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This Is Not A Race

We stood in suits of armor, shivering in the early morning half light, waiting for our chance to make our mark on history. One hundred riders from all over the Northwest had come to stake our claim to bragging rights, earned at well over a hundred miles an hour on this untested circuit here on the high plains. 

I imagined the future landscape of this place, complete with grandstands and observation towers, bright red and white curbing and a legendary name. None of that is here now; only a 2.3-mile ribbon of tarmac meandering through Jim Bird’s wheat field, or what is now called Oregon Raceway Park (ORP). Motorcycle people just call it Grass Valley, after the little town near by.

“This is not a race,” announced Cascade Track Time honcho Tyson Silva. Then came several equally true and legally necessary statements like, “We’re all just here to have a good time and be safe…nobody is keeping score…at no time should anyone be going around the track clockwise…if you run off the track, you’re probably going to yard sale your bike…so take it easy…this is not a race.”

Jessa Irzyk / Portland Sportsman

Riders meetings at track days are always like this: an explanation of the rules and track conditions with an emphasis on safety, courtesy and moderation followed by a sort of “Gentlemen Start Your Engines!”-type of moment as dozens of high performance motorcycles roar to life and line up in a loose grid to be waved onto the front straight of a world-class road race course in groups of three. 

I spent a lot of time around Grass Valley over the past year or so, since my girlfriend lives down the road in the little town of Moro, and I’ve watched the transformation from rumor to racetrack. When the first motorcycle track day was scheduled I ponied up the $219 to reserve a slot and encouraged all my bros in the Flying Fifteen Motorcycle Club (FFMC) to do the same. 

Benny, Cole, Pal and Dick brought their Suzuki SV650 racers, track-ready and race-legal for several classes, especially middleweight super sport according to Oregon Motorcycle Road Racing Association (OMRRA) rules.  Gordon, Derrick and I had taped over the lights on our street bikes for the day—a Yamaha R6, R1 and my stylishly raggedy Aprilia RSV, respectively. Limo and Andersen brought lawn chairs.

First laps are to be approached with some trepidation. Tires are cold and heartless, especially on this April morning with the temperature still just above freezing and a track full of riders with no real idea where they were going through a series of blind uphills followed by downhill, off-camber sweepers, merciless hairpins and a chicane banked almost to vertical in the back stretch. Gordon started with me in beginner/intermediate group, or Group Two, but I quickly lost sight of him—he literally doesn’t know the meaning of the word trepidation. Some other guy blew by me about half way around on a new-looking GSXR, but I didn’t let it get to me.  Let him push his luck if he wants too, I figured. This is not a race. 

Lap two was a different story. With my tires theoretically a little warmer I looked all the way through the ridiculously off-camber turn three and rolled on the throttle. Through sheer luck I hit upon a decent line, carried my speed and gunned it up the hill, only to awkwardly double down shift and run wide trying to back into the hairpin. 

I rode around some little bikes in the back sweeper, 160 racers and GS500 type deals, not much glory in that. I spotted my first unsuspecting victim in the chicane. The Ducati Paul Smart Sport Classic ran a fairly aggressive line through the corkscrew known as “the half pipe,” resisting the temptation to run high on the steeply banked walls like a skateboard. He was using his traction to pinball up the middle, yet, with my fierce Rotax motor and over caffeinated psyche, I seemed to be reeling him in.  

I remembered not to downshift for the left-hand sweeper after the chicane and rolled on third gear up the meandering ridge.  I grabbed fourth at the first blind hill, telling myself, “Slight left, slight left, only slight… shit!” My slight left had come a bit sooner then I remembered and I ran wide.  Inches from the dirt, I muscled the Aprilia back from the brink of destruction, dragging my toe a little.

I hadn’t lost much ground on the Smart and I stayed on the gas through the downhill to catch up. As we climbed back up, I noticed disconcerting seams in the pavement: two parallel stripes running the full length of the track and dividing it into thirds. Paving seams can be slick or bumpy enough to sever a bike’s traction under power or hard breaking, but usually they aren’t as bad as they look.  Hoping for the best, and keen to over take a new Ducati, I dove across them in the next hill crest right-hander and felt both wheels shimmy as their credit-card-sized contact patches flickered. 

I told myself that if I didn’t look at the seams, they wouldn’t affect me, hoping it was true. So far it was working. On the back straight I was on to Smart like a trailer. I could almost hear a hyperactive Irish commentator franticly speculating as to where I would make my move, MotoGP-style. I played Valentino Rossi for the last few corners, holding in the slipstream of  the retro factory cafe racer and watching his line for the slightest weakness.

Jessa Irzyk / Portland Sportsman

I made up my mind to take him at the beginning of the front straight.  I would brake extra late in the last corner, keep my head level, poke my chin (inches from the race track now with the extreme lean angle) toward the apex and give her hell. Just don’t crash. Or rather, carefully accelerate and make a safe and courteous pass. This is not a race.

The plan more or less worked.  I did break a bit late, heeled her over pretty respectably, and then carefully phased in enough throttle to come around old Smarty. The entrance to the straight is another blind rise. I grabbed fourth as I neared the horizon and got into a tuck, cresting the hill in an honest-to-God fourth gear power wheelie. I had to roll off the throttle to get the tiller down and Smart pulled along side. Neck and neck, we roared down the home stretch and grabbed sixth gear until the wind drowned out the engine noise and my mighty Aprilia pulled away.  This is not a Fugazi T-shirt, I’m fucking winning! 

At least until turn one, where I over-braked, cut way inside and decided to watch the Ducati for a while.

My lap times picked up throughout the day as I reconnoitered the track, although nobody ever did actually time anybody, cause who cares?  Right? 

I never asked to move up to group one, like a lot of people did, because whether it’s a race or whatever it is, it’s more fun to pass people then the other way around. I was just glad I didn’t crash, like I did two years ago at Portland International Raceway. Granted, that was my first track day ever and I’d only had the Aprilia a week, but it was discouraging, a bit painful and expensive to repair the bike.

Aprilias crash pretty well with the slender V-twin tucked in well clear of the road on either side, but Brembo levers and Aprilia plastics are dear. Mine are long gone following an embarrassing high-side in front of the Slammer Tavern, and it was too early in the riding season to break something major like my tank, or my collar bone. Not everyone was so lucky.

The red flag went up in the third session of Group One.  Crash.  Debris hazard.  Everybody into the pit.  Dick pulled in with the news that it was our guys.  Cole and Pal where both off the track and down, Cole on his feet, Pal not so much.  Paramedics fired up the ambulance and we waited in the pit kicking rocks.

“Goddammit,” Bennie said, “They were probably racing.  Cole’s all fucking showing off gonna pass Pal and crashed him.  I told you guys, this is not a race.”

As it turned out there was no ambulance required.  Both guys returned sore and dusty, their bikes in tatters.  Surprisingly to everyone, it wasn’t Cole’s fault.  He had followed Pal through a fast line in the back stretch that didn’t work out for either one of them.  It might have been the seams.

The wind always kicks up in the afternoon at Grass Valley and freshly bladed dirt blew across the track after lunch.  It was a joke at first, a Dust Bowl 500. I thought of the old time Flying Fifteen, tearing up sand tracks on Triumphs in the 1930s.  Then it got to be a problem.  On my second run after lunch the half pipe was filled with an opaque brown tornado. I squinted through it, slowing down to emerge in more or less the right place by memory.  If the rider in front of me had gone down in that cloud, it would have been ugly.

Cole cobbled his bike back together and took one more session. He came back even more filthy, flipped up his visor and said, “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life!”  We decided to pack it in and head back to the ranch for beer and burgers.

Grass Valley will become a legendary place.  Isle of Man, Laguna Secca, Thunder Hill, Grass Valley.  Riders will describe exciting street terrain in terms of Grass Valley, but it will always be an exaggeration.  Soon the seams will be smoothed out, the infield planted to grass, the curbing installed, bleachers built and PA system set up. But me and the boys rode it first, before any of that came along, and I would do it again.

This summer Cascade Track Time will be offering $139 track days at ORP with one half-hour session in every two hours. Two before lunch and two after which, unless you’re in really good physical shape, is probably all you’ll need.

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