April 29, 2021
How old are you in 6th grade, 11? I remember this like it’s still happening – my first date. Christina Hagicostas was coming over. She was the prettiest girl in class. Brilliant smile, bright eyes, feet barely touched ground when she walked. I cleaned my room – project style. Started days before. Organized my drawers, the closet, cleaned under the bed, hell I even vacuumed the rest of the house. …
October 28, 2020
I’m really stoked about this last race of 2020. We had an electronics glitch in this F1 race, which hurt the start. The bike went into street mode, instead of race mode, so braking was limited and the motor shut down a few times on the start. But all those issues made for a more interesting race, coming from behind. I hope you enjoy watching this as much as I…
August 13, 2020
Today defined racing for me Yesterday our exhaust system failed. With no tig welders in the area to fix it, I thought we were doomed. Again. But we patched it with sheet metal and hose clamps instead. Only problem is exhaust headers get red hot. We all feared the mild sheet metal that we used would fail today. Stainless steel would have been better against that heat but stainless steel…
August 12, 2020
Enough! First of all the Coronavirus is my fault. This season is the first in 30 years that I was actually ready for. My body, my mind, my bike. All were ready by January, instead of Saturday morning in March, 2hrs before Round 1. Then the virus hit, and 2020 Round 1 was cancelled. Round 2 was cancelled. Round 3 was… you know the drill, we’re all still living it.…
March 10, 2020
Adrift in the bay one warm summer day, on a boat, reluctantly tied-up to an old man and the sea, I asked a spiritual question; “What do you feel, in your soul, when you drag the teeth of your rake through the dying life of the bottom?” Words flowed so easily from my doubtful image of this old man that I was instantly showered with guilt. “We are all connected,“…
February 17, 2020
One of Tracy’s least favorite things about me, in competition, is also her most favorite thing about me outside of competition. Generosity. Often when I discover a secret that gives me an edge, I offer it to those who oppose me. Why help a competitor I am trying to beat? Because the better they are, the better I need to become. The more intense our fight. The more meaningful our…
February 15, 2020
Just hours after my father died, with my face warm-red, soaked in tears, and my mind lost in a space where suddenly nothing that used to matter did anymore, Jim Allen called me. Jim was the boss at Dunlop racing. Although at that point we had never met, a month prior I had written him describing my plans for the upcoming season. I don’t…
August 12, 2019
My knuckles cry all day now, especially reaching into my pockets. My right leg stays bent when I walk, it can’t straighten or kneel. My foot turned black last night, I’m swollen all over, my lower back took a shot, and somehow a hundred hammers beat my knees in my sleep. Other than that I’m fine. Except my head. I’m all twisted inside now about how to avoid this happening…
March 12, 2019
A week before 2019 AFM round-1, I got a call from a friend who I first met at a racetrack, crouched in my pit. He’d come out of no place that day, offering to help. I was shy about accepting. I knew who he’d helped before, and I feared I could never live up to him. …No. I knew I could never live up to him. Could you live up…
March 12, 2018
Photo by: Eric Gulbransen I interviewed the soul of a weather-torn showman at Vanson Leathers last year. His name was Rhett Rotten, he wore a cap everywhere he went, and his eyes looked back at me in a way that suggested there was more to his story than his words might tell. He struggled as he sat there on the edge of his Wall of Death, to explain what…
February 23, 2018
A candid look into the life of racing motorcycles, from the perspective of racers, crew chiefs, wives, wrenches, managers and photographers.
October 31, 2015
Today I searched my 2015 race folders for pics. Typically these folders are filled with laughter, Tracy half dressed, a few wrecked bikes and lots of pics at speed. This year’s folders are filled with pics of asses. Everyone’s asses. Nearly every pic I took last year shows somebody bent over working on our Superduke. That was the theme of 2015 it seems – if you entered our pit you went to work.…
September 12, 2015
The first time I met the Devil in myself, a dangerously attractive woman introduced us. She was tall, lean, she had dirty blonde hair with curls that bounced like a slinky when she walked, and her legs – they never ended. She wore white-rimmed glasses, she drove a convertible without ever it’s top, and rumor has it she never went to bed without makeup “just in case firemen came in…
May 5, 2015
If I believe life is defined more by its journey than its destination, and I do, I must also believe it never stops moving. It never stops changing. This is scary in some ways; perhaps it means we never own a thing in life – like hope or success. But it is also welcome in other ways; maybe nothing ever owns us either – like fear or failure. Last…
February 26, 2015
I was fast in school. Not the fastest, but close enough to steal valuable points when our team was in a heated battle. I was a pole-vaulter first, a sprinter second. We competed against schools all over Long Island. Back then there was bad blood between the north and south shores. More than once I got jumped, beat up, or challenged based on absolutely nothing I understood at the…
January 28, 2015
The oldest number I can remember writing is 1974. I was nine years old, one of four brothers whose parents were not in love. Rarely if ever did we see them touch but to this point neither of us recognized the threat in that. As far as we knew, this is how parents were. That changed one day as I watched my mother pause over a dishtowel hanging from the…
October 13, 2014
I went into this year with a goal, to beat myself. In the past I have done good things but I don’t feel I have achieved my actual best, at anything. I have raced my hardest, but always through compromise. I have tried my best, but always just with what’s before me. Where I fail is aligning things before me. When I close my eyes, when I search those places…
September 3, 2014
A Yamaha bit my ACL in half ten years ago. I got it fixed but it’s never been right, so I went to the doc to arrange an MRI. The nurse told me to step up on the scale. I asked her why, it’s an MRI. “Standard proceedure.” Instantly my desperate quest to avoid all things measuring since we quit racing last August, was about to rudely end. I stepped…
August 12, 2014
People freak out when I write “we” instead of “I”. Sounds weird I guess, I understand, but in reality it’s not weird at all. It’s accurate. “I” out-brake other racers, but “we” win. “I” crash, but “we” fail. I think of myself as the most fortunate, most blessed racer in the paddock for no reason other than the fact that there is a “we” that includes me. If there wasn’t…
May 30, 2014
Looking back – tracing the events, the decisions, the moments in life all tied in a line to end us where we are today, is fascinating. Almost never is it one decision that does it, it’s a chain of them. You’re probably not homeless today because you showed up late for work a week ago, once. Right? And you’re not the CEO of your own company today because you won…
April 6, 2014
Chapter – 1 “The Dark Side”I was born a fortunate kid. I excelled at almost everything. I could jump higher, run faster, and endlessly imagine. There was this one thing though that stopped me dead in my tracks. I couldn’t learn. My mind didn’t work like the other kids around me. If it were today people would understand my dyslexia, but this was half a century ago in a public…
March 20, 2014
Used to be I couldn’t walk through a restaurant without blood rushing to my face in horrified despair. People were watching, people were judging. I didn’t go to parties, proms, or football games. I couldn’t, I had locked myself in my own prison. Surely I got this from my Dad, he was just the same but he never made it out. Luckily I escaped but you never escape entirely, I…
