Rained first session Friday, apart from that clear blue skies and sunshine :smuggrin: Alas, midday tomorrow it's back to crap and cold Booooooo!
What a great few days. If you get the chance, go and do a foreign track event. This was my first one and I can see why people don't bother with the UK ones. 25 degrees, sunshine, loads of track time (ish) and the beers €2:50 a pint....in the hotel! Good stuff? The circuit was/is great. I was a bit concerned that with 4 days going round in the same circles it might get a bit dull but its a circuit where you can really improve by working at getting the lines right and exploring your personal limits as you get more familiar/relaxed. The company was great (especially the guys who convinced my Israeli room mate that Alistair was a Turkish name when he asked who he was sharing with......I was called 'Turkish' for the rest of the trip) and socially it was a blast. Hotel was clean and 24 degree sunshine was wonderful. Did I mention the circuit was amazing? Cafe at the circuit was great Amazing photography (you get what you pay for.......I said to the wife) Meeting @Matt DWrecker and cheering him on in the Race for Fun Not so good? It was all a bit slow to get started each morning. I'd have loved to have got an extra session in each day which could have happened if the briefing had been on time and the first session was got out on track. Finding out that the reason my tyre was knackered was because the guy who I paid to do my suspension hadnt put on any pre-load. There were too many crashes. I don't know why....people just kept coming off which normally stopped the session. The first was day 1, session 1, group 1. 2 broken ankles because he was riding like a twat and highsided.....and this was in novice group. There were at least 2 collar bones, a dislocated shoulder, various finger injuries and there were more crashes where people got away with it too. Mot to mention a lot of very fucked bikes. One of my measures for success is coming away with me and my bike intact. Im not the quickest obviously but my times improved from 2:15 on day 1 session 1 to a 1:57:3 at the end of day 2 and I felt safe doing it. At no point did I push beyond what I new my limits were as I improved. I was consistently doing 1:58's on days 3 and 4 and I was happy with that.
Ta. I really worked on body position over the first couple of days. That was day 1 so hopefully it got better.
work have given us the 2nd Jan off 'for free' and I've realised I have 3 days leave I can take over to next year plus I still have 1.5 days to take this year Got the whole of Christmas off to :Angelic:
I'm taking 1 shift off (4 Days), this in fact gives me 12 days off in a row, but only uses 48hrs Holiday allowence (4 x 12hrs), I am taking time off to attend all the events in the Burt Munro Challenge ( Burt Munro Challenge | The Largest Motorcycle Rally in The Southern Hemisphere… )These include a sealed hill climb, a beach race, Super Cross, circuit racing, sidecar and solo speedway, and a street race, so plenty to see and do, bike and car shows, numerous piss-ups, but the best bit is I still have over 240hrs of holidays yet to take this season before August 2015. Is that smug enough for you?
Do you fancy writing something up for the front news page? Saying that, if you do it well, you could sell it to a UK bike mag
:Shamefullyembarrased: Sorry mate, I feckin hate writing/typing, so unlikely to do it, plus I don't have a camera . I is a luddite me :Smuggrin:.
Camera on phone, but wouldn't know how to get onto internet anyway. If you keep an eye on the website I linked to, they update it thru the events I think.
You have a few days to learn What phone you got and you could email pictures to Matt I'm having no excuses You can do it
