Deals Gap 2002
This was the year that we had planned a big festival at the Gap and boy was that a mistake.
I gotten together (see Deals Gap 2001) with a local Deals Gap vendor to make a video for them to sell and although the video was completed and a lot had been sold, the vendor decided that they would just make copies and by pass my ass finally culminating in a bunch of lawyers making threats and, well you know where that all goes. In the end greed triumphed and this had a major affect on my interest in even showing up for the festival.
Topping things off I was working with a now well known trackday vendor who was a part of our festival ownership team. Being around both groups was not working for Karoline and I as they had teamed up with the other vendor making our lives miseable.
It truely sucked and what madematter even worse was that when we originally decided to put the festival on (a year prior) I was 100% against having it so late in the year. Mainly because I had made a lot of trips to the area, I knew the weather pretty well down there and I had been therein the cold and rain. I felt that late July or early August at the latest would be a reasonable time to hold the event. They all voted for the late August date and with it came the cold and rain. This put a huge damper on the event and only a handful of riders showed up for our so called BIG festival of sportbikes at the Dragon. Those who showed up were greeted by pouring rains and cold weather that hung in the air over the entire weekend.
It was a shame because this could have started a kick ass yearly sportbike event that could have been a lot of fun for sportbike riders to attend and more so because the Dragon was freshly repaved and was really looking good! Oh well, greed and ignorance once again prevailed.
At any rate a group of us ended up driving down after our trackday at VIR (Virginia International Raceway) with Don Proctor with his family in tow. Karoline and I ended getting our own cabin since the agreed upon rooms at Fontana Village never happened for us and we had our own GAP Fest at the cabin in the driving rain with a few of the usual suspects. i.e. Don Proctor Don Don Nangle, Chris Roberts and a few of his friends. Bob Ditners friend Rick Blade and his wife joined us.
Don and I worked the three days at VIR and we were pretty burnt out from all of the driving. The reality was that after some 2000 plus miles and whatever amount on the track we were beat. To top things off Dons Kawasaki ZX7 had a serious head related problem at VIR and we decided that since the rain was not going to go away, we hauled bike up onto the porch for what was a memorable head gasket change. Something the Doc was very skeptical that Rick and I could do.
This sounded like a challenge to Rick and I. And so we dove into the project around noon. One of the major issues on his bike was that he had replaced the ZX7 motor with a ZX9 motor and the motor just fits into the frame (with the addition of some hand made mounting brackets and a modified oil pump cover, that had been a problem in the past). It is a tight fit and requires some screwing around to deal with it.. As per usual Monte was seen wandering around with his dogs and bothering us from time to time to see if I would be coming to the festival. He never offered to give us a hand which was par for the course. Either way he had no idea of how to do any of the work so he became more of a pest than anything else.
Around 9:00 PM in the darkness, Doctor Don finally leaves us to spend the evening with his family (all the while sweating bullets that Rick and I don't ...oop's and leave something like a wrench in his crankcase).
The rains finally let up during the night and so the girls along with Mr Nangle sat by the campfire and supervised the entire project.
Mean while the Gap festival was well not going so well as the damp rain kept many away. Rick and I continued working late into the night using a single lamp. We successfly got the beast, and I do mean beast back together.
We left the panels and what not for the morning and crawled into bed for a bit of shut eye.
The following day Don Nangle and I made an attempt at riding the Gap however the new pavement combined with the rain made it as slick as an ice rink on our used up race DOT tires and so we threw in the towel and loaded everything up to begin the eight hour drive back home.
Naturally the sun came out just as we leaving and entering the Dragon. So as Karoline and I with Don in tow are rolling through the still damp Dragon, a group of riders comes blazing around a corner and one of them slams into the guardrail bouncing back onto the road and almost....... like inches misses sliding under my truck and dying a slow painful death.
His life is spared as I come to a stop and look down at his sorry ass, bike parts littered around. I think to myself...... yep, this place can be good and it can be bad, no run off, guardrails, trees, cliffs, boulders, trucks, animals, cops, and people in cars, right in your way if or when you crash.
So I guess the moral of this trip was that, HEY, if you going to get screwed, might as well be a good screwing.
It was fun while it lasted. I have not been back since.
