| Author | Message | ||
     Mr_grumpy |
Well as promised here's a brief version of the French equivalent of Homecoming. I kicked off from home, with a 500km ride in front of me, early on Saturday morning, having packed on Friday ready to leave, I used the Oxford sports throwovers as they're quite spacious & dont float much. Interesting fitting them for the first time on the M2 the tended to drag the side panels in so I found an ingenious solution to the problem, a couple of short sections of 1"1/2 wastepipe jammed on the rear pegs & folded upwards, works a treat. Anyhow off I shot enjoying the ride, my destination, the Mas du Clos race circuit nr Aubusson in cental France. It started raining about 200km from the circuit so on went the rainsuit & it got progressively worse til about 10km from target when it stopped, by then gloves were soggy & boots squishy but that was all. As soon as I arrived I ran into a mate who was there on his S1 with various of his Buell mounted friends too.   A bit of lunch & then up with the tent in the soggy camping field next to the track, after I'd extricated it from the field the bike looked like I'd been doing an enduro! Having found some dry gloves & emptied my boots, I took the mad sewing machine up for scrutineering to have a play round the track, there were supposed to be experienced & novice groups, so I said novice please and was promptly told it makes no difference as they're all mixed. The Mas du Clos circuit is hilly & quite technical (means it's up & down & very twisty!) http://www.mas-du-clos.com/ So very soon I was being passed on both sides in the hairpins & hoping the motor would hang together on the straights! I think I would have been quite safe as all the bricks I was crapping would have made a good protective wall. Craig Jones (nice bloke) was there & going by me like I was standing still, I'm not a track person, I think I'll stick to playing on the roads. Next up was a ride out on one the new models, these ride outs were the usual thing , you know a group ride with dayglo vests & a monitor front & rear, one big difference to the one I did at Road America last year, the monitors here go like f*** & we hooned about like loonies, I took a Uly for a spin, first impression, TALL, second impression, not enough punch but a nice bike nonetheless. Craig Jones (top fella) did his thing too & very impressive it was. Did I mention what a good chap he is yet? The Bar was a bit on the crap side so our gang all tore off into the supermarket in the next town & thrashed back, rucksacks bulging with booze & crisps etc got some very jealous looks from some who hadn't thought to do the same. As 3 of us are English Jonesy (very nice man) came over with his stunting partner Wing, (yes that's his real name & he's a very nice man too!) & joined us for drinkies & chat, dinner & a live band later & it was tent & sleeping bag time. Sunday morning dawned as usual early, but with just a few small clouds & lots of sun, & soon wet gear was steaming merrily in the warm rays. After a leisurely breakfast we got some of the packing done & went to look at some of the bikes & shoot the s**t with the owners etc. there were some beauty's there but I wouldn't want to do all that cleaning.   People were still caning round the circuit til somebody high-sided & everything stopped. I was chatting with the excellent Craig Jones at this point & the organisers asked him to do his stuff early, so he asked me to do him a favour & ride one of his stunt bikes down onto the track for him, how could I refuse, I then got to stand trackside by his bikes while he did the show & ride another one back up afterwards, what a priviledge, he's a really nice fella & absolutely passionate about Buell.   After some lunch most people myself included started thinking about leaving & we hit the road in a gang of 8 bikes, 3 of us split off after about an hour to head home & had a ball on the road, at one point playing tag with a guy driving an Audi A8, Arrived home about 9.30pm just as the sun had gone down tired but happy, with 1100km more on the odo, an excellent weekend. | ||
| Ocbueller |
Mr.G, Always enjoy your posts. Keep them coming. Looks like you had one of those "Epic Rides" SteveH | ||
| Thesmaz |
This event would explain why I didn't see any Buells at the Le Mans MotoGP! I was there on my Uly and didn't spot another Buell until I was at Point du Hoc on Sunday. There's a Buell meet here in Belgium next month, the 23-24th I think, that I may try to make. I'll post more info soon. |
