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*Liam's Wild Ride*

Here's what most of the buildings in the city look like.

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Just like the last time, I arrived at dawn on Thursday and a few hours later was at the track. It was a full day of work prepping the bikes and making sure everything was going to be "just right" for the race on Saturday. I took a moment to check out the track up close. . . and it really is Astro-turf! I can't imagine what it's like for a bike to hit this at high speed.

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The day ended and we headed back to the hotel for a well deserved night's rest. Naturally, I was the lead driver of four other cars (I had the boss in my car) and we got lost, circling the city for an hour. Thank goodness we eventually found the hotel, because the threat potential of driving in that city is off the scale. After dinner a couple of us made it out for a beer, and by a couple I mean everybody! We were able to buy 3 litre beers and the night turned out longer than anyone thought! That's all for day one back in Qatar.

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The next day was better, as I had more rest and I remembered the way to and from the circuit! I got ahold of my fairings, a day late, and proceeded to get my bike back together since it was still half apart from the wreck three weeks ago.

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Later in the day, trucks started showing up with boxes. Big boxes :)

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That means one person undoes the latches while everyone else just watches, including me :(

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The top of the box then becomes a table to stack the rolls of paper ,which were stuffed in there to help cushion the bike -- ingenius!

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There was another track day going on so there were a couple riders who were there. Kind of intimidating to take to a track knowing the biggest boys are there, too. I had to wait a second to get this shot, because I wanted the British flag to be there. Suzuki's GP effort is based in Banbury, England, and first rider, John Hopkins is half British, half American. In person, he's all Southern Californian, though.

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Perhaps Stuart Shelton knows something about the Suzuki that we don't. . . .or maybe he's as crazy about the Qatari food as I am! Whatever it is, they haven't hired me, so phooey, haha. Paul Denning and the pilots weren't scheduled to show up for another day, but I got a chance to scope out some of the technical bits. I had a hell of a time trying to get photos, but since I was there to work, it wasn't very important to me. I will say this. . . . . .Suzuki definitely has a new motor for '06, not just parts inside of it. In fact, it's physically larger than last year's and it DOES make more power. Even so, I'd say the engine is still smaller than the R6 motor. . . .just to give you guys a size reference :)

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Here's a better shot...

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When I first saw these wheels I thought they might be from the Suzuki Alstare team from World Superbike. Turns out the GP team is changing the colors of the rim strips from red to yellow. I think it's the Australian thing. These wheels are made by Joe Bito, a japanese guy who used to a GP mechanic with Honda back in the Eighties. He got out of it a couple years ago and when he tried to get back in there wasn't a place for him. He had always hated the Marchesini's because they broke so easily, and had even gone to their factory to see what was up. Since he knew they were a liability he decided to make his own wheels, and thus, JB Power wheels was born. Talk about finding a niche! Now Joe is the supplier for several Japanese National teams, SuzukiGP (I think WSBK, too), KawasakiGP, and more. These are the Mag-Tan models, unobtanium indeed. Joe gave me a lift one day when I was hitch-hiking to the circuit in Valencia last year and we had breakfast together. If you ever meet him, drop my name, and be nice, he's a very knowledgable and friendly person.

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Here I am chumming it up with young Chris Vermeulen. I can never remember how to spell his name, but he seems like a nice guy. It's hard to picture, but the Suzuki team is mostly middle aged men from England, and their riders are a bunch of surf-rats from opposite ends of the Earth. Chris is confident that the Suzuki will be competitive this year, and based on today's testing results (Hopper within a half second of Rossi) it's looking good!

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I took the time to shoot a shot of my rider, Ali D, screaming down the straightaway. It was tough because my auto focus doesn't work this fast so I ended up just doing it manually. He told me he had been practicing on his R1 the last couple weeks and made some adjustments to his body position based on my advice from the last race. He dropped over ten seconds per lap! My advice? Choke up on the tank in the corners, haha.

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Did someone say Unobtanium?

So naturally, I was busy working in my garage, checking, double checking, triple checking, you know how it goes. It's an interesting perspective to have, that of the race mechanic. One on side, there's this feeling of happiness that comes from being around pure machines, and away from the crowds and the noise. Moreso, there's this feeling of responsibility that comes from the rider's results. If he can't do his best, it's my fault. I have a measure of control over the situation and the results. I'm involved. I'm responsible. It's really hard, not sleeping, travelling, performing precision work, and always trying to better the mechanics around you. It's worth it. But only if I can make it to a point where I work on things like *This*. Who wants to know what this is? And who has a giant server I can throw a 6 second audio clip on? I know Willit came through for me before, want to go again?

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Here's my friend, lil' Nacho, or Nachito. We met earlier this year through another friend named Roger (who used to work for Dorna). It's thanks to him that I ended up in Qatar in the first place, so thanks Nachito. I had met Olivier Jacque before, in Shanghai, so we talked for a little bit about the Kawi and about his chances for some Wildcard rides before Nachito came up and wanted a photo. It felt weird to me to take another photo with him because I already had one from last year and it just seemed weird so I didn't. Jacque is excited about the new bike and I feel like Kawasaki made a mistake by not taking him over De Puniet.

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I also notice that most of the data acquisition equipment runs these spark plug type connectors. I'd say this is a really clean design and set-up.

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