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Recently I've been asked by many friends and family about how my first race went. They all want to know what place I took and what the racing experience was like. All of them look at me with a sparkle in their eye conveying that they truly are interested. …….SIGH…. Well…..I’ll treat this as though it were a story because this is something that could only happen to me and would typically be something that would be made up for the entertainment of others. The day started out like any other, a wet dog nose to the back of the neck followed by the covers being dragged off and my pillow yanked away from my head. I had no choice but to wake up and get ready for work or else I would face the wrath of the dogs. Traffic was horrendous as always and work was the same thing it always was, boring. Today however I received a package from ups, a package that instantly made the day exciting, my race-body kit for my motorcycle. I had been waiting three weeks to receive it and it had finally arrived, I could barely contain myself. I picked up the large oversized box and carried it away to my desk like a hermit crab with a new treasure for his cave. It wasn’t until I managed to get the package to my desk that I noticed two large holes in the box, the excitement was replaced with fear. I grabbed a box cutter from my desk and carefully cut away at the tape, so as not to damage the precious contents within. The packing material was carefully pulled out piece by piece so as not to disturb the fiberglass parts. I finally had all the parts out of the box and had inspected each one carefully, UPS had managed to chip a few of the pieces and there were several scratches located on the bodywork. Upon closer observation I noticed that my front wheel fairing was warped, but I couldn’t determine whether it was a manufacturing defect or the result of a 600lb gorilla throwing my package around while wearing a UPS uniform. I also noticed that most of the bodywork was not predrilled like I had ordered it so as to save time when prepping my bike. I hate 2007. When I arrived home I reluctantly pulled all the parts out of the box once again and laid them out in the garage, I decided I would deal with putting the body work on last. Instead I had a much more daunting task ahead of me, I needed to drill through some hardened steel bolts so that I could safety wire them to the bike. I had managed to luck out and procure myself a drill-press from my manager to simplify the ordeal. But there is one thing I didn’t take into account, the fact that 2007 sucks. I hadn’t even managed to get through one bolt before the machine decided it had been captured by an unknown force and deemed it best to commit seppuku so as not to shame the name of Makita tools. I opened the unit up to inspect the guts only to find that one of the pulleys inside had managed to sheer itself off of the mount. So much for my manager’s drill-press making the job easier for me. I didn’t have long to complain about this though, the dogs wouldn’t allow that. Meat was barking non stop at something and refused to listen to my shouting at him to shut up. I pulled myself away from the dead drill press to investigate the new issue at hand. Meat had his head through the neighbor’s fence and was continuing with his incessant barking. I looked around the yard and it quickly became apparent to me as to why he was barking, Sable had broken out and Meat was to fat to follow her out. Immediately I started shouting for Sable to come back, but I knew she wouldn’t because in her minds eye she had just managed to break out of a Nazi prison camp and was on the run. I looked over the fence and yelled her name several times until I finally noticed that the neighbor’s front gate was open and she had managed to go out onto the busy street. I ran out the front door and began screaming her name, worried that she had already been hit. I scoured the busy road praying that I didn’t see her body slumped on the side of the street. I ran to the backyard yelling her name some more and this time I decided to bring Meat with me, hoping that she would run towards us if she saw Meat. I made sure to shake her leash plenty in the hopes that she might hear the leash and figure that we were going to go out for a walk, but my real intentions were going to be a swift hand to the rear end. Meat and I ran back to the house in hopes that she managed to find her way back, but she wasn’t there so we ran through the house to go out front once more. As I rounded the corner she was walking up to the front door. Relief was the first emotion that hit me but it was quickly engulfed by anger and she saw it in my eyes. I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and dragged her into the backyard where she was shown the broken fence and yelled at repeatedly. I didn’t even hit her yet she acted as though I kicked her in the stomach and was on the ground whimpering. All I could think about as I was putting up a new fence board was how much I hated 2007. With the drill-press down I couldn’t do much besides safety wire some other components on my bike and drain all the fluids out. By the time 2am rolled around I was finally done with all the safety wiring of my bike that I could do without drilling and all the fluids had been drained. I decided it was best to call it a night and went inside for something to eat and decided to read my AFM rule book in the process. I finished the book and looked up at the clock only to find that it was now 4:45am on Friday and I had yet to take a shower or sleep. My Dad had already told me that he was going to wake me before he left for work so that I could get back to working on my bike. By the time I got out of the shower it was already 5am, if I was lucky I would fall asleep within 30 min and get a quick power nap before I got back to work. It felt like I had just closed my eyes when my dad came into the room and told me to wake up. I rolled out of bed and fell on the ground so I could force myself to get up, this wasn’t a well thought out plan. The dogs saw the opportunity that had just presented itself and jumped right on top of me gnawing at my arms and legs and licking my face whenever I made the mistake of leaving it exposed. I managed to escape from the slobber bath by throwing a tennis ball into the living room, giving myself enough time to stand up and shut the door before they made it back into my room. I walked over to my bed and flipped the mattress up against the wall to take away any temptation of returning to my dreams. I had a lot of work ahead of me and I wanted to be done by 10pm so I could get a good recharge for Saturday. Today’s goal was to put all the bodywork on my bike and find a replacement drill press. Within the first ten minutes of installing my bodywork I discovered that fiberglass is about as flexible as 300lb, forty year old Star Wars nerd suffering from arthritis. I had to start looking for ways to make my bike smaller just to get parts to fit, this resulted in removing components that were no longer needed and even taking a hacksaw to other components that were too large yet had functionality so they could not be removed. I also had to drill several holes which were never drilled from the factory like I had ordered. I had to fight to get the parts to fit and tweaked the bodywork as much as possible so as to get the holes to line up, I spent hours on end pounding away at the fiberglass trying to message it into place. Around 6pm there was a knock at the garage door, Eddy had managed to get his hands on a drill-press but we had to go to his house to use it. At last I managed to catch a break, or so I thought. The only thing I managed to break was twenty different drill bits as we tried to go through the hardened steel bolts. We managed to somewhat succeed around 10pm although the job looked as if a 5th grader wielding a Playskool tool set while suffering from an epileptic fit drilled the bolts. I still had a lot of work to do on the bike so I decided I would keep working on it until I had to leave for the Track. 2am came at me faster than a kid who skipped his Ritalin intake for the day and had just managed to eat a one pound bag of sugar. I wasn’t even done with putting the plastics on the bike either, I still had to drill a few holes and find out what else needed to be removed from the bike. I had no time though, so I threw some oil and coolant into my bike and tested it before I felt comfortable with putting on the trailer. The year 2007 had other plans though. I started to turn the bike when I suddenly felt resistance and then a thud, I tried to straighten out the handle bars so I could inspect the problem but I ran into even greater resistance this time. I carefully inspected the handle bars to notice that the fiberglass was preventing my bike from steering left or right I didn’t have time to debate on what to do, a pair of metal shears would do the job. I managed to get the bike up on the trailer and myself on the road by 3:30am Saturday morning. My body however decided that after 70 miles on the road it had had enough and was time to shut down, I couldn’t fight it anymore so instead I decided to turn around and go home before I ended up in a ditch. I didn’t mind missing Saturday that much because that day was a practice session only so it wasn’t necessary that I attend. After getting a solid six hours of sleep I felt refreshed and decided to hop right back into working on the bike, only to find that I couldn’t fit my lowers onto the bike due to some California emissions equipment that was blocking it. So I spent the next four hours re-routing houses, cutting lines, and ripping parts off of my bike. I was determined to get all the bodywork on my bike this time before putting it on the trailer and I managed to meet this goal by midnight, I could only hope that the two hours of sleep would be enough to recharge me for the drive to the track. This time I was able to drag my Dad out of bed so that he could drive me home in the unfortunate event that I decided to kiss the pavement while on the track. The three hour drive went by without any issues and we arrived at the track just in time for spec inspection for all bikes. We walked around a bit to take a look at some vendors and other bikes that I’d be racing against before pulling the bike off of the trailer. However when I was about to pull my bike off of the trailer I suddenly had a cold chill run up my spine and my intestine lurched forward crying out in pain scratching at my stomach wall trying to escape from the dark confines within. I scrambled through the truck trying to find it, I checked my pockets, I even looked on the bike but to no avail. I left my motorcycle key at home. I hate 2007.
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