The following is a first-person report by motorcycle road racer Robert Jensen, lightly edited for family viewing.

After taking a brief three-day break at the home front in North Dakota, my traveling circus hit the road. I picked up Rick Bretl in Madison Wisconsin and preceded the last 70 miles to the racetrack. It has been established that this guy is the Devil when riding in anything that is labeled as an RV. We have only made it 15 minutes from where I picked him up and the “check engine” light is on. I know from experience, because of what happened earlier this year what the problem is. I plan to ignore this till we get to the track and I have some time to work on it.

Friday morning “Ruby” and “The Chatterbox” (aka the 2009 GSXR 1000 and the 2009 ZX-6R) are pulled out of the trailer and gassed up for this morning’s argument sessions. I usually don’t like to start out with the 1000 in the morning, mostly I’m still asleep and anything that fast on such a small track should require a warning label. I feel that Rick and I are losing the battle and need a new plan or at least a better strategy, so I give the Legendary Mike Fitzgerald a call. He gets us steered in better direction, and I can hop off Ruby and spend some time with The Chatterbox. The name is self-explanatory, enough said on that. It was a great plan and then it started to sprinkle. I had checked out the weather forecast earlier for the weekend, and rain is not on the menu for Sunday so the girls are put in the trailer for the evening.

The bikes are sleeping in the trailer and it’s time to pull the RV apart. The floor in the bedroom is tore apart, and the valve cover is removed and I’m checking what I believe are the ground wires for the injectors. Past the black diesel oil and underneath the Jacob’s brake assembly I can barely get the wrench on the wires. One wire seems to be a little loose, hopefully that fixes the problem. Turn on the key and fire it up… Yep the check engine light goes off, problem solved, time to eat.

Saturday morning Ruby, The Chatterbox, and “Veda” (2008 GSXR 600) are out and ready to play. I’m excited this morning and I’m hoping The Chatterbox will lose her nickname. I talked with Mike and I now have an Öhlins 25mm kit installed.  Stock sucks and it had to go, plus Matt Lynn doesn’t have chatter on his 600. Wow, the first session out and the Chatterbox doesn’t chatter.

I have three races on Saturday GTO, GTU, and Middleweight GP. I will be using all these races for setup. Too many motorcycles and never enough practice time will do that. The GTO and GTU races I was pulling in and out of the pits most of the time so there is nothing very exciting there. I was going to race Veda in Middleweight GP, but after going faster on The Chatterbox and finding more chatter I decided not to ride Veda.

Sunday morning all four bikes are pulled out of their slumber Ruby, Veda, The Chatterbox, and the “Red Headed Step Child” (2009 GSXR 750). I have an idea of how the 750 got her name, and she has the same name every year. Technically this one is Red Headed Step Child the 5th. I usually never practice the 750, we put on new tires, take and educated guess on the gearing and run her.  So far I have had really good luck doing this. Not the case this morning however, because both set’s of rims for Ruby have new tires and the engine is starting to sound a little on the sick side. In effort to keep from taking Ruby to the emergency room I have decided to just run her in the races that pay Suzuki money and ride the Red Headed Step Child in practice and one of the Unlimited races.

The first two races of the day are Unlimited Superbike and Heavyweight Superbike. Normally these races are relatively easy as there is no manufacturer contingency money just tire money. I normally run these on pump gas and used tires, but this weekend we’re running the juice in the tank. Piece of cake, so I won’t bore you with the race details that I don’t remember. The Chatterbox and I line up on the Pole for Middleweight Superbike. Great grids right, I entered all the races in February. Revs up and I holeshot my third race of the day. I have a better idea rather then giving the recap for each race I can tell how all of the races went in two sentences. I got the holeshot in every single race I entered. I led every single lap of every race I entered on Sunday, and I never got passed or even shown a wheel in any of the races on Sunday.  Boring right, unless it’s my checkbook it likes boring. Sunday I was in seven races: Unlimited Superbike, Heavyweight Superbike (Red Headed Step Child), Middleweight Superbike (The Chatterbox), Unlimited GP (Ruby), Heavyweight Supersport (Red Headed Step Child), Middleweight Supersport (Veda), and Unlimited Supersport (Ruby). Now don’t misunderstand me, the races weren’t easy. In Middleweight Superbike I only had about a half a second lead chattering the bike through a couple of the corners. Well the lead did increase once second place crashed trying to keep up. He crashed last weekend at Brainerd trying to keep up there too. In Unlimited GP the same guy crashed the same bike again. What is he thinking? I broke my own track record from last year (1:08.6 Yamaha R1, New Record 1:08.5 Ruby) two laps in row. I’m on a 1000 he’s on a 600, come on. Middleweight Supersport is almost a repeat of the Middleweight Superbike race, except that this time we have a new contender. BAM, SMACK, he’s out on the 4th lap. I’ll give this guy a little credit he did go 3 tenths of a second faster than I did.

So here we are pulling out Ruby’s engine in the Freightliner service center’s parking lot getting the RV repaired. I’m riding with the Devil and it ain’t Ozzy. Today was supposed to be a nice day putting over $10,000 in my checkbook. Oh well, it’s what makes it interesting.