“Making the Grid”
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2025
Well, for me, it always seems that the adventure starts before the adventure starts. Months and months and tens of thousands of dollars went into planning and preparation for my first round of the MotoAmerica Super Hooligan championship. Technically, it was round two of the championship, but I didn’t make it to Daytona. My first round would be at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta in Braselton, Georgia, May 2-4, 2025.
Two weeks prior, Shanea and I traveled to Georgia so that I could get to know the track, since I had never been there and honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was on a rented bike; a 2013 GSXR 600. Nothing like the bike I would be racing in MotoAmerica, but good enough to help me familiarize myself with the track. The weekend was a huge success by all accounts, and I was looking forward to my first MotoAmerica round of the season.
You know what they say – if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans! Well, after two more weeks of keeping God in hysterics, and having to frantically pivot with last-minute preparation, I was nevertheless finally ready to board my flight Wednesday morning of race week, from SFO with a connection in DFW before making my way to ATL. Like I said, my adventures always seem to start ahead of schedule- and by adventure, I mean that anything that can go wrong, probably will. Today was no exception.
At first, everything seemed to be going smooth enough – I checked my bag, made it through TSA security and to my departure gate without incident. However, just as I was settling in to wait for the first boarding call, I got an email telling me that the second leg of my trip had been canceled. You’ve got to be F-ing kidding!!!
I don’t remember if my heart stopped or if it started racing at a mile a minute. All I know is that it took everything I had to keep from completely freaking out. I walked – well, power walked – to the service counter and begged the lady to save me! Yes, I know I’m being a little melodramatic (have you met me?), and it was obvious from her expression that she thought so too.
Choking back my panic, I explained the situation. She started clicking away on her computer keyboard, scanning the screen for whatever she was looking for, then calmly said, “Your flight from Dallas Fort Worth to Atlanta has been canceled.” Yeah, no shit Captain obvious!
I was recently described as someone who “feels emotions very intensely.” I think they were just being kind and using “intense emotions” as a euphemism for how quickly I am to overreact when things don’t go as expected. Okay, if I’m being honest, calling it an “overreaction” is also a euphemism. Let’s just say, under circumstances like these, I can freak the fuck out! Anyway, over the course of my half-century-plus worth of lived experience, I’ve learned a lot of painful and expensive lessons that saying what I think in moments like this doesn’t usually work out too well for me. So, I took a deep breath, exhaled, and with all the calm I could muster, I asked the lady if she could get me to Atlanta today.
Fortunately, she seemed pretty good at her job, and after a bunch more clicking on her keyboard, she soon found an alternate pair of flights that would get me to the Atlanta airport only about an hour later than I would’ve arrived anyway. Getting me there was obviously the priority, but what about my suitcase? Fortunately, or unfortunately – depending on how you look at it – I have had far too much practice having to pivot when Murphy’s Law threatens to unravel my best-laid plans. Literally seconds before I checked my bag in, I decided to pull my motorcycle transponder out of my suitcase and move it to my carry-on backpack. I figured that I could race without everything in that bag except for my transponder, and even if I had to buy a new wardrobe at Walmart, at least I would be able to complete.
Well, now it was her turn to be a little frantic. It seemed that there was no simple way to make sure that my bag – which by now was at least halfway to being loaded on my original flight – would need to be intercepted and diverted to my new flight. Apparently, this requires some divine intervention, so I was desperately praying for a miracle and cashing in whatever karma points I had stored up.
“Give me your checked bag number. Hurry! Hurry!” Yeah, she was definitely matching my sense of frenetic panic at this point. Always prepared for the worse – again, having had far more than my fair share of practice at this – I had my checked bag ticket handy, and passed it to her before the second “Hurry!“ left her mouth.
She was on the phone, frantically trying to reach the luggage foreman. After a pause that probably only lasted a couple of seconds, but felt like an eternity, her expression softened with apparent relief as she made contact with the person who could ensure that my bag made it onto the correct flight.
A brief exchange with the foreman, and it seemed that everything was going to work out after all. She printed out my new boarding passes and assured me that my suitcase would follow me to ATL. Disaster averted. For now, anyway…
No rest for the weary! Of course, the first leg of my new flight wasn’t entirely uneventful. The new boarding passes the customer service agent gave me when she changed my flights were conspicuously devoid of any times – boarding times, flight times, landing times, nothing! So I asked one of the flight attendants if she knew or could help me find out, and after a little research, she gave me a look of pity and told me that it was such a short connection I would likely miss the next flight! You’ve gotta be freaking kidding me!
But what was I really expecting? And if the likelihood that I would be stuck in Charlotte while my next flight was taking every passenger but me to Atlanta wasn’t enough to shake my nerves, the crazy turbulence I was about to experience certainly would! I really don’t have a fear of flying, and I’m certainly not scared of a little turbulence. In fact, I’ve flown a lot in my lifetime and have been on some fairly turbulent flights. I remember one trip I took down the West Coast on a tiny airplane that we boarded from the tarmac, rather than the terminal. That was a wild ride! At one point, the plane seemed to drop straight out of the sky, and if it wasn’t for my seatbelt, I’m pretty sure I would’ve banged my head on the ceiling! The pilot calmly narrated what was happening as if we should have expected it, since it’s apparently typical for smaller planes. And the American Airlines plane flying me to CLT was not the biggest I’ve ever flown on, but it was big enough that I expected relatively smooth sailing. But once again, the universe had to remind me that it doesn’t care about my expectations! After an hour or so in the air, we hit turbulence so severe I actually considered making a final “good bye, I love you” video for my girlfriend, Shanea, just in case my iPhone survived the crash!
And, of course, the drama didn’t end there. Thanks to my last-minute flight change, I was seated near the back of the plane, which meant it would take forever just to disembark. I asked the attendant if there was anything that could be done to help me get off the plane more quickly once we land, but it seemed that a bunch of my fellow passengers were facing a similar predicament.
So, I survived the gut-scrambling turbulence only to find myself stuck behind a packed aisle of travelers who were obviously on “vacation time,” completely oblivious to my panicked sense of urgency. As I already mentioned, I learned a long time ago that thinking out loud in these situations tends to cause more problems for me than it solves, so I simply stood there anxiously waiting for the line to start moving.
Finally off the plane, and it was game on! I had no idea how far my next gate was, but as it happened, it couldn’t have been any further. It was literally at the furthest end of the opposite terminal! Good thing I had been in training and was race-fit, in better shape than I had been in years. So, I ran! And ran! And ran! Two-thirds of the way there, I realized I overestimated my physical conditioning. My legs hurt, my lungs hurt, and my feet hurt – I was still wearing the cheap slip-ons I bring to the airport to get through TSA security more easily. But racers race, and we all know that grit and determination – mind over matter – can compensate for a lot of physical limitations, so I pushed on.
After barging my way through the crowded airport, breathless and sore, so exhausted I thought I might puke, I finally saw it – my next gate. Boarding had already begun, but there were still a few people left in line, so I knew I made it on time – barely, but in this case, barely counts! Thank goodness! Though, of course, was there really ever any doubt?