Whizbang's Spinning Wheels: February 2004

Racing Through Boredom

Racing Through Boredom

For some of us wintertime is like purgatory.  We’re all just wandering around our houses and apartments like lost souls, staring out our windows and doors at our garages where our gas gurgling girlfriends dream of oil changes and garden hose showers.  At one point I just had to brave the below freezing air, open the garage door and just look at them.  I sat on both of them, making sure my feet didn’t get tangled in the Battery Tender cables which snake haphazardly across the cold concrete floor.  I rolled both of them forward a few inches so their tires wouldn’t have a frozen flat spot come spring.  Ah…spring.  In Minnesota, real quality riding doesn’t begin until late April when the temperatures start to go up and the sand is swept off the roads.  But it’s the middle of winter up here.  “Sometimes it snows in April,” said Prince.  At this point, even April feels like a century away and that just sucks.  I sighed as I looked at my bikes, wondering if they’re going to start when I want them to.  I could have started one of them a few days ago when it was in the high 30’s, but the alley is coated with ice and getting a motorcycle safely onto the clear streets is treacherous at best.  Not to mention the fact that I frequently wake up to temperatures like 1°.  Ain’t no heated clothing gonna keep your bones warm when it’s 1°.  Nope.  No way.

So there they sit.  Bored.  I’m bored, too.  I used to love winter.  I’d go cross-country skiing and sledding and running through the snow with glee.  Seriously.  Glee.  Since I now spend the other three seasons riding motorcycles instead of bicycling like I used to, my endurance is down.  Cross-country skiing sounds like something frontiersman did to find food for his family in the frozen northern wilderness.  So now winter is just time that cannot be spent riding.  Instead, I pine.  But there are things to do while pining…

…like surfing the Internet for anything remotely motorcycle-related on which I could spend imaginary money!  It’s pretend shopping!  Yee-haw!

Come on, it’s super fun and you know it because I bet you do it, too.  You even go through the online checkout procedure and then bail out at the last second.  Well I do that sometimes.  Technically I’ve got everything I need to enjoy our sport.  I’ve got a cruiser and a sportbike, shop manuals and luggage for both, books about motorcycle riding skills, and four seasons worth of gear to make sure I’m safe and relatively comfortable from approximately 106°F down to a shivering-but-happy-cuz-I’m-riding 23°F or so (when I can get out of my frickin’ driveway).  What else could a Beginnerbiker possibly need?

…that’s what.

What is MotoGP?  I wasn’t really sure until recently, but the “GP” is “grand prix.”  Four-stroke, 500cc, big ol’ motorcycle racing.  I’ve never been a fan of racing as a sport.  You sit and watch various things like cars, bikes, horses, or dogs go round and round.  Big deal.  Unless you put a lot of money on something and win then who cares?  Then, back in 2000, I got a 3-lap ride from a pro racer in a stock car on the Daytona Speedway where we averaged 177mph and…nah, that’s a whooooooole ‘nother story.  MotoGP is big huge international motorcycle racing and you can see it all here:

Motograndprix.com

I mean for the love of Pete look at what they ride:

That’s 23-year-old Italian champion rider Valentino “The Doctor” Rossi’s 2002 Honda RC211V.  It’s faster than a fast thing with hot peppers in its shorts.  It’s not even like a motorcycle.  It’s just a huge, 3-in-front/2-in-back V5 engine with handles.  This kid Rossi has been a world champion racer in the 125, 250, and relatively new MotoGP categories who just recently decided he’d rather race for Yamaha so he could play on their YZR-M1.

Here he is testing out the new bike for the first time this January.  Not exactly shabby either.  Must be nice.  Rossi’s official fan club website is in Italian, but you can see all kinds of stuff about him and pretend to buy $1,990 autographed helmets in English here:

Valentinorossinet.com

Find out about his championship winning bike’s development in 2002 here:

Honda Racing

Want to know more about MotoGP?  Look forward to the spring release of the of the Ewan McGregor-narrated documentary on DVD, Faster, here:

Faster

I don’t know about you, but I find it all pretty dang exciting. Or scary. Or both. Like high fashion, the racing machines used by these insane-or-brilliant-you-decide sportsmen inspire what we regular humans end up buying at the consumer level. Like you wouldn’t have the 2004 Honda CBR600RR…

…if it weren’t for the RC211V. New info for this Beginnerbiker. I knew sportbikes were loosely based on race bikes, but once you get to know bikes like the RC211V, the set up and lines of bikes like the CBR600RR make more sense to your eye.

Not exactly Beginnerbikes we’re talking about here, but we won’t be Beginnerbikers forever, now will we?

Now how did we get on MotoGP?  Oh yeah.  First I picked up a copy of Britain’s best selling bike magazine mischievously titled “BIKE,” for which I can’t seem to find a website.  Props to the Beginnerbiker who can.  This magazine outdoes any motorcycle rag we have here in the States.  Don’t even get me started.  This mag is smart, informative, has enormous pages, and is loaded with pictures, reviews, and all kinds of specs and other excellent data most of which they print long before Cycle World or Motorcyclist.  Not to mention you get to see a ton of bikes that we don’t get here in the States like my YZF600R’s sport touring English big sister, the YZF1000R.

Yup, drooling.  They call her the Thunderace.  (Can you tell this article is a brilliant excuse to post cool motorcycle pictures?  You know you want ‘em).  Anyway, I’m going through the magazine and see an advert, as the Brits call them, for this website:

Grandprixlegends.com

Go to “DIECAST” and you can buy super detailed replicas of just about ALL the MotoGP stars’ bikes!  In fact, if you take a closer look at the picture of the RC211V above…you’ll note that it’s actually a 1:12 scale model!  Or maybe you won’t because it’s super detailed?  Nevertheless, I suddenly wanted one.  So I pretend shopped all over the ‘Net and found that there are several companies that make MotoGP racing bike replicas, but Minichamps seems to make best-looking ones for the price, so you might as well buy it from the Grand Prix Legends people where you can get an autographed one for $160.  You can even get a miniature green Ducati 996 just like the one Trinity rode through insane traffic while being pursued by those creepy twins AND suit-wearing agents in The Matrix Reloaded film.  Now that’s just cool.

But maybe little miniatures that you ride around your living room floor with your fingers don’t do it for you.  In that case, if you’ve got a relatively fast Internet connection and a computer built in this century you can ride these killer racing machines on your PC.

That’s a computer-generated Valentino Rossi on the right with his teammate Tohru Ukawa on their twin RC211V’s.  This picture is taken straight from an in-game screen.  Check out THQ’s “MotoGP 2,” the sequel to a Playstation 2 favorite which they decided to expand to the PC.  Lucky for those of us who love to be IBM compatible!

MotoGP 2 at THQ.com

Best of all, you can download and play the 87MB demo for free, which I’ve been playing all day.  You only have access to a few riders and only one track in the demo, but it’s got simulated speeds of 200+mph, you can change your viewing angle at any time, you can watch yourself on instant replays of your entire race, AND you can pop wheelies which is something that Beginnerbikers don’t do because motorcycling is scary enough with two-wheels on the ground.  You can download the demo all over the ‘Net, but this site seemed to move data the fastest:

MotoGP 2 Demo at Hot4Download.com

You can also read a review of the game at my favorite PC game site:

MotoGP 2 at Gamespot.com

Nevermind the 7.7 out of 10 rating.  They’re comparing it to previous Playstation 2 incarnations and the Xbox versions.  Trust me: if you’ve never played a motorcycle racing PC game, which I had not, this thing is going to blow you away.  A joystick or analog controller is the best, but you can play with keyboard only, too.

So all this thinking and surfing about MotoGP racing got me thinking: how do you learn to race motorcycles?  What happens between graduating your MSF class and holding up a trophy in some foreign country surrounded by really attractive people really small swimsuits?  Keith Code happens.

The California Superbike School

If you’re smart – and I’m pretty sure you are A) because you’re a Beginnerbiker, and B) because you’re still reading my article which has the word “boredom” in the title (maybe that means you’re bored, too) – you’ve read Code’s A Twist of the Wrist or better yet A Twist of the Wrist II.  Both books are aimed at teaching you how to race and win, but the second book is better at applying the art and science of race cornering to everyday street riding.  My copy is getting soaked in highlighter ink.  Mr. Code isn’t just a book-writing former racer, he’s an instructor at his own superbike school and they’re comin’ to your town!  Well, maybe close to your town.  Check the map.  Been riding for a while?  Ready to turn it up and take advantage of a local track day sometime soon?  Keith will teach you why and how they drag their knees.  I always thought they were just being cool for sport mag photos.  Turns out it helps you turn when you’re cornering at 80mph.  They’ve even got a bike with training wheels so you can lean her waaaaaaaay over and not bite it.

Too bad they don’t make those for your average Beginnerbiker the day after MSF graduation, eh?  I’ll bet they would save some paint, broken taillights, and bent shifters!  I’m thinking about giving them a call and finding out what it’s all about.  I wonder if they take imaginary dollars…

That’s it for February.  Stayed tuned for another month of subzero temperatures!  And for those of you who can…

…RIDE SAFE!