Loganville, GA The race season is now taking place during the hottest time of the year. As I have mentioned before, I must be out of my mind actually wearing full race leathers in this heat.

The track temp was around 140 degrees. It was 95 degrees in the sun. Nothing like losing 12 lbs of water weight.

The best part was the fact that our RV generator died in Bristol, TN and I have not been able to get it repaired yet. I'll have that done by this weekends race. Because of this we had no AC in the RV.

As for the race...

I ran two time trials, in the first one the bike took off for about 5 feet and then decided it wanted to take a look at the weather conditions by standing up on its rear wheel. This was not the type of wheelie that you stay on the throttle with. Not unless of course you wanted to be laying on your back. This run result in a 9.945 pass at 144mph.

The next run was much better time wise except for the fact the bike did not want to change from 3rd to 4th gear. So I ran a 9.57 at 135 mph.

With those numbers I decided to dial in at a 9.57.

My first run against my friend and mentor, Don Chavous, was dicey at best. He cut a .182 light and I cut a .187. Neither of these lights warranted a letter home to Mom about. At the 1,000 foot mark Don passed me then let off the throttle thinking that he might be on a breakout run. He let off too much and I took the stripe by .0064 of a second. The bad thing was my bike did not shift between 3rd and 4th again.

The next run I had Howard Bowman on his wifes trusty Harley Sportster. He got a 6 second start on me due to the fact he dials in at 14.84. 6 seconds seems like an eternity watching him go down the track. Finally I take off. Right at the end of the track I catch him, my shift light comes on to go from 3rd to 4th so I push the button, nothing happens, I push it again, nothing happens. Crap! he wins by .06 seconds.

This Friday I am going to the track to figure out what is wrong with the shifting. It may just be I do not have enough delay in the MPS box.

I'll keep you posted.

Loganville, GA The AMA Dragbike series continued in Bristol, TN at the the NHRA Thunder Valley track. This was the 4th race in the 8 race season. While there, we were also going to complete the Atlanta race which was rained out in April.

I arrived at the track on Thursday afternoon after visiting with Ron Smith at Northeast Technical college. The track was having a 10 dollar test and tune so I figured I would get a few passes in that. Unfortunately, I was not able to gather much data as the track was not prepped well and I could not get any traction.

Since I have installed the polyurethane cush drive bushings I have been losing traction when changing to 2nd gear and in some instances right from the line. This only happens on tracks that are not prepped for racing.

Friday we were to get our time passes for the Saturday race and we were also going to complete the Atlanta race. This time the track was prepped under the supervision of AMA's Tony Williams. I no longer had traction issues.

What I did have is altitude issues.

This is the first time I have raced at an altitude of 3,500 feet. This makes a significant difference in ET's. I was 2/10's off on my runs. The nice thing is that it did not matter as I just changed my dial in accordingly. I ended up finishing in the semi-finals of the Atlanta race in Street ET and in the 1/4 finals of the Pro ET division.

On Saturday night I ran the first PRO ET of the Bristol race. On a 9.8 dial-in I ran a 9.799. So I was down for the count on that race.

Sunday I ran Street ET first thing in the morning and got knocked out of it for sleeping at the tree. The next race was Street Fighter which I knew was going to be an issue as it is a 9.50 heads up class and I was running no where near 9.50. At least until my first race where I ran a 9.481 and lost due to a breakout.

Next in the series is Indianapolis, IN. This track has been good luck for me in the past. Hopefully the luck will continue...