2025-03-31 - Laguna Day Trip
Rain, track, hail, rainbow
My annual pass with Carters at the Track includes their Weathertech-Laguna days. Carters has 92 dB days so that limits my bike options a bit. I had intended to ride the Daytona with a gargantuan silencer and a Jay Murray insert but the forecast called for rain so I had resolved to not go (it’s kind of a hassle between the drive and prep for a single low-dB day). My friend Max pinged me from the track Monday morning that it was drying out and suggested I ride my BMW GS down and ride it (stock exhaust) and I decided to do just that. Max can be a bad influence.
The ride down was usual Bay Area traffic but with some scattered rain and wind but I made my way there without incident and arrived around noon. I removed the 3 cases and my tank bag, taped the brake lights and turned the mirrors down, set suspension to maximum preload (for additional ground clearance and support), mounted the Solo 2 DL and SmartyCam 3 Sport and rode the first session. I haven’t ridden the Bavarian Cow on track in several years but it was surprisingly fun. In the first flying lap (no tire warmers) I managed a fairly clean 1:48 in that first session and 1:46s in the next couple of sessions.
As a track bike, the big GS isn’t ideally suited, particularly with a sport-touring 90/10 19” front tire. The Telelever front suspension is super comfortable on rough roads and tracks great at a spirited road pace but at a reasonably quick track pace the feedback is a little numb and ground clearance was constantly on my mind. I managed to touch down the left foot peg (which does not have a feeler), and dragged my knee in T9-Rainey. A very cool feature is that the same AiM protocol that I use for the S1000RR also works with the GS. I did modify the layout to adjust for the substantially lower RPM range.
All was well and good and in my final session I was tracking toward a 1:45 but I lost the front end going into the final turn (T11) and fell over. The bike landed on the engine guard (aftermarket) and spun around 180°. Jesse Carter came by soon and got the bike off track and inspected it and it was fine other than the beveled engine guard. The foot peg and shift lever didn’t even touch down. My Helite airbag deployed (first time). My leathers took a little scuffing but I incurred no damage to myself—no bruises, twists, etc. Unfortunately that broke my streak of over 5 years of big track riding without falling down. Like most crashes, I chalk it up to rider error. I did know that I was pushing the front pretty hard because I was trying to shorten up my braking distance and to do that I had to condense my braking. I learned from it and know that my expectations should be more reasonable, particularly on an adventure bike.
I decided to call it after that and changed into my street gear, loaded the saddle boxes and top box and rode home with the most efficient route presented by Waze.
The return ride was in a bit more traffic-loaded time of the day but Waze sent me up Highway 1 to Santa Cruz, then over 17 and 280 which was a nice change of scenery. I did run into a couple of pretty heavy cloud bursts and a few minutes of hail (which hurts when riding a bike). I stopped off at the 280 rest stop and donned my heated vest and rode straight through back to Petaluma. It was a 374 mile day trip which included 3 long sessions at Laguna Seca, a very scenic drive with some varied weather, gorgeous green Northern California hills, a big rainbow, and a twisty bit on the way home (Highway 17) and even after falling down, my confidence wasn’t impacted. I feel like I got to know the GS better than I already did and finding more time on it would be tough. The track time included several chase laps on Max which he can use to send to his riding coach for video review. It was really a pretty epic day for something that I wasn’t originally planning to do—sometimes the best experiences are those for which you don’t plan.