Isle of Man TT 2011 - Mega-Blog Part 3

[khaylock]

Warning! This is a vanity publishing blog entry. Don't blame me if it bores you rigid. This is as much for me to read back to myself in my addled dotage as it is for wider interest. If you stumble across it and enjoy it, though... please let me know!

Cheers,


Ken

Actually, I neglected to mention that the hot favourite for Monday's first 600 Supersport race, Michael Dunlop, had serious bike issues both before and again after the red flag, and failed to finish, but New Zealander Bruce Anstey, who many people suggested was no longer a contender, beat all comers to win the Supersport race. I'm a big fan of Bruce, because he gave the Bloor incarnation of the Triumph company their first TT win (and the first by any Triumph for a couple of generations) in 2003. He's also an old-school real roads racer. He turns up to a handful of high profile road race meetings a year, climbs onto a race bike, usually is up the front and in the mix for the win, and then doesn't sit on a motorcycle again until maybe 6 months later when he lines up for practice for some other real road race. No pre-season testing, no training regime, no PR bullshit.

In between the two races, and I apologise for mentioning cars when talking about the TT, Subaru - who had made a big investment in corporate sponsorship at the TT this year - had local boy and rally ace Mark Higgins do a second of three fast (in fact, record setting) laps of the course in a Subaru Imprezza WRX, covered in cameras. If you watch this video, it is pretty impressive stuff. But not as impressive as the 150 mph+ out of control moment that he caught and saved on the way down Bray Hill! Incidentally, in the reprise of that moment, at 4:09 in the following video, if you look to the left you can clearly see motomuffin sitting on the grass behind the railings on the left...

Michael Dunlop's compensation for his shocker of a Supersport 600 TT 1 was later in the day when he won the Superstock TT on the fire-breathing monster that is the Kawasaki ZX10R. Here's the story of that race...

Anyway, when we left our hapless hero and heroine, they had just crawled into their tents. Noting that the wind had got up signicantly, I took the precaution of deploying all the guy ropes and sealing up the flap on the 'storage area' portion of my tent. In due course it got even blowier, and then in the wee small hours the heavens opened and there was a full on 'perfect storm' style deluge, with water coming down in large quantities like it was being fired from a pressure washer. Later the rain subsided to a more normal biblical deluge, and gradually petered out in the morning. On the plus side, the 5am chorus of hard-ragged motorcycles was surprisingly muted on Tuesday morning. On the minus side, at about 8am, the... less than entirely happy... voice of motomuffin assailed my ears from outside my tent. 'Good morning!' she said. 'Good Morning!' I replied, cheerfully. "Were you nice and warm last night?". "To begin with, yes..." she said. "But I'm going to need a new tent!".

Oh shit. Yep, my old reliable tent, the one I lent to motomuffin to reduce the risk of a new cheap tent being crap, decided to pick the middle of the deluge to give up being waterproof entirely. Disaster! So motomuffin and much of her stuff got soaked. There was a great deal of clearing up needed to happen in her tent, because the groundsheet conspired with the rain to form a shallow bath of icy cold water. F*****g horrible. So far, I'd lent her a bike that ate its electrics, a sleeping bag that froze her tits off and then a tent that tried to drown her. I can't blame her for the somewhat... stressed... tone.

Once we had cleared up the tent, and motomuffin had stuck certain things out to dry in the renewed sunshine, we headed for Millets again. This time, motomuffin bought herself a cheap tent. I almost certainly should have bought that for her by way of cringing apology but it really didn't occur to me at the time. We left the tent and a couple of other doo-dads at the shop to pick up later, went next door for a good breakfast, and then made our way down to the Villa-Marina to watch TT3D: Closer to the Edge. Now, I had already seen it twice at this point, and I've waxed lyrical about it in the past on Livejournal, but seeing it actually on the island, in a smallish cinema absolutely packed with TT visiting bikers (and they ran 3 showings a day every day for a fortnight, all packed) certainly added to the atmosphere. I think motomuffin, who hadn't ever seen it (it's not made it to the USA yet) was fairly blown away by it.

For me, it's a top, top film and it definitely bears repeat viewing.

On the way back to grab the tent, we were walking down the prom and passed this...



I think it's an old MAC, but I'm no expert at all. If it is an MAC, my father used to ride one. Comments from Velocette spotters welcome...



Tent collected from Millets, we had some lunch, before heading back to Cronk Dhoo and ripping down/throwing away the disgraced tent and erecting the new Millets special in its place. In amongst all that, I also phoned Jason Griffiths Motorcycles, optimistically expecting that the bike might be ready. He'd ordered the parts on Monday morning, and he was expecting them in 48 hours, so the earliest they would arrive would be Wednesday. I communicated the bad news to motomuffin who was so far not twitching as badly as I feared she would be about not having a bike to ride, but... well, I was getting ever guiltier and she would start getting the DTs soon if she didn't get a bike to ride...

Much of the afternoon was sacrificed to trying to repair the damage of the previous night, but the new tent was looking pretty cool and in due course we were able to head into town for an evening appointment with the Red Arrows and then later the Purple Helmets, with a cameo from the White Helmets on the prom; remember that I missed them earlier in the week? Well, this was supposed to be my chance!

We arrived on a chilly windswept prom in plenty of time to park the bike and find a spot to watch the Reds do their show. Today the cloud base was low and one of their pilots was grounded by an attack of the squits, so we got 8 planes not 9 and a very flat display. Still brilliant of course, but not their best work, so the video below was made two days earlier by somebody with a radio scanner at the Red Arrows display over Ramsey at the other end of the island, which took place in brilliant sunshine and a clear blue sky....

The Reds did their thing at 7:30 pm, so naturally we were expecting the White Helmet/Purple Helmet combo to follow. But no. What followed first was a repeat of the previous nights TT highlights on the giant screen, and then a couple of freestyle motocrossers started jumping off a big ramp, accompanied by a 'High Energy' American commentary. Actually, I was blissfully ignorant, but motomuffin tipped me the wink that it wasn't even a real American accent - the guy was putting it on! I reckon there was about ten minutes to be filled by these two guys jumping over a big ramp covered in Monster Energy logos, accompanied by Mr Whoop'n'Holler. We actually got two hours of it, most of it to a Stony faced crowd who had seen two hours of it last night and the night before as well and were hoping it would stop right now.

Myself and motomuffin went and sheltered behind the glass wall of the Villa Marina complex while we waited hopefully for the fake yank to accidentally choke to death on his microphone. That would have been totally gnarly dude!! Big round of applause for that one everybody!! Wow, that was a double nick-nack into microphone down the oesophagus! Woooo-hooooooooo!! Let me hear everybody cheer or we won't be able to get another stunt in here. OK, no I'm lying... even though nobody moves a muscle, we'll be here for another hour and a half (or is that month and a half) because we have to fill in time.

It wasn't all homicidal thoughts about the commentator. motomuffin amused herself by having me set this up.



Eventually, somewhat after the allotted time, the White Helmets did a vignette from their display along the prom, although of course the lack of space, and the surface curtailed their activities slightly. Our biggest issue, though, was that because we had gone and hidden out of the icy wind behind the glass wall of Villa Marina, we were stuffed for a decent view of what was happening.

After the White Helmets had done their bit to demonstrate their admittedly very impressive skills (stunting seems to have become quite passe these days, and the preserve of squids in baggy jeans, but the White helmets were doing it before anybody else, and they are still doing it now, and Troy-Corser stylee stand-up wheelies ARE still very, very cool if done in an immaculate dress uniform on a vintage 1970's Norton Commando - as are pyramids of riders on several Commandos ridden in formation).

Then it was what should have - for me - been the highlight of the evening... the Purple Helmets. We'd waited long enough, and I'd bigged them up enough to motomuffin. Sadly, they were late, totally disorganised and clearly hadn't really rehearsed the cut down version of their show so it didn't really hang together at all. That and of course we still couldn't see it properly.

Arse. I've no idea what motomuffin thought. Probably 'I stood here freezing to death for

that

?'

I decided to make an early run from the prom for the campsite... and bed. I didn't detect any resistance from motomuffin. After another brief electronics charging jag on my part, and watching the ITV4+1 version of the Superstock TT highlights, I went to bed. motomuffin was already rocking her new tent, which had the major advantage of being waterproof. (Details, details...).

Wednesday dawned unsettled, with a triumvirate of races due - the second Supersport TT, the second sidecar race and the TT zero race. Our plan for today was to head round the course less than a mile and park up at Ballacraine. Ballacraine is the famous corner, named after the then pub, now private house that George Formby crashed into the bar of through the front door in the 1935 TT film 'No Limit' (top film by the way). But as we were setting up to leave the camp site, racing (and road closure) were delayed by an hour due to the dodgy weather. So we had another cup of tea.

By the time we took the short ride to Ballacraine it was close to 11. Ballacraine is a cross-roads that forms a 90 degree right hand corner for the race track at the end of a long, long flat out drag, and we parked up down a side road just before the roads closed and joined the throng on the grass alongside the braking zone.



First up, once the roads closed, was the Arai parade of champions. This featured a number of legendary riders, including multiple 500 GP world champion Mick Doohan and island resident and British MotoGP star Cal Crutchlow, who were all ably led round the course by Ian Hutchinson, who won all 5 solo races last year, a feat never before accomplished, but who was riding in the parade with an external steel cage holding his leg together, since apparently it hadn't healed quite enough for them to take the cage off yet (the only reason he wasn't racing this year, after a hideous short-circuit crash that nearly cost him his leg at the end of last year)!



Once the parade had made it back to the grandstand, and it was fairly quick as parades go, Hutchinson made it clear to race control that he didn't think the conditions were safe for racing on either wet tyres (they would explode) or dry. The race was delayed a little, and eventually started at 12:40, with none of the riders happy, but John McGuinness - who very nearly boycotted the whole thing told the riders after him (as the first man away) at the last second that he'd go but be taking it steady in the mixed conditions. Race control had spoken, the riders were browbeaten into going.

True to his word, John McGuinness took it very cautiously, and ended up riding in a group with the three starters behind him, all feeling their way around the first lap. The marshals were displaying lack of adhesion flags at every corner where there were any damp patches at all, but in some cases that was properly wet, and in others the odd tiny damp patch - and the riders had no way of knowing one from t'other.



Thus it was that after the leaders had passed through Union Mills on the first lap, there was a brief rain shower there. Around 25 minutes later, Cameron Donald and Guy Martin arrived at a now unexpectedly soaking wet Union Mills on their DoT race compound tyres, with John McGuiness and Keith Amor close behind, and then this happened...

The race was red flagged (much to the chagrin of the Dunlop Brothers who were basically riding absolutely fearlessly in the dangerous conditions and were running first and second at the time) and racing abandoned for the day. Everybody was very lucky that there weren't four very serious crashes indeed taking out 4 stars of the TT in one fell swoop. There were definitely some mutterings about rider power in the aftermath! Also some mutterings from the irish road-racing lads complaining that they were doing just fine with the dodgy conditions...

Anyway, after the red flag we were at a bit of a loose end, while poor old motomuffin really WAS starting to twitch now without a bike, and I felt absolutely terrible. I phoned up Jason Griffiths Motorcycles to discover that the part was now IN! I had in fact been facing the prospect that she might not get to ride at all on the island beyond ferrying the bike to and from the ferry. I had been quite prepared to give her the keys to the BMW for an afternoon if if it was that or the promise of riding on the island cruelly denied, but I was really hoping it didn't come to that.

So, off we rode down to Castletown, via the back road from Ballacraine, full of the joys of spring. When we got there, the bike was being bolted back together, so they recommended that we nip out and grab ourselves a pub lunch while we waited for them to finish up. This we did (although with me navigating, the pub was quite tricky to find - listening to motomuffin worked much better!) The food was truly excellent, and we were enjoying an excellent repast, when I got a call from the mechanic. To tell me that... the generator had also now gone south. This was a disaster! Fortunately, a new Daytona 675 had arrived, and it was duly robbed of its generator in short order - when he first told me I had visions of needing to get the bike recovered back to my place from Liverpool docks, and of motomuffin not even getting to ride back through Wales! Still, it was a bloody expensive day :-(.

Never mind, who cares, we had bikes (plural) to ride again! We rode back to Ballacraine and joined the course to do a lap of the TT course, myself on the GT and motomuffin on the Striple, and then we headed over the mountain. Highlight of that? Overtaking a police 4x4 that was absolutely flat out uphill at about 100mph, and giving him a cheery little wave with my left hand as I flew past him at 120mph odd...

After that, motomuffin headed off on her own for the evening (the first chance she'd had) and I nipped off back to the camp site for a meal, some internerd surfing on my netbook and a look at the TT highlights on the TV. And then to bed.

The next morning, I slept right through the traditional TT dawn chorus of howling exhausts and bouncing valves, but we were soon up and at them, and then we swapped bikes for the start of the day and headed out in opposite directions round the course aiming for Hillberry, where we ensconced ourselves in the makeshift Grandstand to watch the first half of the day's racing (postponed from Wednesday). I went round the course on the Striple, motomuffin went the other way on the GT, and I filmed my run over the top, very badly, using the iPhone with the hideous interference issues...

We met up at Hillberry where I parked the Striple right next to the entrance to the Grandstand, and motomuffin parked the BMW about a mile away up the lane. Of course, I got the BMW keys back at this point. D'oh!

Hillberry is actually a great place to watch. You aren't locked in and you can see the bikes as they come off the mountain all the way to Hillberry corner on the run in to the finish line.

The first race was Supersport 2, which was supposed to be a Dunlop parade - but wasn't because both the Dunlop brothers suffered mechanical woes - and could have been a McGuinness shock win, but wasn't for reasons that I'll let him explain (no really, it's worth hearing). There was also a bit of mild controversy in this race but it all came right in the end, and Gary Johnson won it, taking his first ever TT victory, and thoroughly well deserved. Oh, and Cameron Donald was all set for third place until his bike blew up... at the last corner!

The second sidecar race ended with Klaffi's outfit suffering mechanical woes and a surprise first-time winner...

Finally, Michael Rutter beat Mark Miller in the battle of the MotoCycz TT-Zero bikes, with half a dozen other electric bikes making up the numbers, but with Michael Rutter coming in for a 99.9mph lap, tantalisingly close to the big cash prize for the first ever 100mph electric lap, but no cigar...

If I remember correctly, we ended the day with me, idiot that I am, looking for a very nice and very imposing Indian Restaurant overlooking the seat out near Onchan that I last visited in 1999. We found it eventually. It is opening soon... as a Chinese restaurant. We found a rather poor Indian restaurant at the horse tram end of the prom and ate there instead, but the prices were ridiculously high and the food not that good. Which may explain why it was empty. And then, I vaguely remember, we dropped in at Bushy's and grabbed some stickers and another dollop of merchandise. I have Bushy's stickers from '98, '99 and now 2011...

And then, back to the site and to bed, ready for an early start in the morning and breaking camp (we had to be off the site before roads-close or we might be stuck there all day, and even miss our ferry if the roads stayed closed until late)...




Tune in next week folks, for part 4 (well, next week or when I've written it!).