After a quick 3 hours of sleep in a Wal Mart parking lot, it's time to wake up, head to the track, and find our spot in the pits.  Parking in the pits is very similar to mall parking in that it is first come, first served.  If you arrive late, you're saddled with a crappy pit spot far away from the track, and you end up paying for it all weekend long come practice or qualifying or race time.  This is doubly so at a place like Daytona where you might have to travel upwards of half a mile to get to the race grid.

In America, the two large club series of racing are the Club Championship Series (CCS) and the Western Eastern Racing Association (WERA).  Both host small regional events all over the country as well as larger national events.  CCS national events are known as the Formula USA (F-USA) series.  In either series, the national championships are more sought after, they pay more money for a win and the level of competition is about as high as you'll see outside of AMA professional racing.  The prize purses on some weekends are even enough to coax a few of the smaller AMA teams out to the track to try and win.  For those of us whose teams don't have significant factory support and who are on bikes that don't cost $50,000 or $60,000, this is referred to as "cherry picking" because it's no contest for the factory guys. If they're at the track, chances are they're going to walk away with the $2,000 or $5,000 payout when they win the race.

The two series are fairly similar, the larger of them being CCS as it's owned by Clear Channel.  Although it is a larger series, the events tend to be disorganized and disheveled making them highly frustrating when it comes time to be out on the track.  The most important difference between CCS and WERA events is the way they organize the starting grid for race day.  In any CCS race, the riders are gridded in the order that they signed up to compete in the race and as a result, the riders starting on the first row were the first to register for that event and are not necessarily the fastest riders on the track.  However, WERA grids their races based on how many points a rider has, so the more races you've competed and done well in, the closer you'll start to the front.  F-USA grids all their events based on qualifying times posted during sessions held the day before races.  In this respect, F-USA is a lot like AMA professional events. 

But the grids are not what we're thinking about when we arrive at Daytona.  Our goal for the weekend is fairly simple:  Just keep our shit together the best we can.  We still aren't sure what exactly to expect.  We're having to do things to the bikes that even Riderman is not entirely familiar with, and unfamiliarity when you're on a tight schedule is intimidating and scary.  It is very important that we get everything right if we want to keep the bikes rubber side down.

Our problems at Daytona begin with the first races on Friday.  While we thought we signed up early for the CCS races, we apparently had not, as Riderman was gridded back on the 14^th row.  Not only does this mean that Riderman has over 50 motorcycles in front of him from the get go, it puts him at the back of the second wave of riders on the start.  When there are more than 30 or so motorcycles in any given race, they stagger the start so that there are only 15 raving lunatics screaming into the first turn at the same time instead of 45 or 50.  This means that the second wave of riders has to start the race a full 10 seconds behind the first.

Immediately, I am not at ease.  I know Riderman and I know how he gets in these situations.  In a race with only 12 laps, he's got a limited amount of time to work his way through the slower riders and up towards the front of the pack into positions where he'll finish with a payout.  I know as I watch him wrenching the throttle on the grid that this is exactly what he's thinking as well.  He'll take chances and ride as hard as he can.

The race begins, the pack tears off and, for the next minute and a half, as the dust settles around us, I'm standing clutching my stopwatch, looking at bare race track.  We all stand and listen to the whine of the bikes as they zig zag through the course behind us.  During any given race, I'd say we probably get to witness about a minute's worth of actual racing and the rest of the time we're just trying to hear the announcer's call as he watches the pack move through the course.  We also have to keep an eye on the flags so that we know if there's been an accident.

First lap complete, I spot Riderman coming out of NASCAR 4 at over 180 miles an hour.  He explained to me earlier in the weekend that the force of gravity is so greatly magnified because of the high speed on that banked turn that trying to keep his chest off the gas tank strained his back muscles and caused all of the blood to rush out of his head.  Being dizzy at that speed is never a good idea, so he decided after his first time out to rest his chest on the tank rather than face the dizzyness.  When I spot him, he's tucked down low underneath the windscreen and he's following the draft of a chain of bikes through the tri-oval and then he is gone for another minute and a half.  He's moved from fifty-some-odd into 24^th or 25^th.  In the first lap alone, he's passed about 30 bikes.  Seriously... this guy is fast.  Eventually, Riderman would finish the race in 7^th place.

The following race was when it happened.  When it does happen, it's one of those feelings that you never quite get used to.  It's an uneasy rock that forms at the pit of your gut.  You'll be standing on pit wall and, every minute or so, the field zips by and ,for a few brief seconds, we get a glimpse of Riderman.  If he's battling for a position, it sometimes takes several glimpses to see that, yes... he's catching up!  Or sometimes it's "He's losing him and needs to speed up!"  Our senses of perception as to how a race is going are limited to two things: The brief glimpses we see of our rider and the times we're reading on the stopwatches we have in hand.  We're using both of them to the best of our ability.

Sometimes when it happens, it's right in front of you and it's like being sucker punched squarely in the stomach.  More frequently than not, it happens the way it did in that second race at Daytona and it's hard to tell which is worse.  You watch him turn laps for a while and then, poof, suddenly you see the guy he was chasing, but there's no Riderman behind him.  Something's happened... maybe he just went into a turn too fast and is lagging behind.  You linger at the wall for a little bit, hoping that he's going to come around that turn eventually.  Soon, it's a good 30 or 40 seconds past the time when he should have gone by and that's when it's pretty certain: He crashed.

We start to mill around and we can't hear anything coming from the announcer and the race hasn't been red flagged, so it must not be a bad crash, right?  While Riderdad continues milling about the pit, I run back to the race trailer to see if a crash truck has pulled up with Riderman and his bike.  I round the corner and relief briefly washes over me.  There's Riderman standing next to his crashed bike.  He is standing.  His limbs are intact.  He is awake and aware.  Immediately after that, it's: What did I do?  What did I forget?  The front end of the motorcycle is pretty much destroyed.  The steering damper is bent.  What didn't I squeeze?  The brake lever is bent into some kind of perverted J shape.  The bodywork is all but destroyed.  What didn't I tighten?  The wind screen is gone.  The exhaust can is dented and the entire machine is now filled with Florida sand. 

Also, Riderman thinks he may have broken his foot and possibly his hand... he can barely even stand up straight.  But, he's okay... he's alive and he's not being carted away in the flashy bus.  I rush to the pits to find Riderdad and let him know everything's okay.

Injuries sustained in a crash are sometimes slow to indicate how severe they actually are.  The adrenaline can sometimes mask serious bone breaks for 10 or 15 minutes, so it's no surprise when Riderman slowly begins to become more and more incapacitated.  Eventually, he is unable to walk.  He decides that he's injured badly enough to sit out all his races and practice sessions the next day and spend that time getting the bikes back into shape.

When Saturday rolls around, Riderman's feeling better, although he has a pronounced limp.  We scrounge around the pits for a new fairing stay (the aluminum piece up front that holds the instrument cluster and windscreen in place) and get the bike back together the best we can.  In the past, we've used Bic pens and electrical tape to keep the front end together, so Friday's damage proves just a minor inconvenience.  The parts that are too damaged on the 600 to repair or find replacements for are the brake lever and the upper piece of bodywork, so we decide that there is enough time between the races on Sunday to swap the functional parts from the 750 back and forth between both bikes. 

And so it was for the rest of the weekend.  I installed an exhaust system on the 750 and crossed every goddamn finger and toe I had when he went out on the track with it Miraculously, we qualified and got a 6^th and a 7^th place in the races on Sunday.  Heading home, we were definitely proud of ourselves.  We'd made it through the weekend and had made top 10 showings in all the races we were able to compete in.  Not too shabby... now it was time to focus on round two in Jennings, Florida at Jennings GP.