Last night coming from the office splitting lanes at a steady pace. Not too fast, not too slow. See the lights approach rapidly from behind. Move aside. Three riders fly by. Casual wave. Something clicks in the competitive side of my brain. I initiate a chase. Chase sequence engaged.

• Competitor riding in position no 1 -typical squid, gixxer with a tail kit, shorts, sport shoes, t-shirt and an icon vest.
• Competitor riding in position no 2 - 10 something year old Suzuki 500, cheap riding jacket, noname helmet
• Competitor riding in position no 3 - new looking gixxer, proper gear
• Competitor riding in position no 4 - yours truly

The chase is on. Trying to catch up with the gixxer pack. I am on their tail. I keep up with the group. The pace is fast as it is. Apparently not so for the competitor no 2. The old gixxer rider makes his move. Something I have never seen before.

The race was taking place in between the 2 left most lanes on the freeway. So the rider no 2 swerved around a car in lane 2, temporarily rode in between lanes 2 and 3 and then came back around to take up position 1. All of that happened in under a second. And just took him the distance of one car body to accomplish. I was stunned. First of all it is extremely unsafe. Secondly you have to have the balls of steel. Thirdly - what is the point.

The squid now in position 2 seemed to have been amazed too and looked puzzled. He even took time to look back to show his disbelief to apparently his friend, the new gixxer now in position 3. In the meantime the new race leader gunned it like there was no tomorrow. The other 2 gixxers decided to not pursue.

Pretty soon the freeway had cleared up a bit and the two gixxers twisted their throttles to 90-95 mph speeds. I did not feel like racing anymore.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 8:02 am and is filed under Racing, Motorcycles, Street, Riding, Learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.