Senior race... NOT! again, and then Senior race!

Once again, over to the paddock and through scrutineering. I've never been scrutineered three times for the same race before! Actually, if you count the rained off Senior from last year, that's four times!

There were several delays for the weather but finally it cleared up and the tannoy announced that we'd be going for a three lap race. Conditions were great and I was really psyched up for this.. the bike was perfect, on new tyres (Rennsport SC1 inter front, SC2 dry rear) and I had Sidecar Mel and Young Woody in the pits... a crew with a LOT of years of experience between them! Janice and Becca were out marshalling as the Orange Army was a bit thin on the ground.

So we lined up for the start on the Glencrutchery Road, and the flag dropped and le leading pair were away. The next pair 10 seconds later and so on... until someone managed to blow their engine big time off the start. Big bang, huge cloud of smoke, oil everywhere... his bike kept running though and the rider kept going, spreading a nice thick trail of engine oil all the way down Bray Hill. Unbelievably, a few more pairs were given a start and to a man they all slipped and slithered sideways off the start... then reason prevailed and thye race was red flagged. We were all marshaled back into parc ferme and the bikes on the circuit were led back behind a TM.

After a long delay while a road sweeper ran back and forth over the oil spill we were off again, on a race reduced to 2 laps.

Bray was still slippy, but not bad so thanks to the sweepers!!

Other than that it was great fun, the Kawasaki ran like a storm and handled and gripped really well. Set up wise I think we were where we should have been about Wednesday of practice week!!

Finished 48th at about 106.




Rider's eye view! This is from the inside of my helmet, starring several dead Manx bugs. I've just cleaned it out by giving it a good soak in the bath... it was truly rank after soaking up 2 week's worth of sweat and grime.



Here's Sidecar Mel retrieving the bike from scrutineering!



John McGuiness did the prize presentation.

Senior Race.. NOT!

Ach!

After a day at Slick's changing to the big motor, a sighting lap in the car and new tyres at Paul Dedman's I rolled over to the paddock to kip in the van so that the lads in the house could get out for a beer without distubing me.

Got a good night's sleep and woke to a fine but misty morning. I got the bike scrutineered, up on stands, fitetd the tyre warmers and put the bike cover on. Then I got my leathers and other gear checked, blew into the obligatory breathalyser(0.00) and then had a bacon & egg bap in the paddock caff.

The mist didn't clear, so the announcement went out that racing for the day was cancelled. I retrieved my bike, rolled it into the van and then (after the obligatiry cupa and moan about the weather with the other riders) trundled off to my pal Harry's for a cuppa.

Half way through me tea, the mist cleared and the race office phoned; they were going for a 6pm roads closed and a 6.45 start for a 3 lap Senior.

So back to the paddock, more tea, and at 4 I rolled the bike back through scrutineering, kit, breathalyser etc. I swear, the *second* I put the bike on the stand in parc ferme, the rain came on. Just to make a point, the mist came down, and down, and at 5.30 (by which time we could hardly see each other's vans) they scrubbed for the second time.

Got me bike back, etc etc etc.

A real shame; there was a good patch in the middle of the afternoon but there was no way we would have had any kind of a race this evening.

Fingers, toes, everything crossed for tomorrow....

Junior race

In a word, yuk.

Hours late, at 5.30, we got underway with a race reduced to 3 laps. Conditions were amp and patchy, my least favourite... I can ride in the dry, or wet, but half and half always throws me out.

I started with Stu Bainborough, his bike's a hair quicker than mine and so he made St. Ninian's first but I managed to keep him in sight for quite a while... but after Ballacraine, it got much wetter and the throttle turned into a go-sideways lever rather than a go-faster lever. Stu seemed not bothered by this and by the time I made the start of Cronk-Y-Voddy he was just vanishing over the end. Feh!

That set the tone for the rest of the race; I just couldn't get any kind of rhythm going. I'd get a bit of pace on, have a couple of lairy slides, scare meself daft and have to collect meself again.

Rubbish ride, rubbish result.

Good news is the race was won by Manx newcomer Danny Kneen who also won the 400cc newcomers race on Monday. Well done that man!

I'm off up to Slick's now to put the Senior engine in, then I have to get me head straight for Friday.

Well, after a wee delay things got going yesterday about 4pm. The Newcomers race ran for 2 laps in horrendous conditions; the second lap got caught by rain. Good results for a lot of my pals, Ryan Kneen won the 600 race and his brother Dan won the 400. Dan was more than 2 minutes in the lead! Adam Jones just slid into the top ten. Great going lads!

The rain let up for the Senior Classic, which was won by Ryan Farquar on the Paton.

We got out for an untimed practice lap; it was dry all the way to Ramsey but the mountain road was still pretty wet. Not a big problem as I was on inters, but no point in risking it on the last few miles of practice week, so I rolled it a bit and waved at the marshals.

Slick's coming round for breakfast today, then we're off to his shed to swap motors on the bike.

Racing delayed.

We had a day off yesterday; I checked the bike and then we all went to the TT Marshal's Association do in the evening.

They do a fantastic job of feeding 700 marshals, on a budget of about 3p!! I must have spent a fortune on their charity lottery tickets over the years and have never won anything, but I managed to win a smaaart TT paddock jacket this time.

It's Newcomers and Senior Classic race day today, but the weather started off yuk... the organisers have announced that they'll close the roads at 3.15 for a 4pm start, and they'll run the two races a 3 lappers. Our practice lap should get out after that.

I'll trek over to the paddock about half two and see what gives...

Rain again.

We carried this over for Mike Newton on the way back from our last UK trip! It's his boots and orange overalls.



The bike just needed a clean and a check over, assisted as always by Comrade Trotsky.

"I think you need to go up a tooth on yer gearbox sprocket, mate."



We packed the van and headed over to the paddock, to find...

this...



... at Bungalow Bridge.

So we had a cuppa, and came straight home.

They are going to close the roads for an untimed session because a lot of the lads still need to get the laps in to qualify. If they actually do let the bikes out I'm going town to the Central to watch. I'll try to snap a few pics, I don't think motion blur will be much of a problem today!


UPDATE at 18:20: Practice cancelled. Not a big surprise...

Engine swap.

Oh man, busy old day or what!

Yesterday my mate Andy Cowin stopped at Crosby, so I collected his bike in the van. Mine was already booked in for an engine change and his obviously needed looked at so I rolled up to Slick's first thing this morning, unloaded the bikes and did a bunch of preparation like removing all the bodywork.

Another pal, Callum O'Shea was also there with his lovely ZX7R which had sprung an oil leak. Slick did this first, and found the leak was from the gearbox oil seal. The chances of finding a new seal in time to go racing was nil, so Slick pulled the little spring out of the oil seal, snipped a few coils off and re-made the spring, fitted it to the seal and it worked perfectly! Very impressive!

I changed from the Junior engine (600cc) to the Senior engine (636cc) to get a couple of qualifying laps in - of course with Slick at work it was a quick and efficient job.

Here's the maestro at work!



Andy's bike took a wee bit longer but it was buttoned up and tested soon enough.

Two other incidents of note; TT sidecar superstar Dave Molyneaux dropped by and gave us a load of encouragement which lit me up no end... he's a top bloke and it's fantastic to see that lads at the top of the game take time to give a bit of a boost to those of us a bit further down the pecking order... probably bird seed in my case, arf arf! Also the Snap-On van came by and I had to slither in for a bit of a lust at the lovely gear in there... one day I'll win the lottery and then, oh yes, that van will have a BIG delivery to make round my house! I also managed to blag some baseball caps for my pit crew so we're going to be *well* smart on race day.

This done we packed the bikes in the van, dropped by the house to load the rest of the gear and also picked up my assistant for the day, James "Sidecar Mel" Melvin. He's just one of the best blokes you could meet, and incidentally the Isle of Man club sidecar racing champion! We turned up in the paddock to find... this!



Sun! Blue skies! Dry roads! And lots of cheerful racers, of course. The classics and 400's were first out this evening, so we sat in the grandstand and watched them off then headed back to the van to get my gear on and pick up some tools, and some Go-Gels which I've been using for extra energy.

We were off about 7:15; I had Sam Dunlop and another mate Mike Noble (who's been going great guns on my old Suzuki 600) behind me so I was expecting to get caught up fairly soon! Still, I got my head down and got going. Sun glare was really bad up the Ballahutchin road but after the past few days I think I'd be a bit ungracious complaining too much about a bit of sun! I had a pretty lonely run all the way to Ramsey.. got to say the organisers have done an ace job of clearing up yesterday's diesel spill... Sam Dunlop came by at Sky Hill but I managed to tag on for quite a while and he was still in sight when he pulled of at the grandstand. The Mike showed me a front wheel at Braddan... can't have that, so I gave him a dose of Kawasaki power and put him back behind! That was just to prove a point though. I stuck a foot out and waved him through at Union Mills, that way my aging and decrepit eyeballs would have something to aim for through the sun glare up to Glen Vine!

Apart from yellow flags at the Waterworks, the rest of the lap was uneventful.

A good practice on the whole, the engine's great and the suspension tweaks me made worked well. The main problem we have now is the bike is very heavy on the steering at speed -- Quarry Bends for example is *really* hard work -- but informed opinion seems to be that's the way these bikes are. The ride height is about as high as it goes at the back, and the forks are 8mm through the yokes. Hey ho, just have to get them shoulders working!

Tomorrow looks iffy weather wise, the BBC's giving rain from 7pm. We might catch lucky, who knows??