I have now got time and news enough to put to pen.
Gay and I have been in Aquadolce for just over two weeks and we are like locals here. The marina has a fair share of English live-aboards and those that have gone back on land and bought property in the area. Some are lucky enough to own an apartment as well as a yacht.
The purpose of our trip up here was to have three days on the race track at Almeria. Bazil and Bruce came over for a few days, one of our ‘corporate jolly’s’, having got the two bikes crated up and despatched the weekend before. They flew into Almeria on the Thursday. Friday found us up at the crack of dawn for the 40min drive to the track for 8.30am. Got the bikes sorted and was out on the track at 10am. I decided to play safe and go out on the VFR400 first so I could check the new fork seals and get an idea of where to go. Learning the track was not an easy task! It is undulating with lots of medium speed corners that are all linked together so position on the track was very important if you wished to stay on the black stuff. I found that apart from the back straight I only used three gears, even on the 400.
Bazil went out on the VFR and found it equally daunting though he did have a banging hangover and was still asleep. Next session I took the recently repaired 916 out to bed in the new front discs. I took it real easy as you don’t use the brakes much and they would need plenty of time before they would work properly. Some of the guys in the fast group knew where to go and I was left for dead on several occasions, no worries I thought, I’ve got three days to get up to speed.
Thinks were going pretty well and I was getting more confident when disaster stuck. Yes, I binned it on the slowing down lap after the chequered flag! What a wanker!
I could make up lots of reasons for crashing but having evaluated the situation I have come to the conclusion that gravity stopped for a second and the tyres stopped gripping the track, simple really. It happened on a bend a bit like Paddock hill at Brands Hatch but you have to drive up and over the brow of a hill, the apex being at the top before you plunge down the blind side. Takes a bit of a knack to get right but great when you do… anyway, apart from smashing up the bodywork and snapping the right hand bar, we got away with it. Bazil and Bruce pulled it apart back in the paddock and we set about putting the beast back together. Had the thing up and running again before the close play on Friday! Looked like a rat-bike with no fairing and the seat unit held together with duct tape. We took the VFR wheels down and had the guy fit new tyres ready for Saturdays session...
Another great day promised with just a little cloud cover to cut down the brightness on track. I took the VFR out to scrub in the new tyres for Bazil and to build my confidence. Sadly my confidence took the rest of the day to return to the point I was at prior to crashing.
The Ducati felt a bit strange without a fairing and it seemed to handle differently? Took me far too long to just relax and ride the bike like I’d stolen it. It’s funny, when you crash because you are trying hard to go fast you can understand why. When you just slide off the tyres mid corner, you expect the same thing to happen in every corner even with the new tyres I was running. Still even Rossi slides off his bike on occasion….
Day three was better. Bazil was making inroads on his times, he knocked off about 20 seconds over the week end, getting down to 2min 11sec on the 400, quicker than many in his group. Bruce was doing the timing and taking photo’s and video. Gay was trying to stay warm and sleeping in the car. My best time was 1min 50sec, at least four seconds slower than the fastest guy there, pathetic!
Monday was a day of rest so we chilled out on the boat and were joined by Cobby, Simmo, Big Bloke, Tony and another guy? Had lunch on the front and drank beer… easy.
Bruce and Bazil are both spaghetti western fans so we decided to go and see the film set for some of the most famous cowboy films ever made, you know, The Magnificent Seven, The Seven Ride Again, Seven Brides for Seven Sister’s, Clint Picks His Nose and Rides West...
It was worth the effort despite my cynical feelings for such places. Thankfully they had not spent much time restoring the thirty year old sets so they looked pretty authentic. Three Spanish speaking ‘gun slingers’ entertained us with a gun fight in the saloon but it was done very tongue in cheek and incorporated some of the audience. Just glad we were there in the off season.
Having despatched the lads, Gay and I had the place to ourselves again. We drove up to Granada to visit one of the best, if not the best city, in Spain. If you haven’t been there, GO! We were lucky as we missed the crowds and the heat of the summer. It’s not a big place so you can do the interesting parts on hoof, even a cripple like me managed it. The Alhambra dominates the place. I won’t bore you with history, read a book about it. Basically it all that’s left of the Moorish influence in Spain and dates from the 12th Century. That’s a long time ago. We had two days but you could spend a week there. A drive up to the Sierra Nevada was necessary as it is the backdrop for the Alhambra and snow was visible on the peaks. At 3000m the road ends with a barrier preventing us from going over the top like it showed possible on the map. Damm...
We took another route back through the mountains past almost empty reservoirs and cosy little villages, long past being economical to live in unless you were a big shot from the city. There is some great real estate just waiting to be exploited. Imagine being an hour from the beach or the ski slopes.
Not sure what we will be doing this week. I want to take the ferry to Malilla (Morocco) to check out the marina there with a view to leaving the boat someplace cheap for xmass. We might just stay where we are as it is convenient for getting back to any time.
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