Photo Credit

I've been taking liberties. Some of the photos I've shown were kindly sent to me by Sebastien at TrueBikerSpirit.com and I haven't credited him.

His website is here : truebikerspirit.com

Thank you Seb.

Forgive me Father for I have sinned

When I'm eating cat food as a pensioner I'll be able to look back on 2012 as the turning point.

Good Friday at Spa

Pictures tell a thousand words, or something like that. In light of the fact I'm feeling pretty useless at blogging right now here are pictures. Lots of them.

How does a grown man become a blogger ??

Anyway......... here goes:

The track. A slight improvement over Willow Springs. They even have toilet paper.

Speaking of the Lav: 

"I'm Qualified and I'm Ancient"........

I'd like to say we were studying the track layout but we were probably looking at the lunch menu.

Oh those English.......

What a team.

One of Rick's qualifying sessions. He was 12th quickest in the rain. He did a rain dance as he's super fast in the wet. Good work. Too bad the dance didn't work for later in the weekend.

Here's Jordy our Team Manager testing all systems.

Those spotlights: what was I thinking?? They came in handy though when the main light blew a fuse in night qualifying. 

Trackday Guzzis.

The least powerful and the loudest. I may have to change that. Well, the power part at least.

Pit lane

Team Marlin our neighbors, actually that's neighbours. They are English. In case you hadn't noticed.

 More English neighbours. Fast!!. The organizers group teams by nationality.

Team Glam and Phase One. More Brits. 

Crazy Harry, left, and Big Boy Nigel. My errrr Pit Crew. We actually had really good, fast fuel stops. Not that you would know it looking at these two.

My brother Mark. Again attending claiming to be team fixer but more likely looking for baked goods. He's a soft touch too. Jordy talked him into buying him a hotdog the size of a small babys arm. Good work Jordy.

Oh those English.

Rick looks lovingly at the bike

Rick is probably cursing that it stopped raining.

More neighbours. 3 engines and 12 hours later there were still problems.

Rain. What me worry ??

Here's Ralph and his GS. The GS suffered a bent valve in qualifying. Nigel hustled up a Kawasaki from a Dutch friend for Ralph and Gary to finish qualifying. The Dutch friend took 2 seconds to decide whether to let a stranger use his bike. Doesn't get better than that !!

Vince, left and Nigel. They are only friends honest. 

It looks good but didn't finish. Might be time for a Guzzi.

Here Rick warms his hands on 200W.

Friday was great. We qualified 50 something out of 70. Rick learnt the track and the bike had no major issues. When I'm more in the mood I'll add more detail.

Next up. Race Day.