With contrasting views on the quality of Nasville from all of our friends who had been there (with WERA) we decided as a club to take a chance and visit Nashville. With the club members and a few guests we had 17 riders total which turned out to be a good amount for that track. We don’t ride sessions so there is 7 hours of open track at each of our days. We generally don’t have any yellow or red flags and this was no exception, so you could literally ride for 7 hours if you were up to it - none of us were. Even with all of us out there the track was never too crowded. Most of the time there were only 7 people on the track. We ended up not using corner workers and just having 3 ambulances and a 4th fire crew running around. It worked out well as the entire track could be seen this way.

Hannah came with me to be the photographer. I went out and found some good safe spots to shoot from and showed her how to use the camera since she had never used this Digital Rebel. She then took over and took around 600 images during the day. Check out the flicker photo album with all of the images in this set. She is not a professional photographer, but she managed to capture some really good images! I really like this image of Randy Cook on his 2007 Ducati 1098S. Randy was by far the fastest of the day running around in the 1:10’s - I was only able to slightly dip into the 1:13’s. He passed me a couple of times on the straight absolutely flying! Quite a sight to see really!

As for the track, it is a blast! Definitely one of the most fun tracks I’ve been on. Plus we were able to use the garages, which were really nice. The majority of the track is super tight with a couple of corners that are literally first gear motor lugging craziness. The you have the front straight that is wide open banked goodness. The big bikes were 150+ through that section. I was only managing 117mph on my KTM, and after I blew mine up (more on that later) I took Ed’s for a spin which has a speedometer and I got 122mph coming off of the banking. I only did that once, the rest of the time I kept his bike much slower since it was a loaner. Here is an image of Rick and I going through the tightest section of the track, turn 2.

I felt right at home through the tight section and this is where I mad most of my time. The KTM can fly through there! The long travel suspension actually comes in handy when coming off of the back banking into what I’ll refer to as the bowl. Rick said he was bottoming out there quite easily as well as some others. The left hander on the way out of the bowl onto the straight is an amazing turn. You can put your knee down and just leave it there the whole way around. Quite fun!

So as I mentioned above, I had an issue with my KTM again. This problem relates to the last one where the flywheel and stator got chewed up. I should have replaced the flywheel when I had it out, but didn’t want to miss the track time. I’m not too sure how, but the flywheel kind of exploded and part of the magnet is hanging out. Not too bad since I already have a new flywheel and stator to put in. I should be back in action in a few days. I’m just waiting for the gasket for the stator side cover. I thought this was a cool image of me on Ed’s 560 coming into the bowl with the nascar turn in the background.

So all in all Nashville was a great track and everyone I talked to really enjoyed our time there. I wish my bike wouldn’t have crapped out though, I would have rode a lot more. I just didn’t want to kill Ed’s bike too so I rode it sparingly.

Ed Bargy has a race school at Nashville, I was thinking about getting my race license through him… that is in September. I’ll tell you some more of my plans later on.