Daytona, day 7 continued

Friday evening

So, you last left me with a brand new rain-soaked scooter that wouldn’t start. You made me walk-in the rain- to the hotel where there was some BMW shin-dig that we would be schmoozing at. Well, I did get there, and it didn’t take long either.

The Marriot hosted a BMW pool party, but since it was pouring rain, it was held inside. There was a mexican food buffet and a dessert table complete with a chocolate fountain and cubes of melon to for chocolate fondue. There were cups of toothpicks, but no one seemed to recognize the fondue fountain for what it was. I saw people with plates of un-chocolated melon. I also so people stick spoons in the fountain, cups…but no melons on spears! c’mon people, FONDUE - learn it, love it.

But I digress. I arrived and found Mike, discussed the scooter and what to do with it while I heaped some Mexican food on my plate and dug in. We decided to call John Stoddard at Kymco to come pick it up, in addition to the scooter Mike rode over, since it was pouring and we weren’t riding the 5 miles to the RV park in the rain (although we did have waterproof jackets!)

The place filled up, I mean really filled up, and the BMW Formula Xtreme race team members Nate Kern, Brian Parriot and Richard Cooper signed spanky new BMW hardback books on BMW racing. Earlier, Nate joined us at our table and discussed attending the track day at Jennings in two days to get some onboard footage of him for the show (but that didn’t pan because he crashed and broke his hand the next day.) I think Coopers bike was in the room, but I honestly can’t remember which number was on the bike.

BMW raffled off a bunch of stuff. I joined a table of three older guys and they all had winning raffle tickets. In fact, they had a fourth ticket they gave to me, which also was a winning ticket. I won an XL BMW polo shirt, which I promptly gave right back to them.

Simultaneously, the AMA supercorss was being held in the raceway stadium. Evidently it was the muddiest supercross to date. We could see from outside the track was just a quagmire of goo. Ask Chad Reed about it, he’ll tell ya.

When the supercross was over, Kymco came to get the scooter Mike had and I met them over at the misbehaving scooter, which mysteriously started with no problems. I didn’t care we couldnt figure out what was wrong before (it wasnt me, I swear) as long as I didnt break it, I’m happy. I went back to wait for over an hour and a half for a taxi. The hotel receoption desk called our cab three times and finally called a different service. It was 11 at night and I was fed up with waiting. Mike tried to tell me to be Zen about it but I wsaid Zen doesnt get you anywhere, and walked out into the rain to the main road. Immediately two empty cabs drove by and I hailed us one. Ha, zen indeed.

Back at the RV, Steve hadn’t wanted to ride nor drive through the rain so he stayed at the RV by himself for 8 hours and cooked, cleaned and cleaned some more. We came back and drank beer, then went to sleep. It rained all night and the RV leaked everywhere.