On the road to Daytona, day one

A two week road trip in an RV to Daytona and back? With Freddie Spencer school bikes to ride at different tracks along the way ? And film it? I’m in!

So that’s what was proposed to me 6 days before the start date of the trip. My name is Britt, I am a rider and racer and was invited to ride and participate in filming a television pilot produced by Kushitani leathers. I also volunteered to write on Kushitanis blog about it. I situated all my work for two weeks to take on the road with me and I packed my riding gear.

The night before I headed up to Long Beach for a production meeting of sorts. There would be three of us living in an RV - a rider (me-Britt), a cameraman (Steve), and the executive producer (Mike). We would have two Freddie school CBR 600s and a Kymco scooter, a lot of camera equipment and our personal belongings. We would haul the bikes in a van to Arizona where we would pick up the RV. The filming would cover riding footage and interviews to be used for Kushitani, Kymco, and a TV pilot. It was all a little vague, but I went along for the ride.

The three of us left in van early Saturday morning and headed out to pick up the
scooter at a dealership. The 600s were already in the van, since Mike had driven to Las Vegas and back two days before to pick them up. At the dealership, we repacked the van and barely squeezed that scooter in there. poor Steve sat in a folding chair between the only two seats in the van, with equipment piled all around, under and on top of him.

About an hour outside of Phoenix where the RV awaited us, we were having a delicious rest stop lunch and I reminded Mike that we were now one hour ahead of California time. This lit a fire under him - the dealership closed at 4 o’clock, 15 minutes away!

There was no waiting until the next day either - they were closed on Sundays. We called and begged the RV place to wait for us, they agreed to wait until 5pm for us, and we made it with 15 mins to spare.

Of course, the generator worked sporadically and the service guys had all gone home. There were no other RVs available so we packed it up and planned to have it serviced along the way if we needed (note foreshadowing here).

After packing up the RV, we got supplies at the grocery store. Steve spent a long time deciding what to buy, Mike and I couldn’t shop at Steves pace so we all split up. Steve bought things like eggs, raw chicken, spices and around 15 potatoes. Mike bought things like a 12 pack of Coke, cigarettes, all the toiletries he forgot and dried soup. They both bought peanut butter and jelly. I thought I acted as the practical travel shopper, and bought canned soup, fruit, crackers and cheese.

We then went out to dinner, exhausted from buying all our food to cook, and headed out to camp at Firebird East raceway for the night.