What a strange couple of days.
I left work early in the afternoon to meet Nick at 3:30 at the Michael Wood services on the M5 for our IAM track day. Our plan was to pick up the A46 at Evesham and then make our way across country with a short stretch of M69/M1, before getting onto the A roads that would take us to our hotel at Alford. The first part of the journey went according to plan and we stopped at some services near Leicester - how do you write a spitting noise? (I'm a Bath Rugby fan) - for a coffee and fuel stop.
After a drink and a stretch, we prepared to saddle up for a short run round to the fuel pumps. As we were sorting out our luggage, a short, scottish lady with a well presented cleavage drifted over and started chatting to us about how wonderful bikes were. I say chatting, it was more a stream of conciousness and felt a little like being machine-gunned with words. Gillian's boyfriend is a corporal in the army and she is training to be a lawyer. If we start our engines, she'll probably cum.
I had a loosely planned route across to the hotel, but Gillian pulled out a map and in her best "you don't want to be doing that" manner, suggested that we might want to travel via Boston, where she lives and she could follow us in her car (although she had suggested that she'd be travelling over a ton, so she'd leave us on that basis). O=K... I think we both agreed on the basis that at the first sign of traffic, we'd be off and gone, but it was not to be. An ominous sign of trouble appeared when Nick tried to start his bike - nothing, nada. Luckily, a 400 is not too difficult to bump start, so with it buzzing again, we made our way round to the pumps. Filled and ready, we set off again. Nick bounced the 400 into life and we set off down the slip road, with Gillian following in our wake. As I entered the flow of traffic, I noticed in my mirror that Nick was slowing to a stop on the slip. Bugger. I pulled off the motorway at our planned junction (luckily very close) and pulled into a layby. A quick phone call later established that a fuse had blown and Nick was going to replace it and try and get running. I'd wait at the layby for now.
Another phone call and it seemed likely that it was the rectifier - a common fault on these little Hondas apparently. Nick's bike would be recovered to a specialist 20 miles north of Cadwell and he'd stay with Gillian(!) I thought I'd better give the hotel a ring - booking, what booking? Fortunately, they have a room, hoorah! I chose for my original route for the ride across; lovely sweeping bends punctuated by small market towns and 30 limits. Just after nine I rolled into Alford and parked next to three other bikes in the hotel car park. After a Guiness and a packet of crisps, I was settled down to the dulcet tones of the local youf in the market square.
Woken by the people putting up the market stalls at 5AM (what the fuck? No stall holders showed up for hours), I paid for the room, chatted briefly to my fellow bikers and sat down to a full English. We set off together for the track and made our way through the lanes to emerge near the track entrance. We rolled down to the pits (the A group go out first) and we'd all planned to get at the back of the advanced group in one of the left-most of five lines of six bikes. Everybody else had the same idea, so we wound up in group 2. Hey ho. For those of you who've done days like this, it's a fairly standard format, register, pay for photographer (not great) and wander down to the briefing. This was a training day rather than a track day as such, so the only thing I had to tape up was the SV's headlight (I can't turn it off).
The morning consisted of fixed sessions with no overtaking learning the lines and checking a few techniques. It was a nice way to ease up the pace. I did get told off for being a bit too "Whitham or Walker-esque", throwing the bikes sharply into the corners with a late turn in. I was turning in after virtually every cone that they'd put out to illustrate the correct (in most cases) place to drop the bike into the corner. To be honest, that's what I love to do on track but it does look a bit wild and is not very IAM. I did smooth it out for the afternoon session and still managed to have fun whilst passing some faster, better equipped bikes.
Later in the morning session, Nick turned up with Gillian. He'd slept on her couch (I believe him) and she'd provided his lift to the track. Nick's bike needed about £300 worth of work (£50 for three hours labour is brill) and would be ready in the afternoon. The next time I saw Nick, I was sipping a Dr.Pepper (what's the worst that can happen) whilst watching group B go out. There on track was Nick on his little yellow flyer, buzzing past. I felt a presence on my shoulder and looked down to see Gillian next to me. She proceeded to tell me what a bastard Nick was. He hadn't offered her any petrol money and had issued directives to her to drive him everywhere. Not only that, his sister-in-law was living with a drug dealer who said that he had killed someone and Nick hadn't reported it. Wha? I did encourage Nick to give the nice lady some petrol money just in case.
I decided to leave at four PM rather than go out for the last session. It's a four and a half hour ride home and it had been a long day. I'd had lots of fun and was impressed by the guy on an RS100 as well as the ex-chairman on an R1200RT who used up one of his hero blobs keeping up with me. I made sure that I rode well within my own limits, so I've only got a little flat spot on a toe-slider to show for it. I'd highly recommend Hopp Rider Training. It was a well organised day that everyone got something from and we only had two minor incidents during the whole day.
I left work early in the afternoon to meet Nick at 3:30 at the Michael Wood services on the M5 for our IAM track day. Our plan was to pick up the A46 at Evesham and then make our way across country with a short stretch of M69/M1, before getting onto the A roads that would take us to our hotel at Alford. The first part of the journey went according to plan and we stopped at some services near Leicester - how do you write a spitting noise? (I'm a Bath Rugby fan) - for a coffee and fuel stop.
After a drink and a stretch, we prepared to saddle up for a short run round to the fuel pumps. As we were sorting out our luggage, a short, scottish lady with a well presented cleavage drifted over and started chatting to us about how wonderful bikes were. I say chatting, it was more a stream of conciousness and felt a little like being machine-gunned with words. Gillian's boyfriend is a corporal in the army and she is training to be a lawyer. If we start our engines, she'll probably cum.
I had a loosely planned route across to the hotel, but Gillian pulled out a map and in her best "you don't want to be doing that" manner, suggested that we might want to travel via Boston, where she lives and she could follow us in her car (although she had suggested that she'd be travelling over a ton, so she'd leave us on that basis). O=K... I think we both agreed on the basis that at the first sign of traffic, we'd be off and gone, but it was not to be. An ominous sign of trouble appeared when Nick tried to start his bike - nothing, nada. Luckily, a 400 is not too difficult to bump start, so with it buzzing again, we made our way round to the pumps. Filled and ready, we set off again. Nick bounced the 400 into life and we set off down the slip road, with Gillian following in our wake. As I entered the flow of traffic, I noticed in my mirror that Nick was slowing to a stop on the slip. Bugger. I pulled off the motorway at our planned junction (luckily very close) and pulled into a layby. A quick phone call later established that a fuse had blown and Nick was going to replace it and try and get running. I'd wait at the layby for now.
Another phone call and it seemed likely that it was the rectifier - a common fault on these little Hondas apparently. Nick's bike would be recovered to a specialist 20 miles north of Cadwell and he'd stay with Gillian(!) I thought I'd better give the hotel a ring - booking, what booking? Fortunately, they have a room, hoorah! I chose for my original route for the ride across; lovely sweeping bends punctuated by small market towns and 30 limits. Just after nine I rolled into Alford and parked next to three other bikes in the hotel car park. After a Guiness and a packet of crisps, I was settled down to the dulcet tones of the local youf in the market square.
Woken by the people putting up the market stalls at 5AM (what the fuck? No stall holders showed up for hours), I paid for the room, chatted briefly to my fellow bikers and sat down to a full English. We set off together for the track and made our way through the lanes to emerge near the track entrance. We rolled down to the pits (the A group go out first) and we'd all planned to get at the back of the advanced group in one of the left-most of five lines of six bikes. Everybody else had the same idea, so we wound up in group 2. Hey ho. For those of you who've done days like this, it's a fairly standard format, register, pay for photographer (not great) and wander down to the briefing. This was a training day rather than a track day as such, so the only thing I had to tape up was the SV's headlight (I can't turn it off).
The morning consisted of fixed sessions with no overtaking learning the lines and checking a few techniques. It was a nice way to ease up the pace. I did get told off for being a bit too "Whitham or Walker-esque", throwing the bikes sharply into the corners with a late turn in. I was turning in after virtually every cone that they'd put out to illustrate the correct (in most cases) place to drop the bike into the corner. To be honest, that's what I love to do on track but it does look a bit wild and is not very IAM. I did smooth it out for the afternoon session and still managed to have fun whilst passing some faster, better equipped bikes.
Later in the morning session, Nick turned up with Gillian. He'd slept on her couch (I believe him) and she'd provided his lift to the track. Nick's bike needed about £300 worth of work (£50 for three hours labour is brill) and would be ready in the afternoon. The next time I saw Nick, I was sipping a Dr.Pepper (what's the worst that can happen) whilst watching group B go out. There on track was Nick on his little yellow flyer, buzzing past. I felt a presence on my shoulder and looked down to see Gillian next to me. She proceeded to tell me what a bastard Nick was. He hadn't offered her any petrol money and had issued directives to her to drive him everywhere. Not only that, his sister-in-law was living with a drug dealer who said that he had killed someone and Nick hadn't reported it. Wha? I did encourage Nick to give the nice lady some petrol money just in case.
I decided to leave at four PM rather than go out for the last session. It's a four and a half hour ride home and it had been a long day. I'd had lots of fun and was impressed by the guy on an RS100 as well as the ex-chairman on an R1200RT who used up one of his hero blobs keeping up with me. I made sure that I rode well within my own limits, so I've only got a little flat spot on a toe-slider to show for it. I'd highly recommend Hopp Rider Training. It was a well organised day that everyone got something from and we only had two minor incidents during the whole day.
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