Things happen in the past that always come back to haunt you at some point, some good and some bad. Roebling Road Raceway in Savannah, Georgia is one of those. My first time at the track in 1990 was on a brand new Yamaha FZR400 with a freshly earned expert license. Eager to get the bike dialed in for the season and also learn a new track, I got into it a little hard in the second practice session and highsided at a high rate of speed resulting in a broken ankle and a destroyed motorcycle.
Seven years later I returned on an ex Freddie Spencer VF750 and did the opposite, didn't crash and won the race. Thirteen years had passed since my last race there, but both my adventures there ran through my mind over and over on the solo four hour drive there from Atlanta on the Friday night after a long hard day at the Fuller Workshop.
I still had a few things on the bike to sort out, the worst being a front end chatter that just seemed to be getting worse with every race. My host for the Friday night was the father of a chap I work, with whom lives just miles from the track.
“You can stay in the pool house” he said, wait that means there is a pool there too??? I arrived around 10:00 PM with a 6-pack of good cheer in hand, however I was trumped by the three cases of corona they already had chilled. Well, it was a neighborly gesture anyhow. As much as staying up all night drinking beer poolside and trading war stories sounded good, tomorrow was a long day so I headed to bed after just a few “night caps.”
Damn, 6.00 am arrived too soon but as promised, the track was just a five-minute drive away. Pulling into the track I saw familiar faces and found a spot to pit. My team mate had to pass on this race, so I traveled light and didn't even bring a canopy or cooler, not such a great plan as the temperature started rising to 90 degrees before lunch.
First practice was terrible, trying to relearn the track while my front end chatter was even worse than the last race!!
After the first round I started checking around the bike, the rear shocks seemed to be a lot stiffer than I remember, in fact by bike felt like a hard tail chopper (and rode like one too). After a few minutes I decided that the bike needed to be torn apart on the spot before it killed me. As I loosened the rear shocks it became all too obvious that the problem was in my swingarm pivot. It had started to seize up causing almost no movement of rear suspension.
I let out huge sigh of relief, that was probably heard halfway across the pits. Next practice was great and I rode well enough to keep up with local fast guy, Doug Bowie on his Ducati Pantah. Bore-tech had also done some machining on the cylinder and head in record time for me, and the extra horsepower was apparent already. Things were starting to feel good.
First race was V-2, a class based around 500c bikes but the CB350s still seem held their own. A triumph 500 showed me a wheel coming into the wide open turn one, but then I lost sight of him, turns out he had an ignition failure. Mike Matthews was also on a CB350, and we battled the whole race, swapping lead several times. In the end, I was the victor but only by a few bike lengths.
The V-1 race followed and was pretty much a duplicate of the last with another win. That gave me a safe lead points in both classes, although it's still early in the season. Next weekend is Talladega, Alabama followed by Road Atlanta two weeks later.
The bike was getting a well needed set of Avon tires this week and with a little more help from Race-Tech suspension it should be handling like a dream.
On the subject of dreams, my other demon is an unhealthy obsession (so my wife says) with Molly Ringwald, but that's another story!
–Dean Middleton
WERA/ AHRMA 418
Atlanta GA
