round and round and round and round and ...

Two days at Cadwell Park circuit near Louth. Van loaded with 3 of my bikes and a friends CCM and far too much other stuff. One person should not have enough stuff to fill an extra long wheelbase Transit van.

On the road and the long familiar road trip across the Penines. Onwards into power station country past Leeds. Spotting all those little landmarks en route. The tingle of anticipation getting bigger and tinglier by the mile - time for a toilet stop at Ferrybridge then. :) Some may know I had a bad crash while racing at Cadwell last year and since then I have barely ridden a bike. And of the bikes I was taking, I finished working on them on the monday night before going. So not only was I returning to the place I broke my leg but also on with the very same, freshly rebuilt and untested bike with brand new tyres. So that will be anticipation with a dash of trepidation.

Got to the track at 10pm, parked up, threw all the stuff out and got a beer and went socialising. 2am or so and it was getting to a comfy temperature and time to go to bed.Up far too early, got scruted and signed on and just about finished the bacon butty by the call for the Tigger session. This is the no brakes drill - the aim being to re-familiarise yourself with the track at a gentle speed and not braking. Very good idea and works well. However, my plan to scrub in the tyres on the racer were scuppered when it still wouldn't run so it was time to jump on the R6 and find out if the new head bearings were fitted correctly and how much difference dropping the forks 10mm would make to the handling.

Next session was no holds barred, overtake as much as you want, ride normally but no sticker swapping as you overtake (aww, that's the fun bit) so it was back out on the R6. Gently does it, settle in to the track again, pleased to notice Chris curve was not an issue (where I crashed for a reason I still don't know) and that the forks seemed ok. Time to push on a bit. Settled into the 'comfort zone' easily, keeping a pace on a par to pre-crash trackdays, keeping with the same people as before, plenty quick enough and not too taxing. Which was nice.

Spent the next half an hour after this lying under a tree drinking litre after litre of water. It was a tad warm. Took the KR1s racer apart to see what was wrong. Being positive it was fuelling related the carbs were taken off and dismantled. Several people attended and did the 'sucking air through teeth / beard' thing and went away. 'Someone-who-knows' proved that he did in fact, know and spotted two holes in the left side carburettor. Ah. That will be missing jets then. It all makes sense now. :) The thread the jet screwed into was knackered too so after a rummage in the bag of spare carbs I fitted the right jets to a 1mm pair and all was well. At last it was running ok. Revs took a long time to return to where tickover would be if it ticked over but it did that before.

Flushed with success I sneaked out in one of the slower groups to see if the bike went in a straight line and to scrub the tyre in. All seemed well so it was out in a proper group soon and a decent amount of progress was made. That bike is so much fun to ride, getting on towards 140mph top end if geared right, weighs a pittance, stops like running into a brick wall! Best trick of the day turned out to be chasing 600s up Park straight and hitting top gear and still accelerating as they started to brake! Many metres further on I'd brake and disappear off round the corner. :-D It was like they went backwards on a huge bungee cord.

Less fun was going out on the R6 and forgetting I was on a heavier bike when approaching the shitty chicane and almost going straight on several times. Now, the R6 has amazing brakes. One finger stops it bloody quickly from eek mph. All well and good but the Kr1s will stop from similar speeds more quickly. Head re-calibration time think.

The rest of the day followed a similar routine, lots of track time, sneaking out into other groups as well as the tiggers, drinking litres of water, getting sunburnt, socialising and generally having a fantastic two days.

The KR1s did develop a slight niggly problem - going down a gear for a corner and then wanting to accelerate into and through the corner there was a sizeable pause before the throttle responded. Very disconcerting and made me run wide a few times, especially at Coppice.

I am all achey, very tired, there are bruises on my inner thighs and on my arms. Beer and curry happened. Best two days evah! Since the last best thing evah and until the next best thing evah. I needed that. :-) It was pleasing to discover I can still ride a bike well, even if I didn't push out of the comfort zone as I might normally do. Comfy was still plenty quick enough on such a mixed range trackday. I was very tempted to see if there were any entries for the Derby-Phoenix f400 class at Mallory this sunday.