Tuesday, May 24, 2011

AMA Superbike at Infineon Raceway

Couple of weeks ago we teamed up with our dealer RKA at the AMA Superbike race up at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma.  Sonoma is beautiful around this time of the year, if it's not raining, and Infienon Raceway is a great place to watch a race as it provides numerous awesome viewing points.

Since RKA wanted our K1200S as one of their demo bikes, I happily rode the K1200S up on Thursday afternoon.

My plan was to break up the ride into two; ride till dark on Thursday, find a place to stay, and finish up the ride on Friday via US99 as it offered more lodging options along the way than Interstate 5.

I made it up to Madera without seeing a single cop while averaging 77mph moving speed, and that's including splitting traffic getting out of LA and gas breaks!

The next morning I finished up the ride before noon, and got to work and had a great time at the raceway the next couple of days.

After the last race ended on Sunday, it was time to hit the road again.  I left the raceway fairly late in the afternoon.  It had been raining on and off throughout the day and I figured I'll just ride as far as I can until either I get tired, it gets dark, or the when the weather turns for the worse.

I came across at least 4 CHPs in the first hour of the ride, before I got to the 5.  The traffic on the 5 was relatively heavy and I was zipping by other vehicles on the road cautiously as I had expected CHPs out in force based on what I saw before I even got to the 5.

The ride was cold but at least dry.  Just as I had passed an exit to a small town called Patterson, I came across an uphill with a right bend on the road.  I was doing about 90+ comfortably on the BMW and passing vehicles left and right.  All of a sudden, the TPX Detector went off on a short burst of Ka band.  I backed off on the throttle immediately and dropped my speed down to just over 70.  The Ka went away quickly, but since I was heading uphill with a bend coming up, I thought I'd stay at that speed until I get past the bend.  As I got past the bend, sure enough, there was a CHP on the side of the road, running his radar on instant-on monitoring the traffic.  I know that had I not picked up that instant-on Ka band, I would've been toast because I was for sure the fastest vehicle on the road at that time.  Count that as a definite save on the TPX Detector.

Shortly after the close encounter, it started to get dark and I literally caught up to the storm.  Luckily, I only got to ride in the rain and darkness for about 10 minutes as i came across a hotel and called it a night.

I finished up the ride the next day without any close encounters, although did see numerous CHPs on the other side of the road.

All in all, it was a good weekend.  Got the SBK race at Miller Motorsports Park this weekend at Tooele, UT, and I'm riding there... can't wait!

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