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Virgin Killers Part One. 7/8/2004

The very first time I hit a racetrack was well nigh 20 years ago. It was located in the high desert, and was fairly small and tight track. An excellent motorcycle track. I was still a wet behind the ears bike rider, having just got my first genuine 100 plus horsepower motorcycle. It had 4 cylinders, was oil cooled, dual overhead cams and a 19 inch front wheel. Those of you who ride newer sports bikes will probably be sniggering now, but back then, this was considered state of the art.

I was invited to take part in a local club race, at the behest of several senior riders. I turned up earlier in the week for race school and to obtain my race license from the sanctioning body. I attended the classes, which comprised of classroom and track sessions. The classroom sessions seemed a little superficial to me, basically covering things like flags, right of way, corner markers and so on. Nothing I didn’t already know, except that the statement “Oh, and by the way, we can’t afford to have an ambulance stationed on track so it will take about a half hour before you can get medical attention.” made me sit up straight. We were taken out on the track and shown our wobbly way around it for several laps, before the instructor buggered off down the straight and into the distance. I proceeded to try and chase and was catching up up with him when the braking markers suddenly loomed large in my visor. Trying to slow down 500lbs of motorcycle together with 150 lbs of rider was not easy. The front tucked under and I kept trying to save, and finally negotiated my way around the corner. By this time the instructor was long gone, and the rest of the pack had caught up with me. So this terrified bunch of newbies sort of stuck together like sheep and made their way round the track for the obligatory 5 laps within a pre set lap time.

We rolled into the pits, wide eyed and sweaty, and the racing school crew were there to congratulate us, as were some of my friends. We each got a little laminated card which said we were now ‘C’ class riders. I was having a few celebratory brews with my friends, when one of the them said to me, “well, we’ll see how you actually perform on race day.” I asked him what he meant by that remark, and he said, “Oh, in this race school, no one fails to get a license.”

Great. This now meant I still didn’t know if I was race material or not. We went back to the city for more beers and partying, and finally crashed out in a friend’s living room, one of us with a stripper’s panties on his head, much to the disgust of the friend’s wife.

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