Boys at Play!

John Koh		Ducati 916 (stealth_mode)
Jon Pieratt		Kawasaki ZX-7
Collin Fagan		Suzuki GSXR-750
Doug Cramer		Yamaha FZR-600
Sharon Silverman		Awsome Photographer!

Recently, John Koh discovered a wonderful little "track" for us to play on. Coined as "Old Dominion International Speedway" by John, this "track", found at an undisclosed location around a business complex in Northern Virginia, has a total length of x.x miles (I forgot to measure it again...rats), and 11 turns. Here is my best artistic sketch of what its layout looks like. I'm a very left brained engineer, so it's not nearly as accurate as it could be, but you can get the general idea:

If you really must know where it's at, e-mail me and I might give you the location. If I don't know you already, I might take you there myself; otherwise, please don't ask. If too many people start playing around out there, it will attract unwanted attention from the local constables.

Wheelie Ops

Of course, any time that you have a group of overgrown boys out playing on their sportbikes, you will end up with a series of gratuitous wheelie shots. Doug and I attempted some double wheelies, but my gixer (being the heavy piglet it is) is a little more difficult to throttle than Doug's beefed up FZR. Every time we tried to get them together, mine would strain and only come up a foot or so. I think our gearing is just different enough that his pulls up at a little lower speed/rpm than mine. Of course, I suppose if I would have just feathered the clutch a bit and built up the r's it wouldn't have been a problem. Oh well, next time!

Hmmm. Doesn't this look like one of those really cool retro Kawasaki commercials they used to show a few years back?? Jon looks niftier than the Bugle Boy jeans salesman :)

Since the pics my wife took didn't turn out all that well, and I still haven't found a way to make my scanner work with this crappy Pentium board, the only pics I have are the ones that Sharon sent me. Strangely enough, Jon managed to get captured the most! Maybe she's a little biased towards her hubby, or was it that the rest of us were just going to fast for the film? The truth is out there. (Just kiddin' Jon)

Here we see Jon, apparently hard on the brakes.

Flamer Disclaimer:

Before the flamers out there scold us for our general abuse of public roads, consider this: On scene we had 1 licensed and practicing doctor, 1 EMT (both with goody bags), and at least two other CPR/First Aid certified people. The road is a generous five lanes wide and we were restricting ourselves to one side so there was runout room. And finally, two roadracers informed me that the surface condition of this semi-closed circuit is far better than that of many of the regional racetracks.