Mudshark's Page

All I know for sure is that everything was pretty much fine and dandy in my own personal motorcycle world, that is until a fateful day one summer a couple of years ago. The chain of events started much the same as many others, with a phone call from my brother Tom.

See prior to that phone call, I was minding my own business, content owner of a 1980 H-D Superglide. This was my only bike, it ran O.K., and pretty much filled my biking needs. I was happy, or at least that’s what I thought. See the purpose of Tom’s phone call was to let me know that a race school was hosting a track day near our house, and that we should attend. See Tom is the sportbike type. Well I explained to him that my riding style, i.e. Harley choppers, didn’t really cross over well into the race world. I also explained that with two kids, and a mortgage I probably couldn’t, or at least shouldn’t try to afford this. Looking over the itinerary, and price sheet confirmed my beliefs. The problem is that Tom had it in his head that all of this racing stuff is a good thing, but he needed a sidekick, a patsy, if you will. That’s where I came in, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer. See he rebuked all my attempts to get out of going with him. He even put up the cash. I was in deep shit! This was toward the end of the summer of 1996. We took the penguin school, at the last track day of the year, at the Bridgehampton Race Circuit. Well that was the beginning of the end of my cozy little motorcycle world.

Totally intense is the only way to describe riding a race-prepped bike at speed on a closed course. No cops, curbs, poles, old ladies in Buicks making a left in front of you from the right lane. It’s as close to nirvana as most speed freaks will ever get. Needless to say, Tom’s evil plan worked, I was hooked.

This was only the beginning of my problems. In order to race you need certain things: full-face snell 95 approved helmet, full leathers, boots, gloves, and a bike. All of which I didn’t have. So much for a savings account.

Since then I have gone through several bikes including: an ’89 EX500, a ’92 F2, and a ’94 F2. I raced the ’92 F2 in the few races that we were able to make in ’97. By the end of the ’97 season, we resolved to make every effort to make every possible race in ’98. We also ended up with two FZR600’s as the platform for our ’98 effort. Not exactly cutting edge, but the price was definitely right. To make a long story short we made a decent showing and had a pretty good season. We felt as though we took the FZR’s as far as we could without dumping a bundle of money into them on engine work. We decided to sell them as a package to a guy from New Hampshire that we met at Loudon, on the last race weekend of ’98. So now we have no bikes, (at least race bikes,) and more ambition than ever.

This brings me to my biggest dilemma yet. As I write this, all of my Harley Davidson stuff is for sale. I have an ’89 Yamaha XT600 motor, and if all goes well with the sale of my H-D stuff, a spondon frame will be ordered for the XT engine. The other, more likely choice, is a MZ Skorpion race replica, that a local shop has. This is a tasty little scooter. WP inverted forks, WP shock, and twin brembo four piston calipers squeezing 11 inch floating rotors. (Ala Ducati 916) And a Yamaha 660cc five-valve liquid cooled dirt bike engine. This particular one has a Mikuni 42mm flat slide and a factory dual race exhaust. Very tasty indeed! Only time will tell.*

Mudshark

This page was last updated on:

05/03/2006