Cadwell Trackday, 9 June 2005
Yes, I know it's been a while since the trackday itself, but I've been waiting to get hold of the photos.
We stayed overnight the night before at the
Admiral Horny, Rodcastle Admiral Rodney, Horncastle which was very pleasant and well priced. I passed around my copy of the Motorcycle News as I was sort of featured in it in an article on the Kawasaki ZRX1200R.
On the day itself, I drove up to the circuit at around 7.30am to get myself in place to help out with signing on before handing out wristbands and getting changed into my new leathers. During the briefing, Geoff singled me out as someone to avoid following my 'off' at Mallory.
For the first time, I was due to be in the Fast Group along with the racers and track bikes on slick tyres. But you know what? It was much better there than in the Intermediates as the Fast Group (me notwithstanding) know what they're doing and overtake safely. Marvellous!
I've uploaded some video footage: most of
one fast group session is here (11 minutes, 41MB WMV file).
What's that? The photos? Oh, if you insist:
Click on the photo to go to two larger versions.
All in all, it was great fun and the weather was superb.
More Photos
Control youselves!
Yes, it's Captain Blue in his new riding gear! w00t!
Just got backHiding behind the visor
New Gloves!
So John at the Motorcycle Clothing Centre rang me this morning to tell me that my Richa GP Race Gloves had arrived.
These are Richa's top of the range sports glove "featuring Kangaroo leather to palm and fingers for extra protection. Carbon protectors to knuckles, fingers, wrists and palm. Vented leather section. Double wrist closure."
Fresh from the packet, they fit like, erm, a glove and are soooo comfortable. They look as though they'll do an even better job than my old Richa gloves did if I have another off.
New Helmet!
Well good to their word (and for an extra tenner) Lings at Lowestoft delivered my Arai RX7 Corsair in Sport Blue like this one:
At least my head's not big: this was a Medium shell like last time.
It also came with a free cleaning kit, Arai baseball cap, lanyard, water bottle and a voucher to swap for a cool bag and seat combination as I bought it from an Arai 5 Star Centre.
Marvellous!
New Boots (no, no new panties)
It seems that my replacement Oxtar TCS Evo boots are not to be: despite ordering them well over a week ago, there aren't any in the country still in my size - I'm a 43 euro normally and I was in the Oxtars these were replacing, but the slightly different toe slider arrangement seemed to mean that the inisde of the boot was smaller, so I'd ordered a 44 instead.
So as the thought of trying to do next week's Cadwell trackday in trainers was too scary and - dahling - I couldn't possibly wear red boots with
blue leathers, I bought some slightly cheaper Gaerne G-RS boots as worne by WSB rider Chris Vermeulen and other top flight riders:
These also have the added benefit of coming with spare plastic toe sliders for tracks where the owners don't like titanium ones.
New Nessies
So the nice man from UPS arrived this afternoon with my new Arlen Ness 1790 two-piece leathers like these ones:
That's the proper colour, but for an idea of how the suit looks from the back, this is pretty good (if slightly off, colour-wise):
Only downside with the new ones is that there's no external pockets like there were on the old ones. Old, haha, I mean
the ones I got in January.
Oh and the Euro 56 size I got maps to XXL it seems...
