Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Dry Lake

We got up at the asscrack of dawn Saturday to go to MotoGP.
Last year, we got there and spent an hour waiting to get in. I swore I would not return. Laguna Seca cannot get their shit together.
I lied, and I did return.
This time, the line moved OK getting in, but once in the gate, we rode around the entire goddam place trying to find where we were supposed to park. I know, some places you go, they do fancy things like post big signs, but not here! They wanted us to have a tour of the place first. We drove every direction, and yes, I stopped several times to get directions from the various traffic directors. They directed me a lot of places. The last place was to the parking area. Good job, dumbasses!

Fine, so we're parked and on our way finally. We got a bunch of beer (Porter, even, not some pissy frat boy shite) and felt a little better. Oh, yeah, it's HOT. It's going to be even hotter, we know this. I've camped in 110+ weather before, and this doesn't surprise me. We have our camelbak, and a ton of sunscreen, and are staying out of the sun anyway.

But it becomes clear as the day goes by that it is not hot, like, complaining hot. It is, in fact, dangerous hot. I don't like crowds anyway, and being surrounded by idiots kind of freaks me out. In the tent where we stop to sit for a while, there are about a million people eating lunch. We look around to see a lot of people who don't even know their bodies are crashing. I see kids who are completely flushed, and their parents clueless. Heat is actually very hard on your body, folks! I know, we are from California, and not particularly aware of this. But it's kind of sad and scary. We watch a lot of ambulance activity taking place around us. Water? Costs FOUR DOLLARS a bottle! We sat in the lobby area of the bathroom near the paddock entrances/food area, where I had just soaked my shirt again in the sink, and we sat loading up on salt in the form of some noodles, and even sucking down soy sauce packets. Refilled the camelbak and gave our bodies some rest. After a guy came in and then actually dropped in front of us, we were like, "fuck this place, this is getting bad," and left.
It must have been around 3:30 when we got up to our bikes, stepped into our sun-warmed snowsuits, and got on the road again. The most racing I saw was on the way out of the place, I caught a glimpse of some folks riding around the track. Hey, guess what, I'm riding too! I guess that's at least as good as watching some guy I don't even know ride.

On the freeway, I got incredibly sleepy, and pulled off. Paul was the same, and we literally parked at a shopping mall and napped in the grass there. Heat exhaustion is no joke.

After a mall dinner, we rode home, which was more misery. It never got cool. Windchill was more like riding into a hot hairdryer. Even San Francisco was hot, and my apartment didn't cool off until, oh, about 3am.

I hate hot weather.
I hate Laguna Seca.
I hate $4 water.
Motorcycles are still cool.

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