Batter Up

Sat., July 7, 2007

Before the humidity of the day kicked in high gear I decided to head to the Dug Out, a local batting cage facility. It was around 11:30 a.m. The baseball fields were full with teams playing games, but the cages were all pretty open. I went to the slow softball cage on the end, my favorite one. I hit four tokens (56 balls) out of the park, OK maybe not out of the park. It felt really exhilarating. I’m sure I’ll have sore arms tomorrow but I don’t care ... it was a fun way to spend a summer morning.

Track Day

Wed., July 5, 2007

My friend Tim (in the pic above) invited me to Motorcycle Excitement Track Day at Summit Point in West Virginia. I had never been, so I decided to go as an observer. I “caged” (drove my car) to the motorsport park, arriving around noon. The parking lot was full with various tents and trailers. As soon as I stepped out of my car, Mother Nature tried to throw a wrench into the day with some fierce rain, but shortly after she had a change of heart and cleared up.

The guys had been there since 7 a.m. for check in. The fee for the day (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) was $175 per person. Each rider was required to wear full body armor, gloves, a helmet and boots. Some people arrived with track specific bikes and some brought their street bikes but modified them for track use. All the participating bikes had to be numbered. Riders got to choose their own number. If there was a duplicate, they’d ask one person to add an "X" to their number; i.e. one 6 would become 6X.

Tim introduced me to his riding buddies and then took me to a building that displayed the layout of the track they had been riding on -- Summit Point Main, which is 2 miles and has 10 turns. There were approximately 100 riders that day. The riders were broken into four classifications groups ... amateur racer, expert racer, intermediate street rider and advanced street rider. Each group had 15 minutes of track time and rotated throughout the day. It took each rider about 1-minute to complete a lap.

I had a blast! I can't wait to be at the level where I can participate.