encounters with solid objects

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Hi everyone, remember my first visit to the manx ... there I was flat out towards Doran's Bend when the rider in front of me (about 100 yards away) spooked a pheasant .. up it shot, and with a well timed arc decended .... I ducked, buried my head into the tank and shut my eyes ... a loud thump, and the steering whacked side to side, and the front brake went on .... now at around 120 mph this is a somewhat disconcerting experience ... I sat up wondering if I would make that particularly nasty corner, wizzed round it and coasted to a halt .... inspecting front wheel of the tz revealed a bent t.l.s conecting rod, and a mess formaly known as Mr Partridge. slow ride back to pits was scarier than riding the bloody thing flat out ..riders were so fast when they went by!

Second occurance was practising one day on my early bantam (75 flat out) hurtling (!) round Corum I was confronted by a TANK, a real genuine Challenger tank .. and a few jeeps .. and people with guns ....

Now I'm sure there are rules by the ACU about this sort of thing, "riders should be aware that they may encounter large vehicles straying onto circuits and should make arrangements to stop within a safe distance" but I had not at the time been "racing" long .....!

Anyway, they trundled on accross the circuit and the organisers despatched a car to tell off the army about their er ... noughty goings on!

Yeah it was fun then, no officials, no health and safety, life was EXCITING!!!!

Regards all the old farts, and our leader, JB

Blatting down the back straight at Cadwell, practice on the TZ again ...laid the bike into the first right hander at the end of the back straight, looking at apex I saw a shiny oily looking puddle ... Oh F@**k ... down I went and sailed accross the grass .. looked back to the corner ... another rider was aiming for me .. his bike blocking any escape .. then another, I jumped over one bike, just missing the rider .. then more bikes were sailing accross the grass .. S***t al in all about five of us went down ... and umpteen hundreds of £ worth of damage..

Did I ever swear at the marshals on that day!!!!

That reminds me of an occasion when the travelling marshal failed to turn up at Cadwell, in the late 1960s for a British Formula Racing Club meeting. I was in the paddock to support one of my mates, having turned up on my shiny new BSA A65 Lightning. They knew I was an experienced competitor and marshal, so asked me to do the job.

All I had to do was ride round after each race and check that everything was OK before the start of the next. Between races one and two, the marshals at Park corner waved me down. They had been provided with flags, but no brushes and no cement dust. I arranged for someone to deliver the necessary supplies, which took about five to ten minutes. When I got back up to the assembly area, at the top of "The Mountain", the organizers tore me off a strip for causing a delay! I explained that it was a critical safety issue, but they were only interested in keeping things running on time. It seems there were financial penalties for running late, and that was all they were concerned with.

I very nearly told them where to shove the job, but that would have made things worse. Fortunately, everything went to plan after that. It was a strange experience riding a bike equipped with a speedo. I couldn't believe the numbers it was telling me as I flipped through the Esses - quite scary!

Just after the bridge -- on the old Snetterton circuit -- it all went terribly wrong: I was in among the leaders in a beautiful angle-of-dangle which suddenly went wrong! The front flipped both ways in a millionth of a second -- so it seemed -- and I was thrown through the brand new windscreen which took a chunk out of my left knee as I tried to be a bird and then I buried my face in the mud bank...
Pudding Basin days -- of course.

That was at about 14.43 on the Sunday. I came to at 10.00 hrs on Monday and thought the clock on the office wall at Ford Dunton was wrong again then the pain came, right eyebrow, head, knee, collar bone plus a mouthfull of grit. A nurse flitted past and I knew that the Snetterton jinx had struck again. The daily doctor came and asked about how I felt and how long had I been OUT at the circuit. He meant unconscious, of course, and I worked it out that 3/4 of Snetterton (OldCircuit) lap was about 55 seconds so I told him the number in seconds and he told me, in that case I could go home...
I then asked for a drink of water -- mostly to wash the dirt out of my mouth.

I wondered how they´d dealt with the situation. According to Derek Neil I was really OUT in the first-aid room at the circuit and the others I spoke to also reckoned OUT -- as I´d reckoned, so over 19hours had gone missing. Probably the hospital crew just cleaned and stitched up my eyebrow and knee without bothering about muck in my mouth.

Worse than the hospital agony, more was to come. I travelled in a Mini from the Norwich hospital to Barking. Every bump or ripple (the height of a lying matchstick) in the road sent agonising pain through my collar bone and knee. That Mini had the famous "Hydrospastic" suspension that the Mini makers had crowed so loudly about....

Cheers!

One of the things I pride myself on (and am very thankful for), is that I never injured myself motorcycle racing. Well, I had the usual road-rash and contusions, but never badly enough that I couldn't turn up for work on a Monday morning. In seven seasons of racing, on bikes of various types and sizes, I fell off eight times, and always walked away.

The heaviest get-off was at Oulton Park. I ran wide at Cascades on my 250 DMW "Hornet". The tumbling and rolling seemed to go on forever. The ground was very soft and damp, and my mouth was full of mud. A young St John's Ambulance lad retrieved my mangled, wire framed spectacles, very carefully straightened them out, and gently placed them on my muddy face. Only then did he start asking me if I could move my limbs, and where did it hurt. Strange priorities!

Only from Snetterton was I stretchered away -- three times. The place was EVIL - but I just had to prove the point by going back there and even after they´d changed the course shape the dreaded Lurgy struck again.

I fell off at other circuits, of course, in the words of Tangozulu ( he who dances Bantu-style).
"...how do you know if & when you are going fast enough -- thro´a bend if you don´t fall off ...." There were times when it was not my fault and I hesitate to name the riders who didn´t exactly play fair just for the sake of a little pot -- fortunately they were but a few ....

Apologies to Keith Webb -- who was quicker than me at Lydden and I still cannot get over it....

All the best,
Cheers!

You might be right about Snetterton, Herr Bass. I broke my ankle there. Not a racing accident - I was walking across the circuit in the dark (don't ask!) and stepped off a sheer three foot drop. The ankle would support my weight, so I could hobble around, but the pain was memorable. I rode the next day, and got a fifth and a third. Went into work on Monday, skived off to get it X-rayed, and back to work with a pot on.

I saw a bloke fall off at the esses at Snett. He stood up, and fell over, stood up and fell over, stood up again, and fell over. Then someone pointed out to him that he had a broken leg, so he decided to lie there and wait for a stretcher.

Funny that... only hurts when you laugh -- I used to suffer from something you might call Expanded-Road-Rage before a race and it even lasted whilst picking myself up with blood dripping from the `Druids´ elbow. Marshall said "You are bleeding & I can see a bit of bone..." I told him to get specs `cos I couldn´t feel a thing .... Then it did really hurt ....

Cheers!