If someone had told me 18 years ago – holed up in Anchorage Alaska with six feet of snow outside, watching Isle of Man TT videos – that I would someday race there at almost 200mph, I wouldn’t have believed them. Yet here I am, eagerly anticipating next year’s TT race with aspirations of finishing on the podium.

 

Looking back, it’s hard for me to believe that a shy young man from Alaska, who wasn’t very good at ANYTHING, and who spent his time working just enough to afford cheap beer and lift tickets at the local ski resort, could rise to the top of the Pacific Northwest road-racing scene and win two AMA national #1 plates in the ultra-competitive 750 Superstock class.

 

I remember as a kid riding my bicycle, rain or shine, 16 miles to the local motocross track on the other side of Anchorage, just to watch other people ride. I came home and asked my father if I could have a motorcycle and heard the gut-wrenching reply “not under my roof, young man.” I knew then that riding motorcycles was only a dream…or something I had to wait a long time to do. And so I waited.

 

Years passed and I did all the things parents want their children to do; got a job, went to college, and so on. Eventually I found myself sitting in huge lecture halls, at colleges in Alaska and then Oregon, listening to professors babble on and on, as I read the latest motorcycle magazines. On weekends away from Oregon State University in Corvallis, I’d drive my ‘68 Nova to Portland and watch the local hotshots at Portland International Raceway and think, “I can beat those guys.”

 

After about four years of wasting student loans on classes that served only as magazine reading rooms for me, I decided to take a year off school and try my hand at the high-speed spectacle of motorcycle road-racing. I took my pride and joy, my 1984 Yamaha RZ350 with only 432 miles on the clock, which I had bought from an old geezer in Alaska and I entered the OMRRA Novice Racers school at P.I.R. (with “student loan money” of course).

 

I won that race, on one of the smallest bikes in the field, and the next one several months later. I got bumped up to the expert class in only my third event, and earned OMRRA’s Novice of the Year award. Needless to say, going back to college was of no interest to me and from that point on, everything I did revolved around racing.

 

For the next four years, with the help of family and friends, I worked and raced, clawing my way up the Pacific Northwest’s regional-racing-food-chain. First I won the OMRRA 450cc Supersport Championship (on my friend Tommy’s FZR400 that he too dragged down from Alaska), then a 600cc Championship and finally the Washington State Overall Championship and #1 plate. Then I got a break not many racers get; a chance to race nationally. Thanks to a dear friend, Jeff Pearce, and the “privateer” team of RICCI Motorsports, I was able to race a brand-new 1996 Suzuki GSXR750 all over the country at tracks like Daytona, Mazda Laguna Seca, Road America and Road Atlanta. Although we never actually won a race together, we racked up numerous podium finishes, runner-up positions in the Championship and did our best to give the far better funded “factory” teams, absolute fits.

 

Ironically, after a great weekend at Daytona in 1999, I returned to work on Monday to learn that they had laid me off, along with a bunch of other people. I was devastated initially, but as time went on, I realized that they’d actually done me a favor; now I could now focus entirely on racing. So I did, and my results went through the roof.

 

Highlights included my first podium finish at Las Vegas Motorspeedway (finishing second to rising star Nicky Hayden), soundly beating ex-Superbike Champion Tom Kipp on a Kel Caruthers-tuned factory Chapparal Suzuki at Daytona in ‘99 and nearly winning at Daytona in 2000. I was in the lead on the last lap when I got mugged - in sight of the finish line - by four riders, including rising Moto GP star, John Hopkins).

 

I guess those battles and results were noticed, because I was approached at the end of the 2000 racing season by a newly formed team - Corona EBSCO Suzuki - to ride the Willow Springs 24-hour endurance race. We won our class and my performance caught the eye of the team owners, who asked me to join the team for a full-on assault on the AMA 750 Supersport Championship. That was the beginning of the two most successful seasons of my professional racing career – well so far, anyway.

 

2001 saw me win my very first AMA national race at Road America, my favorite track. It was also the year that I finally proved my abilities. I not only won 2 other races, but earned several pole positions and wrapped up my first AMA National Championship with a couple of races still to go. My ship had arrived. I had the confidence to run with the best and that led me to an elusive victory at Daytona at the start of the 2002 season and the first of my national title defense. It truly was an epic race, one that has to be seen to be believed. 

 

After fighting my way through the pack because of a less than stellar start, I found myself out front with a sizable lead (by Daytona standards). Around the mid-point of the race, while braking for the back-straight chicane, I mistakenly made one too many down shifts and nearly threw myself off the bike, as it snapped violently sideways. I recovered but ran off the track, narrowly missing the dreaded Daytona hay bales, and rejoined the race several positions back. Again, I had to fight my way back to the front and with only about 2 laps to go, found myself with a sizable lead.

 

Normally, when one finds them self in this position, 90% of the drama is over and you simply have to focus on not making any more mistakes and bring it home for the win. Not this time. Exiting, the infield up onto Daytona’s famous high-banking, I noticed, as I fought desperately for traction, that my left foot was moving around a bit too much on the footrest. Up on the banking and accelerating, just inches off the wall, I looked down and saw my boot covered in oil. As I braked for the chicane and gingerly tipped into the corner, the rear end let go.

 

I had more problems than just oil on my boot. As if the track had personally cursed me, I could feel another Daytona win slipping away. Flying past start/finish, starting the last lap of the race, I decided to go for it, even if it meant crashing. My lead diminished with every tick of the clock. The constant flow of oil onto my back tire forced me to tiptoe through every left-hand corner. Fortunately, most of the infield section was right-handers, unfortunately, the high=speed, high-banked turns of the Speedway portion weren’t. Glancing back as I exited the infield section, up onto the banking for the final time, I could see marauders approaching, led by my own teammate.

 

I had to slow down so much for the chicane this time through, that my teammate almost hit me. My lead was gone. A quick check of his position as we exited, and I could see I was in trouble. As if guided by some higher wisdom, I made the decision to back off and let my teammate go by. It’s a pretty well known fact, that even in the best of situations, if you lead someone out of the chicane at Daytona on the last lap, you’re not going to win. Slipstreaming rules the game.

 

So I let him go by, timed my drive and prayed. Lying on the gas tank with the throttle cable stretching in my hand, I clicked off each gear-shift as we accelerated past the battered walls that lined our route. I stared directly at his rear tire and willed my bike forward, trying desperately to ignore everything else. With the finish line in sight, I went high, sliding along the outside of my teammate, stealing back my position and the win, in one of the closest finishes in Daytona history. The engine blew up two turns later.

 

I followed that up with more wins and more pole positions. At times I felt untouchable. We never had the fastest motorcycle, but I think we had the best rider and the best crew and that’s what was needed. Again, we wrapped up the #1 plate with some room to spare and coasted to the end of another amazing season.

 

Looking back, it feels like a dream. To come from so far away - geographically and metaphorically - and beat all those other top racers for two AMA national titles blows my mind. Because I’d started racing at age 25, I was competing against significantly younger racers with more experience. Some of them had been racing since they were barely old enough to go to school.

 

2003 started off like crap and ended the same way. At Daytona’s season opener, I ran off the track on the first lap and had to work my way through the field, just to get into a points paying position. Then, just as I was finding my stride during practice at Brainerd - an event I had won 2 years on the trot - I crashed big time.

 

It was a very windy day in Minnesota and as Josh Hayes and I fought for fast lap honors, I lost the front end in gust of wind in Brainerd’s intimidating Turn 1. This was one of my strongest corners; it separates the men from the boys and I knew I was good there. Turn One has nearly a mile-long straight leading to it and is taken flat out in 6th gear, at around 175mph. As I tipped in, going for a good lap, the front end just went numb and for maybe a second, I had no idea how things were going to end up. At those speeds, in that kind of wind, you’re just along for the ride.

 

And my ride decided to dump me. The bike went down and I slid off at over 170 mph. The track instantly burned a hole through my suit at the hip, and then   burned a hole in me. I ended up sliding on my back for what my mechanic Sean Storment estimated to be 262 yards. As I watched my bike destroying itself in the sky above me, I realized that because of the wet grass from a week’s heavy rain, I wasn’t slowing down and I’d better get a look at where I was headed. Bending my neck, I saw nothing but trees and in a futile effort to scrub off speed before impact, I dug my elbows and heels into the ground. It was too little, too late.

 

There was a bang and I stopped; out of breath and completely battered. I was lying in tall grass, with trees all around me, not sure if I was dead or alive, watching big fluffy clouds whisking by, high in the sky. I had broken my left humerus (upper arm), my back, my ribs, my hip, ruptured my spleen and partially collapsed my lung. For the next 2 years I struggled to return to action. Suzuki continued to pay me but my arm refused to heal. It was miserable; but I knew the other possibilities could have been even worse. I could have been paralyzed or killed.

 

I have come to realize over the years that some people are just “wired” differently than others. Most people - the sane ones - would walk away from something like that and never go back. Yet there are a few strange folk out there, like myself, who simply can’t get enough of a good thing. And motorcycle racing is a “good thing”.

 

So as soon as my body was up to it again, I set out to make a comeback. I tried desperately to claw my way back the place I’d been before, but it seemed it wasn’t meant to be. I was embarrassed with my results; I’d try too hard and wind up on the ground again. After a year of finishing deep in the pack, only managing a 10^th place finish at Laguna Seca, I decided to take a year off. In 2006, I only raced once and that was at my home track in Portland.

 

Which brings us back to the Isle of Man TT. Real road racing. I had always wanted to see the TT. I always followed the action and respected the guys who did it. I even got to show David Jefferies around Daytona in ‘99, when he was “King of the Mountain” (fastest man at the TT), and had come to race in the States for the first time. I helped him shave 10 seconds off his lap time in that one practice session and think he may have finished the race as high as 10^th or 11^th. Yet I could never really see myself doing what he did, the TT.

 

But here I sit, pining over next year’s TT like a kid waiting for the candy store to open. I’m patiently waiting for those amazing two weeks on the Isle of Man – and the most dangerous motorcycle races in the world.

 

It’s all (fellow American) racer Mark T. Miller’s fault. He did the TT for the first time in 2006 and I emailed him while he was over there and tried desperately to follow his progress online. When he returned home, I bent his ear about it every chance I could get. His description of the thing sold itself and I just had to try it. For some reason, just sitting on a hedge and watching it wasn’t going to be enough. Mark talked about it as if it was too good to be true and as I sit here today, I can tell you, it is. It is the most amazing thing I have ever experienced in my life. Hands down.

 

The TT course is like a paved motocross track. The bumps, the jumps - it’s all there. And one of the hardest things to wrap your mind around when you’re racing there is that you have to set your bike up like a motocross bike. I remember thinking after my first few times around the course in 2007 that the front wheel never seems to be on the ground. And when it is, you have to steer then and brake right then. You literally have to ride the bike that way. 

 

For example, Bray Hill is one of the first challenging places you hit on the course and it’s only about a mile from start/finish. Bray Hill is a 160 mph plunge down a house-lined street in the middle of the city of Douglas. As you crest St. Ninians crossroads at the top of Bray Hill (see HOME PAGE photo), you jump completely off the ground at 160 mph, as the road in front of you just disappears, down and to the right. As soon as you land, you steer to the right, and then the bike wheelies (even a 600), and when the front touches again, you steer hard to the left and plunge down Bray Hill. The bike wheelies again halfway down and as soon as the front tire hits, you steer right and brace for impact. The bottom of Bray Hill is a massive G-out. The bike’s suspension fully collapses; you slam down on top of the tank and as you fire out of this hole, you’re steering as hard as you can to the right, sweeping across the road, trying not to hit the curb and wall on the left. Then - as if you needed or wanted more - within the next couple of seconds, you hit the two back-to-back jumps, known as Ago’s 1 and Ago’s 2 (for multiple World Champion Giacomo Agostini). To do this entire section well, you NEVER lift on the throttle. It’s spectacular.

And you still have 36 of the 37.7-mile course to go. 

 

*(for a full recount of my past race results at the TT, and comments: please see (link here)

 

Where else in the world, does the local government, close roughly 38 miles of their main highway, to public traffic, so that you can go wild on your motorcycle? After all, isn’t that what these amazing machines are designed to do? No cars, no cops. Just you and this intricately challenging piece of tarmac, flowing around one of the most beautiful places on earth.

 

The TT is the motorcycling equivalent of “base jumping” or “free climbing” or maybe those silly little men who jump off those huge cliffs in Europe in flying squirrel suits.

 

But even those guys don’t get to listen to the sound of a highly tuned internal combustion engine screaming between your legs at nearly 200 mph, while the rear tire spins and jumps off the ground, because the public roads are beat to hell and spectators stand just inches away from you as you blast past them, sending pressure waves that ripple the hedges for hundreds of feet behind you.

 

It’s so hard for me to think about the TT and not get fired up. It is one of the most amazing spectacles on the planet and I would like help to go back.

 

Jimmy