The Kawasaki Riders Club trackday at Cadwell followed the British Superbike round, so a group from Middlesex and Herts KRC groups went up on Saturday to camp for the weekend. Because the weather was so good, I just packed shorts, light shoes, and t-shirts. (you can tell what's going to happen, can't you?)
Saturday night we slept under canvas to the sound of gently rustling Oak leaves and chirping cicadas. Floating on the breeze across the the campsite came the sound of a drunken biker retching.
We woke early in the morning to the sound of the rain beating down on the tent. And stayed awake for the rest of the night with the rain alternately beating, hammering and monsooning onto the tent. By morning however, it had got heavier!
The whole race day was marred by rain. And mud. Especially for me in my shorts ... and for Niall Mackenzie who crashed at Hall, knocking himself unconscious and breaking his wrist. The umbrella salespeople did well though. :-)
By late afternoon the rain eased and the Sun even showed its face, but Amanda & I were so wet and soggy that we booked a room in the Kings Head in nearby Louth for that night. We thought we'd enjoy our first trackday on the full circuit better if we had a good night's sleep.
Cadwell full circuit is about 2.2 miles long, of which 1.5 miles is used for
the short ("club") circuit. The short circuit, er, short-circuits the
full track with a horrible little hairpin made worse because it struggles to
join two bits of full-circuit track with about two feet vertical separation.
There is a lot of sports-tourer bellypan plastic eroded on the lip!
Your first trackday is a nerve-wracking event. Sometimes all you can do is sit, fiddle with your petrol cap and listen to your heart beating.
Especially if (like Robin here)
you're on a borrowed bike. Robin, for some bizarre reason, left a girlfriend
and a Fireblade in England to go to Seattle, where it turns out there are no
girls (although he still has one in England of course, ahem), bikes or
trackdays ... you can't tell that I'm trying to persuade him to come back,
can you? :-)
Nerves give way to excitement and the last few minutes before a session can be
spent swapping information and stories, and verbally jockeying for position:
"I'll follow you so you can show me the line through Charlies";
"You're doing Hall in second? Try it in third, it's much
smoother"
"I'll follow you coz you're quicker through Chris"; "You can try to
follow me through Chris :-)"
A Kawasaki Good Time was had by all!
