Sunday, October 17, 2004
ALMS 2004 - Day 3
The Weather Channel and the local paper both predicted continuing rain throughout the day. I decided to not join Cary, Chad and John for the Sunday races, to try to beat (most of) the rain. They left for the track round 9:30am.
I woke up with a bad headache, and kept waiting for the Neurontin to take hold, but it never did. While I waited, I hung out with the remaining Bowsers, which was fun. At 11:15am I knew I needed an Imitrex, so I packed up and headed south on the 101 looking for food to wash it down with. The best I found was a Taco Bell in Soledad, whose music was on too loud to make for pleasant reading. My earplugs kept the din down to a reasonable level. I'd had only sporadic rain since leaving Salinas.
I cut east on the 46, and found lots of opportunities to make use of my high power-to-weight ratio. After some hilly sections, the road straightens out, and I found a few spots of perfectly straight, perfectly level, perfectly dry roadway with no cross-streets or driveways and no traffic for as far as the eye could see, either forward or back. I hit 200kph on the road for only the second time in my life (I hit 130mph in the 'Vette somewhere in Northern Arizona in July, 2003).
I stopped at a Starbucks on I-5 in the middle of freaking nowhere for a decaf Americano and a muffin. As I was suiting up to leave, the man at the next table struck up a conversation - he was out for a ride on his BMW RT. We chatted for a few minutes, and exchanged names and e-mails. My headache was still lurking, which made me less sociable than I would have liked, but I'm going to get in touch with him in the next few days. He has a lot of long-distance experience that I can tap into to.
The high-speed run home continued until the construction between the 126 and Magic Mountain. What a pain. I got a few drizzles coming through La Canada, but beat the bulk of the rain. I pulled into the garage, with a sore buttocks and tight legs, around 5:45pm.
Posted by bnc at October 17, 2004 2:46 PM