Velocity Racing's 'Honey Badger' Blog

I'd say it's early in the planning stages for the coming season, but I'd be lying. The reality is that bike(s) are already getting torn down and put back together; sponsorship packages are already sent out; sponsors are already rolling in; parts are being bought; and wallets are cringing in fear. Okay, my wallet is past cringing. It's now curled up in the corner, crying and having seizures. And it has only started.  Taking a few of the lessons from last year, a few things have been in the works. For starters, the race team, which we had started under the honey badger name, is becoming official and we are working on a professional presence. We're still amateurs at this point, but we want to at least look like professional amateurs who are on their way to try some bigger things. The other stuff is a bit more personal. One lesson I learned the hard way this last year was in regards to bike set up. Finances were tight after medical bills started rolling in, an...

After the 6 th round of the season, I headed in that following Tuesday to have all the hardware removed from my leg that had been installed back in December 2016. I had scheduled surgery for that time for a couple reasons – 1) if things went well, then I’d have 3 ½ weeks to recover, which should be enough time for the bones to be relatively healed from the swiss cheese and 2) if things didn’t go well and there was more infection or it looked like it had done more damage, then I’d only be missing one more round instead of several. Surgery seemed to go well, and I was sent home with a bag full of titanium that we removed. I had four zippers on my leg, and about 100 staples holding it all together, but was released with “weight bearing as tolerated” with a warning to be very careful of a fall or hard hit, but told that “normal” activities shouldn’t cause a problem. Thankfully recovery seemed to be going well, so I signed up for the last round of the season. By the time t...

This weekend was one where I came into it with high expectations. You see, I was close – so close – to getting down to my “old” times at Sonoma, I was convinced I could accomplish it at Thunderhill. Thanks to Jim at Catalyst Reaction Suspension, I was finally getting the bike dialed in and my confidence was going up incrementally. I knew that would continue through this weekend, but was putting a lot of pressure on myself to perform up to *my* standards. I failed in that regard. Success was still gained. Friday there was a trackday that I bought a pass to knowing I could really use the time to work on setting the bike up. On Jim’s suggestion, I had dropped the forks a bit, and I knew we’d be playing around with getting everything dialed in for this fast track. I arrived on Thursday evening, unloaded, then headed off for some sleep before the weekend kicked off. I arrived bright and early to get the weekend started, determined to meet my own expectations. Fa...