Busy Days!

It's been three days since I have been able to find the time to make a post.  We have ended every day late, and with the slow internet at the Snoozebox, it just wasn't going to happen.  Thursday was supposed to be a "day off" because there were no races, so we scheduled a tour of the course with Phillp MacCallen, who won a bunch of the TT races back in the early to mid 90's.  The tour was scheduled for 11 am, so we spent the morning down at the Douglas Promenade.  There was art gallery with the following work:

It was called The Fragility of Life, and the rider was made out of glass jars and bottle parts.  Pretty cool. 

Speaking of cool, we saw these old riders walking around town with their canes:

The person in front in the black and red gear is a woman. 

MacCallen narrated as a tour bus drove us around the course and it was a fascinating trip.  I came away with the following impressions:

1.  The TT course would be a challenging ride at normal street speeds
2.  Knowledge and experience is worth more than courage. 
3.  These guys have no lack of courage. 

Regarding the first, the things that make it challenging, besides the walls and buildings right up against the road, is the steepness of some of the grades and the unevenness of the road.  It has dips, rises, bumps, and many blind corners and crests.  MacCallen did a great job of describing what it takes to do a lap, but he was also nailed it when it came to explaining why anybody loves to ride.

Here is a pic from the bus to give you an idea of the narrowness of the road:

Our tour ended around 2:30 and so we decided to take in the bike show at Laxey.  This was beyond walking distance to we went to take the bus.  Problem is, the bus drivers were on strike this week, which meant that there were still buses, but they were few and far between.  After waiting for an hour we got a ride up to the show, which turned out to be pretty lame.  They did have a couple of classic Triumphs like this:

 

They did have on display the mobility scooter that went 85 mph in the Ramsey sprint races.  It has a 600cc four cylinder motor of some brand, and I got my picture on it:

 

There were only a couple of dozen bikes in the show and by the time we caught a bus back to the 'box and had some dinner is was way late. 

 

Friday we took a cab up to Creg Ny Baa to watch the TT lightweight class, which consisted mostly of Kawasaki's like mine and was won by James Hillier on a Kawi.  Then after a couple of hours the main even, the Senior class began.  However it barely got started when there was an accident where a bike crashed into the spectators and injured several.  This happened at Quarterbridge, where we had been watching on Wednesday.  The race finally did get back underway at 4:30.  We were this close to the road:

 

 

When we sat down our feet were actually dangling over the road.

 

Following are some of Carolyn's pics from the race:

 

 

 

 

 

 #5 is Bruce Anstey and #4 is Guy Martin, who is sort of a rock star in England and Ireland; sort of like Barry Sheene and Valentino Rossi. 

 

Fantastic experience, but by the time we got back to the 'box and had dinner, we were done for the day.  I am typing this from our apartment in Dublin, Ireland, which is an interesting experience in itself that I will post about later.