A vacation from the office
This week is the start of a month away from the daily grind of the office. A part of my daily grind involves a lot of airline seat time traveling for the company, so the idea of spending any of my time off in airports just doesn’t appeal to me.
I’ve taken the month of July off for the past 10 years or so. It started off combining a two-week summer company shutdown with a weeklong excursion to Guelph, Ontario, for an adult ice hockey camp followed by a week recovering from the camp. Have you ever gone to a hockey fight and actually seen a game break out! Well, the days of the hockey fantasy camp are behind me. The idea of a month at home piddling with this and that is extremely satisfying these days.
This year’s vacation got off to a very different start than years past. The week of June 30 just happened to also be the first official tire tests for the MotoGP teams to get their first experience on the new Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) road course. Since I don’t have a family ranch in Wyoming to hang out at, what better place to start my month off than out at the Brickyard helping with some track preparations for the Red Bull Indianapolis GP?
Towards the end of the day Monday, I ran into a longtime friend from the motorcycle racing days walking through the pit area. I helped introduce Larry Lawrence to the world of motorcycle road racing way to many years ago at the old Indianapolis Raceway Park road course in Clermont, Ind. While I eventually moved on to the corporate world and away from racing, Larry became fully involved with the sport in the media world. Larry has done a marvelous job of chronicling the history of this sport over the past 20 years and is always enthusiastic about sharing his vast experiences. I think getting Larry and Dave Hillberry at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum together would be an incredible experience.
Larry has taken on a new career opportunity this year as Ben Spies’ publicist. Ben burst onto the U.S. national road-racing scene, turning pro in 2000. He won his first American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) Superbike championship in 2006 defending that championship by a single point for a second crown in 2007. Currently leading the 2008 AMA Superbike championship, Ben was afforded the opportunity to fill in for an injured Loris Capirossi at the British GP June 22 for the Rizla Suzuki team, finishing 14th and gaining his first-ever MotoGP points. Ben is here in Indianapolis this week for the MotoGP tests and will be riding for the Rizla Suzuki team at Laguna Seca, Calif., and the Red Bull Indianapolis GP in September.
Larry took me over to the Rizla Suzuki suite and introduced me to both Ben and his mother, Mary Spies. What a wonderful lady! We sat and talked about this and that. Well, folks, all I can say is Mary has a wonderful, white1958 Corvette she’s very proud of that far out-styles Ben’s green 1967 Corvette that sits and gathers dust. However, her pride in her son Ben shines the brightest!
Well, there’s going to be a full week of MotoGP test action at the Brickyard, and if you’re anywhere near West 16th Street this week, you’ll be able to see the action from the south end of the road course by the Hall of Fame Museum parking lot.
Check out the details at www.redbullindianapolisgp.com and see you all next week.
Greg
Introduction
Hello all, and welcome to my first installment for the redbullindianapolisgp.com blog. Actually this is my first-ever blog, so this should be a lot of fun in the months to come, sharing my activities leading up to the inaugural Red Bull Indianapolis GP.
My name is Greg Sickmeier, and I am a lifelong resident of the Indianapolis area. In fact, I spent my first six weeks in this world across Georgetown Road from the front straight of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway a long, long time ago. Maybe this explains my love of racing and my need for speed!
A bit about me: I am a graduate engineer from General Motors Institute in Flint, Mich., now known as Kettering University. I’ve worked for Allison Transmission, another Speedway company, for 33 years in the service, sales, marketing and training organizations. James Allison, our company’s founder, is also one of the founders of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1908. I just can’t seem to get to far from my roots on Georgetown Road!
During the early 1980s, I raced a Honda CB750F in AMA Pro Superbike and ran a lot of WERA and CCS events during a 12-year time period. At a few of the later events I attended, the Hayden’s were showing up, with Tommy, Nicky and Roger Lee in tow. They were on 125’s, and the youngest ones couldn’t even reach the ground. Someone had to hold the bikes up to get them started and catch them in the pits when they came back in. Earl’s Race Team was a very shoestring operation, with Earl’s old Ford box van packed to the ceiling. Wow, who would have known that all three of the boys would have turned into such great riders and sportsmen!
Another midlife crisis
I drifted away from motorcycles for a few years and have played a lot of ice hockey over the past 14 years or so. A couple years ago, I bought another street bike, and now this impulse purchase has turned into another serious midlife crisis! Four Honda’s, three Yamaha’s and two Ducati’s later in the past three years, I am thoroughly enjoying this second go-around with the motorcycles and the local sport bike scene.
Do you wanna be in the movies?
My involvement with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Red Bull Indianapolis GP started last summer with a phone call from a senior IMS staff member about borrowing my ’07 Honda CBR1000RR Repsol replica motorcycle for a promotional event. Boy, was I excited when I found out what was in the works! That photo shoot turned into a full-blown video session on the “Yard of Bricks” at the track. Yup, that’s me in the Red Bull Indianapolis GP Event Introduction video on the Repsol with Stephan Gregoire on the 1910 Thor. Check it out!
In future installments, I’ll share some more on that experience, along with many other experiences since then and many more experiences to come as we all count down to the inaugural Red Bull Indianapolis GP on Sept. 14, 2008.
I hope you all stay tuned each week here on redbullindianapolisgp.com for “The Experience.”
Greg