They give the teams the opportunity to go out and run laps, then tinker with the bikes so that they can get gear ratios set and suspensions tuned just the way they like them.  Any kinks the motorcycles may have are worked through during these days.  This Thursday, with my brother watching, Riderman and the mechanic, having the bikes set where they wanted them, decided to show me how to change a front tire.

Really, changing a front tire is much easier than you'd think.  The front tire on a motorcycle has two large brake rotors on either side with brake calipers attached around the top of each rotor.  First, you unfasten the brake calipers, then unscrew the main axle and afterwards the tire comes right off.  After some brief instruction from the two, I did this.  I did this extremely gingerly.  I did it in roughly 5 times the amount of time it takes a normal person, but I did it and I was proud.  My brother watched and, secretly, I think he was clapping on the inside.

With the old tire off, it was time for the new tire to go on.  I slid it into position, stuck the axle back through and tightened it.  Then I re-attached the brake calipers, spun the tire around a few times to make sure nothing exploded and told Riderman and the mechanic that they needed to look over my work to see that I'd done everything correctly.  Everything appeared to be in order, they patted me on the back and I was officially the proudest person at the track.

I was amazed at myself.  Here I was in a place doing a thing that, 3 years prior, I never could have possibly imagined I was even capable of doing.  The fact that I'd just changed a tire and was officially learning to put a wrench to a race vehicle made me immensely proud.  Prouder even than I'd been after getting an A on my 25 page Senior Seminar paper comparing Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene to The Matrix (and it was a killer paper).  That immense sense of pride and wonder lasted approximately 10 minutes.

When Riderman took the bike out on the track and started racing it around, everything appeared to be in order, but it most definitely was not.  You see, what Riderman and the mechanic had neglected to tell me or check for themselves is that anytime you remove brake calipers from a tire, be it the front or the back, they get spread out a little bit.  As a result, when the new tire is put back on the bike, the pads aren't actually touching the brake rotor; there is a little bit of space.  So, anytime you futz with brakes (and this goes for cars too), once they're back in place, the brakes need to be pumped so that the pads are resting on the rotor.  The process of changing tires had become second nature to them and they'd underestimated my prowess as an English major completely incapable of understanding the mechanics of a brake pad on a rotor.

Needless to say, Riderman's pads were not resting on his rotors and he found this out at about 120 miles an hour going into a turn when he squeezed the lever and got nothing but thin air in response.

Fortunately for us, there were 200 feet or so of flat grass off that particular turn, so he was able to keep the bike upright as he careened off the track and into a pasture.  In the end, he was no worse for the wear.  When he came off the track, I had no idea that I'd done anything wrong, but when he told me that my minor oversight was nearly catastrophic, I was devastated.  I had no idea that something so small, something that I hadn't thought to check -- something I didn't even know to check -- could have such disastrous repercussions on the track.  He just shrugged it off and laughed because, hey, he hadn't crashed, so no harm no foul.

But, going into Daytona, this incident was all I could think about.  I could only think of the things I didn't know about.  Every time I touched the motorcycle, I looked for things to squeeze or tighten afterwards.  I read motorcycle manuals and studied engine mechanics, reading things about piston movement, combustion and top-dead-center that I can't possibly begin to understand.  At Daytona, there are no 200 feet of flat grass to pad a mistake, there is only an unforgiving 33 degree banked turn met with concrete walls on all sides, everywhere you look.  Forgetting to squeeze a lever or tighten a bolt at Daytona has dire consequences.

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