|
Ride out - ISLE of MAN June 2000
The IOM (Isle of Man) was an experience as all bike trips are. The trip itself is a
whole story unto itself as anyone who has
traveled big miles on a bike will tell you. If only we could get everyone from Go Star to go one time it would be
the biggest laugh of the century. I hope you all feel very guilty. As usual you have to lose someone during a bike trip, I left
Smithy before we even got on the ferry. Smithy was chilling at home underestimating the time etc and we basically rode
290+ miles separately. We met on the boat in the morning at around 6:00am, I was sleeping on the floor in some room.
This floor thing was a foretaste of what was to come as during our camping my
tent became waterlogged and I had to sleep on the campsite kitchen floor which was basically an open room. In the morning I could hear
German and
French voices talking as they came in the room, they must have been laughing there heads off. However they could not see my face as I was
sealed in the sleeping bag like a mummy.
Anyway we got off the ferry at 6:00am and went looking for camp sites, within ten minutes we came across some closed of road
and saw race bikes going past. This felt unreal as I am used to race practise between 9:00 - 10:15am for the normal circuits. At the TT practise is sometimes
from 5:00 - 7:00am. This is true grit and respect to the riders,
not an activity for night people.
Basically the 6 days was fun even though it rained just about all the time and I had to buy a proper tent from a Millets shop. I was told by the locals that you should bring
wellies when
you come here as the weather can do all sorts. I would recommend that a person do a bit of camping practise before going as you may need to
cook within your tent etc due to heavy rain. I would have taken the piss if all the Go Star members would have been there but again they could also laugh at me
sleeping
on the kitchen floor.
We met lots of people on the campsite and had a drink or two with them, saw topless girls on the prom and rode around some of the TT course. Due to rain Mad Sunday was cancelled and the mountain course was closed off. The racing was good Smithy & I travelled
all over the island to check out the racing from different spots. We saw thousands of other bikers doing the same thing.
The average shop and bank on this island have pictures or even the bikes within their shops.
A truly biking island more so than Spain but then it's a smaller place with a history of TT from around
1908.
I have been thinking about it and would like to race the course and am now planning to make a historic racing visit by Go Star Racing.
We will be back.....
Ian |
