Hicky…
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Watched that Hicky vid last week on my TV. What a HERO.
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Man, It was a beautiful, clear morning on this part of the globe, so I rode the bike to work. Rode last week too. But this morning was incredibly nice. I got mounted up right at 0600 and was able to chase the sunrise all the way down. I’m tellin ya, almost kept goin’.
I am still amazed at how well this 1250FA runs. I love this thing. It’s a very simple machine, really. There are no fancy features. Fuel injected. 6-speed. Front ABS. That’s it. But maybe that is a strength. There are no distractions. Just you and the bike. It’s a faired engine, with redone brakes and suspension, basically! 
And what an engine. Complete sleeper bike, this is. Even at the mature age of 12. I like to call it a “Gentleman’s Sportbike”. An absolute hoot to ride.
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Thank you, Sir. I got into a rut (I wasn’t feelin real good for a while there) and just stopped riding. It feels so good to be back in the saddle. I’m gonna try my best not to let that happen again!
As for the bike, I completely agree. The other two have really nice feature sets, so to have one that doesn’t is a nice change. I still laugh like a fool when I do the mid-second gear hard roll-on right up through fifth. The acceleration is such that I gotta squeeze that tank, set my core, get down and hold the f*ck on. My eyes get big, and I just start laughing. Every time! you can’t help it. But I never do that. That would be wrong… 
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…
Shoulder-mounted slider pucks must be coming soon!
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I think they already have them. Hell, they should just go ahead and put them on their helmets too! You gotta trust those tires to do stuff like this, man. ZERO fear on the rider’s part. Absolutely insane skills…
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then you have Peter doing his 100%…
Madness.
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Absolutely agree. It takes a very special kind of person to race the roads. Most GP riders won’t even consider doing the TT or road racing in general. And I don’t blame them.
Honestly, I never thought I would see 136. Awesome…
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HICKY! What a god.
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Quartararo needs to lean that hard to get any speed out of that pig of a Yamaha. But at least the M1 doesn’t try to kill its riders every session like this year’s Honda.
If anyone told me 10 years ago the Japanese bikes would be WAY at the bottom of the MotoGP grid, I would have asked them to pass that good sh*t to me right away. 
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Pretty amazing how fortune’s turn, isn’t it? 8 years ago, Ducati was a joke, Marc Marquez ruled the world, and Yamaha was right there in the mix fighting for championships. Everything changed in 2015. This was the year that the aero wars came into full play, and GiGi Dall’inga and Ducati went all in. The Japanese manufacturers haven’t really been able to compete since.
The other mistake HRC made was building a bike around a single rider, that of course being Marquez. It’s no secret that he can do things with a bike that no other rider can, which is unique and special in its own right. But that also meant that no other rider could ride the RCV. And now HRC have completely lost the scent. Now NO ONE can ride their bike, including Marquez.
And Yamaha? Well, they just didn’t make the investment that they should have and now they are dreadfully behind the curve in every way possible. I honestly don’t know if they have what it takes to catch up. Time will tell, of course, but the dynamic of the grid today is like nothing I have seen before.
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You NAILED it.
Another big mistake by Yamaha was abandoning the concept of satellite teams. Tech 3 was a steady pipeline of riders and technical development for more than a decade. Now Yamaha is alone as a factory-only team despite Ducati using the satellite team model to soar to the top of the manufacturer pecking order.
Dumb!
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Yep. These were all cost-cutting measures, and it has come back to bite them in a big way. There is talk of them reviving the satellite team concept starting in 2024, with none other than VR46 taking the partner role. As far as I know, nothing has been confirmed as of yet, but I think it would be big step forward for them to get back onto the competitive side of things.
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Hey fellas I thought you guys might appreciate this. I took the Hayabusa to the track today (I paid for 2 hours of private track time this afternoon). I geared up in my full racing kit with shoulder, knee, elbow, etc sliding pads, coms in the helmet…the works. Plus, I spent the last two weeks having the Busa converted over to run on high octane alcohol mix,lengthened the swing arm by six inches, lowered the profile, added functional vents to the front of the body with two larger diameter tubes feeding the engine, and a number of other mods.
I spent the first 30 min just getting a feel for it because it’s been a long time (7 years) since I converted it back to street legal and mostly stock. After that I started to open her up and ride with the track pro trying to follow his line and keep up. Frustrating at first, but I picked it up quickly. By about 30 min left in the session I was consistently hitting between 160 to 165 mph on the back straight away and I hit between 168 and 173 on the front straightaway. We spent some time at the drag strip and I could get the Busa up to 201.33 mph running 120 octane with a stock gear box (I didn’t have the time to change it out for this day). I also won $2k for riding the longest wheelie of the day.
Highlight of the day though was when I went into a turn to aggressive and caught some air and my body was literally off the bike, I was holding on to handlebars only as the bike was fishtailing everywhere and I managed to pull myself back on, use my knee to stop it from sliding out from under me, get the back back to vertical, and keep riding. I’ll get the DVD video from the track cams tomorrow and I fully intend to post some highlights throughout the week as business allows (I’m travelling doing promo for a company I endorse.). I was legit so proud that I kept that from going past sketchy to an ugly wipeout, wrecked bike, and medical bills. It was one hell of an adrenaline rush.
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Cool man 
it what track was that?.. loved my track days before I got old and boring and live on a barge 
…Dude I did a track day at Brands Hatch full GP circuit…stupid, stupid wide, stupid fast probably the only time I cooked the brakes on my ZX10R…
here’s a pic of me on the classic British circuit Cadwell Park’s mountain…
WooHoo…
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It was at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway after the finally got their track expansion finished. It was great to be back out there for the first time in forever.
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Damn bro, you aren’t just the average hobbyist. That’s for sure! What bike(s) do you ride?
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