Left work early yesterday afternoon for a scenic drive across the Peak District to Liverpool for teh evening sailing to the Isle of Man.
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| Trusty Chev-Dawg and the gurls... |
Due to poor conditions, and a broken engine, the ferry departed an hour late and the 2.5 hour journey took 4 hours. Lovely 70mph winds and a big swell greeted us once we were out in open sea.
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| Views from the van... |
Bobbing like a cork on the Irish Sea wasn't too good for me... or my £6.99 dinner. Two hours into the trip and I chundered, puked, vomited, barfed, blew chunks and spewed until I was retching and the occasional gob of Valentino-yellow bile came up. Fuck me1 That was a long 24 hours. was I glad to get off that boat!
A few months ago, I'd organised and payed for the house on Bray Hill that I'd rented last year. The owner called last week... they're going through a rough time and have more than one family tragedy... could I find other accommodation?
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| All calm down the Mersey mouth... |
I'm one lucky sonofagun and within a few hours I managed to find another house just a few minutes down the road in Braddan. It has no garage, but my original landlord generously offered me his garage. The gods smile on me :-)
So... I'm signed-on, riders briefing done, technical briefing done, a bit of grocery and fuel shopping done... I'm catching up with my mates over a cup 'o tea and it starts to rain. Piss and bollocks!
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| Getting kit skrootineered is part of signing on... |
The forecast isn't good for the week either with Monday and Tuesday looking to be the best days toi get qualification times in. Not going to get caught out like I did in 2009.
"Bing-bong!" Paddock tannoy announcement; "This evening's practice session has been cancelled due to averse weather conditions. Thank you.". You're welcome. And I was wearing a tee shirt in teh sunshine just an hour ago. Bah! Fucking IOM weather!
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| Candy gets a new paint-job.. and new wheels, brakes, forks, swing-arm... ;-) |
So... I sit out the worst of the rain... then load the bikes back onto the trailer. They're wet and slippery... so I drop Suzy V on her side. Nice one! Plonker.
Bikes back on the trailer and I head back to the garage on Bray Hill to offload all my crap and setup a wee bike prep workshop. While maneuvering Candy off the trailer, she too goes down with a sickening crunch of fiberglass splintering. Tremendous!
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| Offload the bikes... load the bikes... offload the bikes... |
Once in the garage and organised but wet, I dry off the bikes and check them out. Broken clutch lever on Suzy V. Just the tip so nothing a file can't sort out. Footpeg took impact too... hmmm... peg's a bit loose... let's get it off and tighten it. So I go and strip the footpeg bracket bolt. Great!
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| Setting up base camp for the fortnight |
Candy just suffered a bit of concrete rash and small split in the fairing. Duct tape sorts that. It's been lasing it down for a few hours now and the ground is all waterlogged - I hope the forecast of a good Monday and Tuesday is right... but then... I hope it's wrong and we have fantastic weather so we can get some practice in.
Welcome back to the Isil-of-pizzle!
man, two dropped bikes, and a stripped thread.
ReplyDeleteyou got all ur bad luck outta the way in one go!!.
hope thats it now.
have a good couple o wks racin.
This is normal for the Manx - the place is just like that. Part of what makes racing here such a challenge. I visited the Fairies today... so all will be well!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the well wishes!