Although it may have been an off year for most of the Sundial gang, the Sundial and STOGI colors were still seen in competition at Mid-Ohio. In the group shot above from left to right you've got DiamondJ (me), Mowgli (Eugene), and Desmocat (Ralph).
See it all started out at last year's Mid-Ohio. Eugene had bought back the GT500 racer he had built a few years ago and put it back on the track. Only to realize he really preferred racing his '86 GSXR750. So he decided to sell the GT500. At the time I had failed to cobble together a T500 race bike for Mid-Ohio. So a ready to run racer was particularly attractive. We settled on a price, I handed over a deposit, and we agreed we would meet up sometime in the near future to trade the rest of the money for the race bike.
Unfortunately, sometimes "life" is just an alternate way of saying "insanely busy" and we just couldn't match schedules to meet until this year's Mid-Ohio. This also meant that I once again failed to get a race school and a couple of races under my belt before Mid-Ohio thereby failing to meet the requirements to race at Mid-O. So I would have a race bike and no license at Mid-Ohio.....
Meanwhile on the other side of the USA, Desmocat was busy racing his beautiful orange and black T500 in AHRMA races on the West Coast. At the April round at Willow Springs, he suffered a catastrophic engine failure that broke a connecting rod and junked the crank. Time for a rebuild. But not enough time to get it rebuilt for Mid-Ohio.... It looked like Desmocat would be a racer at Mid-O without a race bike.
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, I can't leave well enough alone and decided that Desmo should race my "new" race bike at Mid-Ohio.
Mowgli was naturally pleased to hear that instead of delivering a race bike in need of some minor tweaks to be ready to race, he would have to spend time fettling the GT to get it ready for Mid-Ohio. He started in diligently replacing fork seals, changing oil, cleaning carbs, and the like.
The racer was shod with older Metzler race rubber. Not ancient but not fresh as a daisy either. I did have a fresh set of Avons and offered to bring them along just in case. It was decided that we would try the Metzlers and change to the Avons if we needed them.
Now I just needed to load up my trailer with a '75 T500 (handy spares pit-side) and my GS1000, pack my tools, spare parts, some clothes, race tires, more spare parts, a cooler, camp chairs, an easy-up canopy, the kitchen sink and I would be good to go.....
Mother Nature had other ideas and I awoke Thursday morning (my travel day) to one of the worst thunder storms I have seen in a while..... Not my idea of perfect trailer weather. Would I really drag my two motorcycles out in this weather, particularly since the last time I trailered bikes through this kind of rain, it took me months to get them running correctly again. Hmmm, what to do, what to do........