BEST OF JODY’S BOX: CHECKING OFF ALL THE POSSIBILITIES

By Jody Weisel  

“I thought I was going to die out there,” exclaimed Crazy Dave immediately after practice. He had that wide-eyed look of a spree killer and the effect was all that more magnified by the way he was waving his arms and grimacing.  

“Yeah,” I said comfortingly while reaching in my toolbox for a tire iron just in case. “The track crew didn’t do their best work this week. It was a little muddy.”  

“I’m not talking about the mud. The mud was okay. Mud doesn’t bother me. I like mud. It wasn’t even that muddy. Who said I was complaining about the mud? It wasn’t the mud,” said Dave in a very agitated manner. Even worse, he was standing very close to me and yelling in my face. I’m used to this sort of behavior, but it normally comes from some guy I knocked down.  

“Look Dave,” I said while trying to calm him down, “If that was you I knocked down I didn’t see you there. I was holding my line. It was a stupid place for you to make a move. I was in front and can go wherever I want. And you shouldn’t be racing in practice.”  

“What are you talking about,” said Dave. “You didn’t knock me down. That was somebody else you knocked down. I’m trying to tell you that I almost died out there and you are giving me a bunch of lame excuses for chopping some guy off in the hairpin.”  

“Did you see it?” I asked. “It was his fault. Wasn’t it?”  

“No,” said Dave in a much calmer tone. “He had you clean until you put your foot on his front wheel, your elbow under his bars and jumped from of the outside rut into the inside rut. The only thing that was his fault was staying in your peripheral vision too long. I, other other hand, have a real problem.”  

“What is it?” I asked. I felt better now that he had stopped swaying back and forth like a mental patient.  

“Are you deaf? I already told you, I almost died out there!” he yelled.  

“Dave, no offense, but almost dying out there encompasses a lot of territory. Exactly how did you almost die?”  

“My forks don’t work! I thought they were going to throw me over the bars on every jump,” said Dave. “I can’t believe that I lived through practice.”  

“If your forks were so bad, why did you stay out for the whole session?” I asked.  

“I needed the practice,” said Dave with a quizzical look.  

“Do they bottom?” I asked.  

“I don’t know!” he answered.  

“Are they topping out?”  

“What’s that?”  

“Where do you have the compression clickers set?” I asked while bending over to look at his forks.

“Is that the one on the bottom or the one on the top?” he asked.  

“Top,” I answered.  

“On 17,” he replied.  

“That’s your problem, 17 out is pretty fast?” I said, but when I turned his clickers they were both on 8 out. “Maybe you have the rebound set too slow. What do you have the rebound clicker set at?”  

“Is that the one on the bottom or the one of the top?” he asked.  

“Bottom,” I answered.  

“Don’t know. Never touched them,” he said as I crawled in the dirt to count the number of clicks. It was true that he had never touched them because the rubber plugs were still under his fork legs. One leg was on 10 clicks and the other was on 6. I set them both to 10.  

“Where do they feel the worst?” I asked.  

“When I land from jumps,” said Dave. ”They almost twist out of my hands when I land, but they aren’t very good in the corners either. The front end feels like it is hanging down and the bike wallows around. Can you fix my forks before the first moto?” 

“I’ll try,” I said. “It sounds like they are too soft. I don’t have any springs with me, but I can add about 10cc’s of oil to each fork leg and put some preload washers under the springs.” With that I grabbed a set of wrenches and started working on Dave’s bike, while he went to the rider’s meeting to see what race we were in. Luckily, we weren’t until race five. I would have enough time to get everything done and still have time to put gas in my bike before our race.  

I have to admit that I was a little perturbed that Dave never lifted a finger to help me. He sat on the tailgate of the Jodymobile and told Jimmy Mac all about how he “almost died in practice.” I tried to ignore the two of them as Dave told Jimmy about how his forks didn’t work and how he had decided that perhaps he needed more fork oil. Jimmy nodded as Dave told him the gruesome details of almost every jump and how he survived it.  

Then as I tightened down the last few bolts I heard Jimmy say, “Gee whiz Dave, I’m sorry you had so much bad luck in practice. I didn’t know that your forks were so bad, I thought that the only thing wrong with your bike was a flat front tire.”