I've had a couple close calls on the street, but yesterday's near moto-sandwich was the first one that made me think "ummm, this could be bad".

I'll turn over 10,000 miles in a day or so. I find I'm no longer scared all the time, just a little nervous some of the time, and best of all, I'm actually calm in highway traffic. So when I exited on Martin Luther King boulevard from Highway 24, I wasn't the tense rider of last year. Neither was I as aware as I should have been.

There's a series of traffic lights on "eM eL Kay" as Berkeley people call that main drag. Everyone is jockeying for the best position. I wasn't paying attention to whose blind spot I might be in and sure enough, the Universe decided that I needed a wake up call. I was approaching a red light, on the brakes, when a minivan decided that it wanted to be in the space that I was in.

Fortunately there was a lane to my left, but a car was where I now wanted to be. The minivan was converging in on me. Kicking it away was not an option. I moved into the left lane, trying to stay as close to the right side of the left lane as possible. The cars were terribly close and I was not happy.

The car on my left perceived the situation and swerved left to avoid me, then ran the light. The minivan, hell bent for forward progress, also ran the light. I come to full stop, shaking.

I was pissed off at the minivan, but more pissed off at myself. It was a classic move on the minivan's part. I've done it myself. I should have anticipated that the minivan would try to move into my lane, and been in a better position relative to the minivan.

I am lane-sharing on the highway now but I'm a conservative lane-sharing rider. I won't lane-share unless traffic is going less than 30 mph, and I don't try to slip through between cars the way I see other bikes doing. With a new perspective from my between-a-rock-and-a-hard-spot experience, I understand why riders go to the front of the line at a traffic light. I always thought it was a greedy move. Now I see it as a safety precaution.

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On October 30, Peter and I will be riding Streets of Willow with CLASS. Peter will be riding the F3 which is all cleaned up from its spill at Thunderhill. It even has yellow Honda wing logos on either side of the tank. The bike is looking good, the yellow wings match the yellow wheels. I'll be on my BMW. I am so looking forward to this.

As soon as that track day is done, the hand-guards go on the BMW's handle bars. I bought the hand-guards months ago in anticipation of fighting back against frozen finger tips in February. Yes, my bike has heated grips, thank heaven. It isn't enough. Wearing glove liners only gives me an uncomfortable grip. It's like trying to eat linguine after coming back from the dentist and still having Novocain in your lips.

(Flame on) I can't find cold-weather gloves small enough to fit me. I bumped into AlpineStar's rep at CalBMW, now CalMoto, a few days ago. He assured me that they have figured out that there is a huge untapped market out there called women riders. I was preaching to the choir when I went into my rant about wanting gloves and boots that fit women's bodies, meet our functional needs, and of course, make us look great. And, not only is our money as green as the guys', we spend more of it on gear than they do. (Flame off).

Streets of WIllow Springs in Rosamond, southern California is a six- hour drive from home, not counting dinner. We checked to make sure we could even get there as some roads were closed due to the fires. As we got closer to the Mojave desert, the air quality became pretty bad from the smoke in the air.

This track day was with Class Rides. The owner/chief instructor is Reg Pridmore. This was a new track for me. My impression is that it is one tight little track. At 1.8+ miles, it is about a mile shorter than Thunderhill.

After the sighting laps, I took Reg up on the offer to go out with a teacher. Fred led me around another couple laps then followed me for two more laps before waving bye bye. It was just what I needed.

The 20-degree banked bowl is a neat feature. I tried to pass someone on the outside, forgetting the fundamentals of centrifugal force. As you accelerate your line will go wider unless you are able to compensate, and I'm not good enough to do that. I had been warned about getting flicked out, so when I felt myself drifting to the top of bowl I gave up the pass.

Turn 4, a short right hander, reminded me of Karolyn's goat trail. Reg emphasizes tight lines. About 12 inches away from the right edge of the tarmac, the surface was pretty chewed up, a lot like the surface of parts of highway 101 these days, and not something I wanted to run my tires through. Sure, my suspension could handle it, but I didn't want to experience the chatter until I had more confidence about the corner. I had to set up the turn just right to take the corner on last 8-10 inches of the inside edge. Even though I had the whole day to figure out where to start braking, get off the brakes and get on the gas, I did not get through that corner smoothly even once.

The sequence of turns 1-2-3 felt good, you're going uphill turning to the right, around to the right again and descending, then cutting around to the left on an ascent, anticipating the bugger turn 4. You can get on the gas through 5-6-7. I found a rock on left side of the track that I used as a brake marker to get into the bowl. The rock won't be there next time, but I was taking any reference point I could find.

CLASS staff marked the esses, turns 9 and 10, with bright orange cones in the corners. This was a much appreciated kindness as I was having trouble finding any horizon-level reference points in the desert.

I finished the day a little early because I started getting leg cramps and figured I'd had enough. I learned a lesson about potassium: just because the weather is cool doesn't mean that I can back off of my potassium intake. Peter kept offering Gatorade, but I was too dumb to drink it.

Peter also decided he was done before the last session. Any question about that was settled when Reg pulled him off the track because the F3 was smoking. I'm hoping it was just a coolant overflow but we're taking no chances. The F3 is getting a full service at the local Honda dealership, then it will hibernate for the winter. The BMW did great. It's time to put the hand guards on it, the cold weather has set in.

Sharing the track day with Peter made it especially nice. Icing on the cake was that during the time we were unknowing subjects of Reg's camera bike scrutiny, we were doing good. Overall it was a great track day for both of Peter and me and we'll ride with Class Rides again.

This was the last ride of our first track season. Peter has ridden three tracks, I've ridden two. We'll be sticking closer to home next season. The four-hour drive from Thunderhill or Buttonwillow is a chore; six hours from Streets of Willow gets us home around 1 a.m. which means we are little better than dishrags the next day. Sears Point/Infineon is a two-hour drive and will be new to both of us. We'll be spending a lot of time there next season.