Laguna Seca

What a way to wrap up the track season. I went to Laguna Seca lately for a back to back two day track event with a couple friends. I'm not fast enough to race quite yet, but have started reading the AFM rulebook and understanding the entry requirements... I think at this point I would be able to qualify for Sunday races but realistically need to get past the back of the pack in lap times before getting out there and going for it. Next season is probably still too early with weekend obligations in LA for business school, but I'm starting to see it clearly where I'll be able to get the times needed to race.

Only In America

I'm feeling all time high levels of patriotism currently, despite the hiccup of California's denial of civil rights on Proposition 8. The reason, I believe - is a realization I've been coming to in the last couple months about one of the greatest aspects of Americans.

When I was in India a couple months ago, I was being instructed at one of India's premier business schools (ISB) by a UCLA Anderson professor, a leader in his field who originally developed real options pricing theory under uncertainty. He was born in Chile, has degrees from Chile, Canada and Spain, lives and teaches in Los Angeles, but visited India to teach this class. One day in class he mentioned something I've been thinking about since.

He suggested one reason for America's economic success is our culture of inclusion. Only in the United States could he become a department chair at one of the most well regarded public universities in the country. Anywhere else he could be teaching, his foreign birth and cultural background would prohibit him from reaching the highest levels of status in the department... not true in the U.S. At 67 years old his belief is advances in the department are awarded solely on merit - regardless of nationality.

An extension of this pliability of attitudes came to my attention recently watching the feature film, "Milk" and also watching a documentary on the dual assassination of San Francisco Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk. It's crazy to think that in the early 1970's the San Francisco police and the Castro neighborhood were in bloody and riotous dispute. The change in the public attitude in the last 30 years in San Francisco is an amazing difference.

This when other parts of the world are currently in contest for events and transgressions of hundreds of years ago. It's remarkable to me the ability of Americans to adapt and learn and embrace new ideas, new people, new cultures, new paradigms and generally change. We don't get everything right - all too often, but this aspect in particular of our country makes me very proud.

Buttonwillow - More Track Days

Another great weekend at the track, this time at Buttonwillow Raceway in between LA and San Francisco. Jason drove up from Orange County and we had a blast. Track days are like mixing 1 part camping with 2 parts Nascar hillbilly-ism with 1 part athleticism with 1 part club. The spirit at the track is one of achievement and exhilaration together with camaraderie. Everyone puts so much into their bikes and getting to the track and getting away from work and other obligations that there's also a great sense of both vacation and relaxation and also gratitude just for having the health and means and werewithall to get out and ride for a day. So much fun. Some guy I don't even know was following me for a while around the track with his video camera. If I get the video from him I'll post here later on.

No On Prop 8

I went in for a couple hours to make phone calls for the "No on Proposition 8" campaign. I don't have much background for what a political activism effort should look like, but as compared to other volunteering I've done I would say they were quite well organized. This is encouraging to me because I find the "yes" vote on California Proposition 8 a reasonably crazy civil liberties violation and I forget sometimes living in my *ahem* liberal city that much of even California is not like-minded. That this is even going to be a close decision at the polls on Tuesday is truely bewildering to me.

Sears Point aka Infineon Raceway

This track is so much fun. I think one of my favorite things in a track is elevation changes. There are some good sweeping turns on this track, not many high speed runs, and many slow technical turns. The track configuration we ran was non-standard (meaning they eliminated some of the turns that typically exist in professional AMA races) so benchmark lap times are irrelevant - but I was consistently at 1:55/lap. Which I think I could easily improve on next time I'm there by at least five seconds. Highlights of the day were trading corners with a friend Jeff, and getting a tow to learn the lines and corner entry from a local AFM guy Lance Williams who also rides Ducati - super nice guy. Still getting used to the transition from the R1 to the 848. Next stop: Buttonwillow this weekend where I'll have both bikes and meet Jason who's driving up from Orange County for the all weekend ride.

Tracking a Yamaha

Got out to the track on my R1 for the first time since throwing a rod at Laguna Seca last year. I've now been doing track days for 12 months, 10 track days in that time. 5 more in 2008 I have scheduled will put me well over my 2008 goal of getting in ten - I'll end up with 13. Each time I go I'm making lap time progress, I'm getting consistent with relaxed laps around 2:14 and had a few laps in the 2:09's - it's fun seeing the progress quantitatively. I think I can see so many easy mistakes I'm still making to correct that just cleaning up my riding will take a couple more seconds off. I don't have plans to visit Thunderhill again this year so we'll have to see how low we can go next year. If I can get into the 2:00 to 2:04 range I think it will be time to start racing AFM. Maybe in 2010 after business school is over?

Getting comfortable on the R1

Thunderhill turn 4

Following Brad on his RS250

Some Pictures From India

This one is from Singapore this guy put the "R" in Relax...

Back From India

Got into the United States on Thursday afternoon by way of Singapore and Tokyo, just in time to start my second year of MBA studies at UCLA Anderson on Friday morning. I’m looking forward to this quarter, the finance and operations classes are sure to be riveting. I’m sure that sounds like sarcasm but it’s not – it’s going to be a great quarter of class content.

The rest of the trip in Hyderabad was great – the finance class was enlightening. In particular given the 100mph pace of the US banking world in the last two weeks (the Fed buys Freddie/Fannie for $5T – the largest deal in the history of money, B of A buys Merrill, Lehman fails and Nomura eats most of it, AIG gets $85M from the Fed, WAMU fails… is that it?) … what a great time to be in a class studying derivatives, what credit default swaps are, different hedging strategies to mitigate interest rate risk or exchange rate risk, forwards, futures, swaps, and options.

On my way to Seattle for a wedding of a great friend and college roommate, thinking about India, here are the things that stand out in reflection as highlights of the trip:

- Trying to capture the experience of driving down the street in a tuk-tuk with my camera and realizing it’s futility… India is a place which needs viewed in 3D and with five senses.

- Getting a chance to eat a halal fast-breaking meal with a Muslim on Ramadan. I’m starting to think halal is a set of Muslim food preparation instructions not a particular dish, but basically it was a specialty lamb and cheese paste we ate that was imported delicacy from UAE.

- Visiting the largest mosque in South India where 15,000 people visit daily to pray during Ramadan

- Visiting a Hindu temple and drinking holy water before later that night talking about the Bhagavad Gita and generally Hinduism with a Hindu Indian classmate

- Seeing a camel being rode down the street as what appeared to be this guy’s daily driver

- Seeing a Bollywood movie filming in progress at Golconda Fort

- Under great protest, lip synching “Baby Got Back” while wearing a kurta payama at a Hindi karaoke session

- Dying laughing as the 67 year old professor had an epiphany and suddenly understood the Indian head nod (the Indian head nod is a cultural thing… Indians wobble their head in an ear-to-shoulder direction at certain times which usually means ‘maybe’ or ‘okay that sounds good’ or ‘yes I think so’)

- And possibly the best part… making three new friends from the UCLA FEMBA program

I haven't made it back to San Francisco yet, but when I do I'll pull some pictures off my camera and post.

Hyderabad, India - Day Two

Having a great time at ISB. Finally adjusting to the schedule and staying awake in class. Was very useful when one of my classmates pointed out there was a switch to turn on the hot water in the bathroom - I was on day three of cold showers and just thinking to myself, "dang, they got cars and the Internet but can't heat up water?" Took a trip to the Laad Bazar after class, it's an open air market that has been an active market for 400 years. There's literally probably 100 stores selling the Indian bracelets called bangles. There are over 14,000 shops in this market. I drank a glass of sugar cane juice the vendor was pulling out of raw cane stalks by sending them through a mechanical press, which cost 3 INR (about 7 cents). Saw the Charminar which is a historical edifice in Hyderabad which was constructed hundreds of years ago to lure the population of Hyderabad away from Golconda Fort and basically relocate the downtown urban area. Saw the Mecca Masjid the largest and oldest mosque in Southern India, where 10,000 - 20,000 people visit daily to pray (particularly during Ramadan which it is now). Ate true Southern India food at dinner, which cost ~$6. Having amazing laughs with classmates who are also visiting from UCLA - cool guys Chris, Rosco and Mike. The course material we've covered is about options pricing and derivatives and hedge strategies and risk metrics. A little technical but pretty interesting stuff.

Delhi and Agra

A crazy schedule. I met up with two other UCLA students from another program on Friday for a day trip to Delhi. We left from Hyderabad at 4:30am, flew two hours to Northern India to the capital Delhi, got in a hired car who drove us five hours South to Agra where the Taj Mahal lives. It was raining as it's monsoon season here now, and the Taj Mahal isn't open to walk through on Fridays... but it was still magnificent from across the river we got a very good look. The guy who built it for his favorite of his three wives (the "romantic" story about the building of the Taj Mahal is somehow slightly less romantic when you learn he built it for one of three wives), was imprisoned in this fort across the river when his son launched mutiny and overthrew his father the king. The fort has a great view of of the Taj and we viewed it from there. Some of the same marble inlay is used in the constrution of the fort and I have some beautiful pictures on my camera when I get home to unload them. THEN we drove back another five hours by car to the Delhi airport to fly back to Hyderabad for the start of school the next day. Well, the traffic in Delhi is unpredictable - between the cows wandering around in the road, the camels pulling loads of brick and wood and other building materials, the monkeys crossing the road, the people riding motorcycles three at a time and also cramming six people into little two person tuk-tuks... we ended up missing our flight back to Hyderabad. So we napped at the airport and flew back in the morning just in time for class. IndiGo is a local discount airline that looks and feels nearly exactly like JetBlue. In fact their websites looks similiar and their color schemes are the same and it's clearly an intentional mimicry. More to blog about later but off to class for now.

Hyderabad, India - Day One

Wow, sensory overload. I am not nearly as well traveled as I would like to be, but I've visited other developing countries in the past... yet this is like nothing I've ever experienced.

Hyderabad battles Bangalore for the tech capital of India. There's an area basically where I'm staying informally called "tech city" housing all the tech company offices. Informally they call Hyderabad - Cyberabad. And by informally I mean this is what the stamp in your passport says. The juxtaposition of large buildings from many large companies (CapGemeni, UBS, PwC, Polaris, nVidia, InfoSys, Microsoft, Tata, etc.) against the backdrop of extreme poverty is mind-boggling.

By extreme poverty I'm talking about people standing around with nowhere to go, tent-cities of hundreds of lean-to's made of sticks and tarps & rugs for rain shelter, cows and camels and dogs and chickens and goats walking around in the road... yes, cows walking around in the road. I know the Hindu's revere the cow but I saw some hungry people today and all I could think of when I saw those cows was, "What part does the T-Bone come from?"

The taxi's are mostly these rickshaw type things with either two stroke or diesel motors (picture), they fit up to four passenger somehow.. but only of those people are under 100lbs. All the ones I saw had over 50,000 km on them. The operators are also mechanics in many cases, the engine cover has two quick hand fasteners to access it - so you know they are getting in there often. As I set out for the day the taxi was supposed to cost 110 Indian Rupees (INR), but the time we got to the gate of schol the driver was negotiating up. Since he spoke no English and I speak neither Hindi or Urdu - he brokered a message through the security guard I was now paying 150 INR for the trip. 150 INR is about $3 USD so I figured c'est la vie. Then when the taxi I was in broke down while I was riding in it, two others stopped within about ten seconds ready to steal the passenger (me) away for the fare. I ended up hiring another taxi for the rest of the day since his rig seemed pretty reliable and I was pretty sure after a couple hours cajoling he was going to cave and let me drive for a little. It worked! Seven hours driving me around and also showing me how to drive his taxi cost a whole $10 USD. Traffic is crazy, the air is polluted, cars and taxis and people riding three-up on motorcycles, lanes don't exist and you're literally inches from the next vehicle (or pedestrian) at all times.
Invariably words fall woefully short of capturing this experience. You really need 3D and five senses to even capture the images. I put my camera away half way through the day there's really just no point. I saw a fort built in the early 1500's to house the Qutb Shah kingdom and the kings 360 wifes (and their eunich security guards), the tombs of Persian royalty from around 1700 (picture). A mosque built of white marble offers the best views of the city but allows no pictures. I saw a giant statue of Buddah sitting in the middle of a giant lake.

Taking a plane tomorrow to Northern India to Agra where the Taj Mahal sits.

Hyderabad, India - Day Zero

Just got into Hyderabad, India. IATA: HYD is a brand new state of the art airport. Glass and metal and modern construction. There was an egress security checkpoint to pass your bags through a scanner and walk through a metal detector. Funny, 50% of the people (me included) were setting off the metal detector, nobody took computers out of their bag, and they just waved us through. Maybe just because it's late at night and they didn't care? Funny anyway that's a lot of hullabaloo if you're simply going to ignore the detector results.

Indian School of Business (ISB) is ~40km from HYD. It was dark and 11:30PM here but there were TONS of people out in the streets and along the streets for the whole drive. Even it appeared street construction happening. Maybe you just work when the weather isn't hot or raining. It's monsoon season in Southeast India now. Motorcycles were all 10 year old 150cc bikes and scooters and outnumbered cars 2:1. ISB has a giant campus right across the street from Infosys headquarters campus and right next door to Microsoft's Asia headquarters. Off to sleep now...

Singapore

I had a layover in Singapore of sufficient time to take the light rail into the downtown and tall building area and walk around for a few hours. Things I must confess in my ignorance didn't know about Singapore before visiting here briefly today:

* Singapore is one of the worlds three remaining city-states in the sense it's a city entirely self-governed (along with Monaco and Vatican City)

* Singapore is the sixth wealthiest nation in GDP/capita

* When I think of English-speaking places I seldom thing of Singapore but really should... Today walking around I overheard Mandarin, English, Malay... and I guess there's an additional national language called Tamil that I don't know by hearing it - but probably heard English most

* White people are a certain minority, it's extremely diverse. As many Indians as Silicon Valley and as many Asians as Seattle (or more). Still a little European in vibe and lots of British English spoken by people of all skin color

* Singapore has only been an independent state in it's current form since 1965

* Though a democracy or close to it, speech is not free and remarks against the government are punishable. In 2005 three bloggers were convicted for racist blog posts

* Singapore is set to host a Formula 1 race for the first time in about a week from now and the whole city is a buzz for this. Seems every advertisement on posters and walls and all promotions in stores currently are based around this race. It will be the first night race added to the Formula 1 circuit. Grandstands are set up in the downtown area and barriers are already in place along sidewalks.

Headed To India

Been a crazy last week trying to get (a) ready for Anderson to start back up in a week, and (b) get ready for a quick trip to India to take a finance elective at India's ISB. Financial risk management: like how certain finance instruments like hedges and other asset classes can offset risk of holding certain kinds of capital or minimize currency transaction risk for international companies or studying how returns can be optimized with different portfolio composition to maintain risk but maximize returns. At least that's what I think it's going to be about. Let's see how much they can cram in my head in just a quick week. I'm actually most intersted in looking at how much if any of this applies or can be applied to IT risk management in the data security sense. I doubt directly the formulas, but I hope to see some cross over. Or at least eat some good Indian food. Yeah, I would settle for that. I do have a quick side trip before classes start to Delhi to see the Taj Mahal.

Tracking a Ducati

Amazing day at Thunderhill Raceway today in Willows, California. Went with my primary riding buddy Brad, two guys I met at a previous track day Don and Ben who helped me get my bike working again after an off two months ago, Matt who races AFM and sometimes AMA and is friend of Brad, and Steve who rides on Sundays with us. Quick and fun group to ride with. The highlight of the day was getting one-on-one coaching for two sessions from Matt who's the fastest guy I know personally. He is a tech-guy by day who's been racing for the last 10 years and when his company was acquired recently took a sabbatical to race. Some of his races are televised, he races on a national level - so very very fast. What a tremendous opportunity it was to have Matt follow me around the track and give me personal feedback on my five or six weakest areas of the track and how to improve. Prior to today my best timed laps at Thunderhill were 2:18, today I clocked a couple at 2:13, several at 2:14 and averaged 2:15 for a couple sessions at the end of the day. I'm graduating myself as of today to the fast group of riders which gives me a great sense of accomplishment - this was my 8th track day and I can see the improvement in all areas - but still have a big list of things to work on for my next few track days. Outstanding day at the track!

Naked Bike

Man this 848 is beautiful to look at even without the plastics. I found a guy making fiberglass track plastics, and another guy who paints them. So I tore off all the stock fenders and mounted the replacement unfinished fiberglass ones. This required some drilling but mostly not too big a deal. Then dismounted all the replacement plastics and drove them out to the painter's shop this afternoon. I hadn't taken the fuel tank off myself before - it's both comforting and unnerving to have the bike this apart. It's confidence bolstering to get to know your bike and how the parts are attached and how hoses are routed and electrical system wiring is harnessed - it's also a little unsettling to know I'm now responsible to attach things as they need to be for race readiness. Parts flying off at high speed is a scary endeavor. True mostly this is cosmetic, but the importance of proper fastening is the same. Anyway I'm turning this 848 black - hope to have pics up by end of week with the new black look. The frame will still be red but all the fairings will be professionally primed, painted, buffed and clear coated.

I hope the neighbors don't kill me for the mess I make in the garage! Man, I gotta get one of them house things with the dedicated garage I can turn into a bike workshop...

American River Rafting Trip

Great rafting trip last weekend on the American River. Two day event, drove out to Lotus California on Friday - camped out overnight and hit the river 8a Saturday morning. So hot at times it felt like we were drifting downriver into a hair dryer. Still though, the water was icy cold and shocking when it splashed into the raft or (electively... usually) we jumped into the river. At one point we did manage to tip the raft and dump all 7 members of our raft into the water - but I'm pretty sure that was entirely by design on the part of our rafting guide.

This is the second trip a group of friends has made out to raft the American River. We did the South and more aggressive Middle forks, perhaps next year we'll get a bigger group like 20 or 30 people out there - or possibly get a smaller group of more serious rafters out for a more intense run.

Sadly the California forest fires of late prohibited any bonfire at night, but we did have fun anyway around a camp lantern Saturday night. A couple friends played guitar and a couple brought iPod's and speakers to play.

Just near the town of Lotus where we camped there is a tiny tiny town (literally one gas station and like three stores) called "Cool" California. SO great the general store there sells trucker hats that have "Cool, California" emblazoned across the front. Definitely have to get one of those hats next time I'm in "Cool" (which ironically is often 90 or more degrees in the summertime).

Sweet Hog

I'm not sure yet is this is an investment project, a practical transportation agenda, or simply yet another chapter of exploration in my seemingly unquenchable thirst for toys... but I bought another scooter the other day. When I sold my Chineese scooter a few months ago I knew it would be a temporary step away from scooters and my next one would be an Italian scooter... I just wasn't planning on getting another so soon but this was too good a deal to pass on.

I went with a friend to check out a scooter she was considering buying, and the seller also had this Piaggio for sale. I tried to talk my friend into getting this one instead for another $300 but she wouldn't hear it. It's got a salvage title and needed some minor fixing. A little TLC, some new breaks, a few hours at the DMV (not to mimimize this - the DMV is quite an ordeal) and I think this thing is ready to tear up the streets of San Francisco for the next while. I'm going to try to keep both wheels on the ground and treat it well, but I do promise some pics of me in full riding gear trying to drag knee at the Monster Park parking lot.

MotoGP 2008

Great trip to MotoGP this year. I was highly over ticketed for this event. First I purchased my own ticket for Sunday only. Then I entered a photo into a Yamaha photo contest and LOST, however by error of Yamaha I ended up getting two 3day passes to the event. Then I joined a friend of a friend's AMA pit crew and by doing also recieved a team pass to the event. Too funny. Anyway it was very cool to standby and watch Brad's friend Matt race in the AMA 600 superbike on the track with Ben Spies at the same time. Basically being in his pit crew consisted of trying to be helpful changing tires and pulling off tire warmers. It's an AMA rule we had to have matching shirts trackside, so Brad got team uniforms made up which was pretty funny. Then we slept overnight in Matt's trailer literally on the paddock (staging area for bike prep and race crew pit area near the track) and watched the MotoGP race on Sunday with Rossi and Stoner in an epic battle for the Laguna Seca title. What a great race. Highlights of the weekend were talking with Matt all weekend about his race aspirations and better understanding the economics of the sponsorship and privateer race crew realities, and learning some things about working on bikes.

Another great things about the weekend was seeing the RedBull Rookies cup kids load their bikes up and get out on the track in matching bikes and leathers. These are all kids 12 to 16 years old who sign a racing contract for six years. They are all on the same bikes, and they all have the (lack of) believe barriers that a kid has - it's great racing to watch.

Also great to see and really to participate in the Nascar-esque *ahem* honkey trackside camp out and watch the races. This guy in this picture with the tent has a personal dome to watch the races from - he literally can't event talk to the person in the "tent" next to him unless they both unzip their windows. Terribly funny and terribly... um... country.

A Couple Pictures

Just some random pictures taken in Paris.

Fascinated with Two Wheel

The best thing about Paris so far is the public bikes they have everywhere. I'm going to have to check one of these out tomorrow to scoot around for a while. This city has a fascination with the two

wheels. Man do they love their bikes and scooters and bicycles.

There's parking everywhere for scooters. It's great I love it. Business people formally dressed and middle aged people on dates with their spouse and kids ripping around on scooters - everyone is on two wheels. I guess you just check out a bicycle with a credit card and return it anywhere when you're at the end of your ride. This guy is checking his blackberry at a traffic light, just bicycling around. It's really a great traffic limiting solution and of course unlike London which for some strange reason was very light on sportbikes there's no shortage of Ducatis or MV Agustas or Japanese sportbikes here. Vespas and Piaggio's rule the road, there's certain small roads that only permit two-wheel traffic even. If only I spoke French it could be a big incentive to move here!

The Foot Race Disgrace

I found my way into a brief foot race yesterday morning with some of my HEC MBA classmates. Being someone who has run several marathons in the past, I consider myself to be a runner. Unfortunately, it was a sad day for me, the UCLA MBA group I was representing, and all of America. In my defense it's entirely a different thing to run 6km than 40km, apparently I'm much better at holding a slow pace indefinately. I came in seventh in this race which was about bottom of the first quartile, or seventh overall. Which wouldn't be too bad, in fact two of the guys who beat me were French military. Now say what you want about the French and their history of military dominance, these guys were champions in every sense of the word. It was actually an honor to be defeated by them. And really of the other four who out raced me I am okay with that too - they were better prepared and really didn't beat me by that much overall. No, what's really unfortunate about the whole affair was the guy who finished directly in front of me and somehow I could not pass. He was wearing - and I'm not kidding - black dress socks, green shorts circa 1970, and a J&B Whisky shirt. And still beat me. It's emarrassing - a disgrace really. I bow my head in shame and vow to train periodically at short distance. Ha, ha.

Little Brother

It's been widely publicized about the plethora of cameras (tens of thousands of closed circuit cameras blanket London and feed to central government automated and manual monitoring) but I tell you this: it does feel definatively creepy to feel these cameras swiveling around atop their several story perch refocusing like a robot zooming in on motion watching you. In addition to the cameras which cover some 80% of public space in downtown London, there are signs posted everywhere alerting the public to the fact that monitoring is happening, and otherwise alerting the public to watch your neighbor and report suspiscious behaviour. Traffic downtown London is taxed, and the cameras capture all license plates to run through computers and ensure payment for road tax has been paid. I wonder what databases I live in now that I've run around London for two days taking pictures at every available opportunity... It's an interesting read on Wikipedia on closed circuit cameras and monitoring and the history of the UK Data Protection Act (http://snipurl.com/2wyk8).

London

I'm taking the next week to visit briefly London and Paris, taking a class in Paris at a French MBA school HEC and a few days in each city for tourism. Pretty excited, never been to either city before. Hopefully a few blog updates over the week to fill in some details of my adventuring.

Speed Club

So I'm going to the track as much as I can lately with my motorcycle. I met friends Jason and Red-Star at Buttonwillow the other day for fun day of riding, and tomorrow I'll be at Reno-Fernley Raceway outside Reno, NV. It's funny this sub-culture of guys who ride sport bikes, and more broadly people who have a speed addiction. Traveling up the 5 freeway I was passed by a caravan of four Lamborghini's. They all check out my bike as I drive by, and one of the guys paces me for a little to my side to get my attention. When I look over he gives me a thumbs up like a nod-of recognition just saying, "hey man... cool." This is the same comraderie felt when out on a canyon road on the weekend. It's like you're part of a secret club. Probably the best example I've felt of membership in this club was traveling on Hwy 33 outside Ojai, California outside Los Angeles last year. Every person you encounter on this road is driving a sport bike, or a Porsche, Lamborghini, Farrari or similiar. Everyone waves to each other. Even the cars wave to the bikes and vice-versa. Nothing crazy, just saying "hey man... cool." As you're pulling to the start of the ride you see guys coming off their trip through the canyon and they all point at you from 50 yards away nod. Doesn't matter what sport bike you're on, you get a nod of, "Hey man, I get it. Me too." You see sport bikers wave to each other all the time. Sometimes we even do it traveling opposite directions on the freeway. It's really funny when you think about it.

I Hella Love Oakland

I have a friend who teaches elementary school, no kidding this is an actual note she confiscated from one of her students. Who is 10. I probably shouldn't post this but it's really too good not to share. Super-duper!

This

Thunderhill and the 848

Loaded up the bikes and drove three hours to Thunderhill this week. What a great day to be at the track. Great drive out there, great time at the track. We drove out the night before and met up with a group we ride with on the weekends. These guys are all pretty fast riders which is great to learn from. Amazing weather and was the first time at the track since December for both Brad and me. My R1 is still in the shop getting a new engine from the thown rod incident at Laguna Seca in December - so had the 848 out for it's debut at the track. It was really great to get acclimated to the bike - handling and breaking distances and how to lean on it. All and all couldn't have wished for a better day. More like this and I'm going to be trying to do this every few weeks! I'm nowhere near as fast as I can be - not even worth timing laps at this point. But I think a few more times at the track in April and I can really make progress on

my lines and form and passing and knowing when to shift and man what great fun this sport is.