Mini Moto Practice at IMI Motorsports Park on a 1998 Kawasaki KX60 & New Stickers!

I’ve been struggling with the question of how do I make motorcycles fun again after they become not very much fun anymore? Why? How on Earth do motorcycles become NOT FUN?!

Believe me, I never thought I’d see the day.

But I’ve been doing motorcycles every day for going on something like 15 years, and that’s a long time to have motorcycles on the brain and have them stay fun.

I had a good run! And I’m not about to let a little ennui stop me from enjoying my chosen passion. Not happening! The trick is to find NEW THINGS to do with motorcycles, to boldly go where I have yet to go before! So here I am, headed for IMI motorsports park last week to ride my new-to-me ’98 KX60 done up like a mini-moto racing bike:

I didn’t build this bike! Let’s get that out of the way first. It’s a minimum-viable minimoto bike that I doubt will keep up with anything in its class, hello KX65s with way more power, but it runs great, and it’s sprung for an adult, and it has the right size wheels and tires on it. I think anyway. The rear tire makes the wheel it sits on look pretty skinny!

If it sits, it FITS! So I’m not going to fight with myself about it. It’ll work! What was it like to ride such a tiny bike after getting used to riding big bikes on bigger race tracks? It was a hoot! I mean of course it was a hoot! I had concerns before showing up to ride the thing in leathers though.

I wasn’t sure how well I’d be able to shift the thing in leathers and size 11.5 boots, so I tested it by bombing around my neighborhood in the boots. I figured if I could shift it in the boots, adding leathers wouldn’t be a huge problem. I was right! The bike worked fine with me in full gear. I used an old set of leathers and an old helmet because I wasn’t about to ruin my normal racing gear on a mini-bike crash.

Luckily I didn’t crash the bike at all. I came close though! Because of course I did! I almost high sided it a few times getting the rear real loose coming out of corners. I almost forgot how awesome it is to downshift a 2-stroke on a race track. You just bang the gears, and the thing spins underneath you; no slipper clutch BS required.

There’s a huge variety of machines that show up to IMI Motorsports Complex, which is cool as heck and always makes it worth the visit. To my left was a guy with an old ITB (international touring, b-class, SCCA, NASA etc) car, to the right was a guy with a later-model Vette to drift on the asphalt track. A father and son pulled up on a bitchin’ UTV to check the action out.

You’ll see everything from the smallest dirt-bikes to fully built drift cars and everything in between at IMI, making it one of the raddest motorsports destinations in Colorado IMO.

My paddock setup for the day mirrored what I do at HPR and PMP with my big bikes. I’m really enjoying not running a generator or tire warmers at track days these days. That and street tires are cheaper and last longer. God, I must be getting old! It’s only a matter of time before I’m showing up to race on Q5s, running mid-pack, and not even caring as long as I’m having fun. Girls just want to have fun, right?!

I did 4x call it 3.5x 15-20 minute sessions before the rear inner tube gave itself up to my efforts sliding the rear around like a barrel racer at the rodeo. Come to find out, I probably should have taken this bike apart and checked everything out before riding it at a race track. The tube in the rear was a 2.5-2.75 x 12″ tube, which is pretty small for a 120/80-12 rear tire and probably why it only lasted as long as it did.

Anyway, it let me know it was gone by almost sending me to the moon coming out of the last corner onto the front straight. I let out a little fist pump after saving it, didn’t realize my rear was flat or going flat, and went full-send into the next corner where the bike did the same thing only worse. I was full opposite lock with the bars when the bike straightened out, and it was then I realized the rear was flat. I pushed the bike the opposite direction in the grass and got the OK from the marshal to exit through the entrance, and all was well. I’d had plenty of fun, so I packed everything up and drove home. It was a super fun day, and motorcycles are fun for me again! Yay!! W0000t!!!

New Stickers!!!

I designed these “F@CKIN’ RACING” stickers years ago but didn’t print them because I didn’t realize how immature I really was at the time. Fast forward a few years, and I’m still just a big 12-year-old, so here’s some stickers with F-bombs on them for the kid in all of us.

No they’re not for sale. You can’t buy them! I give them away to customers and friends and stick them all over all of my crap haha.

Now for a little send-up of the asinine “MAGA” meme that’s been going for like a decade. Let’s MAKE RACING FUN AGAIN instead! I mean, that’s something that’s totally in our power to do instead of fantasizing about bringing back some boomer’s hallucination of what the 1950s were like before those rotten hippies ruined everything!

Ahem this isn’t a site or business about politics, but it seeps out sometimes. I think all of it’s stupid, which is why I concentrate my thoughts, efforts, and even prayers on motorcycles and motorcycling, which is also stupid BUT AT LEAST IT’S FUN MOST OF THE TIME.

Thanks so much for reading. Thanks so much for watching! Until next time!