Saturday, June 02, 2007

Live Timing MotoGP

Connect up to real time Practice results.

Live Timing MotoGP

Looks like they've changed the link so go to MotoGP Web and it's on the front page.

Want to be a Racer?

The Selection Events mark the first stage of the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Program. They are open to all junior racing enthusiasts between 13 and 16 years of age.

Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup

Friday, June 01, 2007

Diary of a Goldwinger Part 1 - Holland 2007

by Steve Faulkner

So what is a Treffen? Treffen is a German word meaning friendship and is used by Goldwingers all over the world for their rallies.

Lorna and I were involved with the Treffen committee in the UK; we would go to the Treffen site and help other volunteers to build the site ready for the weekend. This would include erecting marquees, bars toilets etc ready for the many Goldwingers who attend such meetings all over the world.

We decided to go to the Dutch Treffen as we had met some friends from the Goldwing Club (GB) whilst they were in Spain on holiday in early May.

We sold our Goldwing, trailer and all our camping equipment when we came to live in Spain 5 years ago, so rang the Dutch Goldwing Club for hotels in the Kronenberg area of Holland. We were told that all the hotels in the area were full; we were disappointed with this so emailed our friends to tell them we would not be going to Holland.

Tony and Helen ride a magnificent yellow Goldwing outfit and tow a trailer tent, they assured us that it was not a problem and would bring an extra tent and camping equipment with them for us to use, so that solved that problem and our trip was back on.

Day 1
So with our 1800 Goldwing packed to the gunnels we set off on Monday 22nd of May bound for Kronenberg in the south of Holland.

The 1800 Goldwing can certainly eat up the miles and is very happy cruising at high speeds. It has cruise control but I don’t use it much as I like to feel in control of the bike. With intercom and music into your helmets and a very comfortable riding position you soon use up the tank full of fuel, and 300 k’s later we were pulling in for fuel and a welcome coffee.

So at the end of day one, we were in Perpignan, just over the Spanish border, we could have carried on but with a hotel pre-booked and a cold beer calling we called it a day. A great days travelling with about 7 hours on the bike and a good distance covered.

Day 2
The weather looked great so we set off after a continental breakfast (what no bacon?) and what the French call coffee. We were soon eating up the kilometres, our plan was to get to Nancy in France by mid afternoon, We were soon in Lyon and passing through the long fume filled tunnel, if you have rode through that one you will know it well, it must be the biggest health hazard of the journey. You can taste the fumes for ages after. We soon found that we were having a great days travelling and decided to get a bit further up and we ended the day in a very nice hotel in the centre of Metz very close to Luxembourg, we do try and get hotels in the centre of towns, this gives a chance for a bit of sight seeing and a better choice of eating out. Having never been to Metz we had a walk around and found a beautiful old town with cobbled streets and lovely old buildings.

Day 3
We were away without breakfast having decided to eat later, we stopped in Luxembourg at a motorway service area. The service area was packed with about 5 coaches of Dutch pensioners on their way home, we were soon engulfed by the oldies (bless ‘em) with many questions which we couldn’t understand but did our best, you do tend to get a lot of this when you ride a Goldwing as many people ask the normal questions. How fast does it go? What is the weight? And is it easy to ride?

With breakfast over we were soon into Belgium and out on the open motorway. We could not believe the amount of lorries on the road between northern France, Luxembourg and Belgium at times it was a bit frightening with so many of them around you. I drove HGV’s for 25 years but they seem a lot bigger now and the sheer numbers was amazing.

As we rode down the motorway heading for Holland the weather was quite chilly and we soon pulled over for extra clothing, it was quite misty, the motorway was very quiet and the cruise control came into good use, there is a severe lack of service stations along this motorway into Holland and when the fuel light came on I was thinking we may have to pull off to find fuel, but we managed to get to a service station.

The fuel prices here in Spain maybe on the up but at 1.51 € this was the most expensive yet. In Spain if I fill up when empty its approx 22 € in this one it was 31 € so quite a big difference.

That afternoon we arrived in a town in Holland called Venlo, very close to the Treffen site, as it was quite early we had a ride to Kronenberg to find out where the actual site was.

We never did find it as it was on the outskirts of a small village so rode back to our hotel via a trip up the road to ride into Germany. We were well in front of ourselves and very happy with our trip up having covered 2,350 kilometres in 17 hours riding time.

Day 4
As we couldn’t get onto the Treffen site until 12 noon we had a walk around Venlo and did a bit of shopping, one of the good things about shopping when on a loaded bike is you haven’t much room so had to keep the shopping down to a minimum. Anyway we would be buying at the Treffen so needed all the spare room. (Bless her)

So it was up to Kronenberg for the Treffen and meet up with our friends who had come overnight to the Hook of Holland on the ferry from Hull. This done we pitched our tents and got set up ready for the weekend. In Holland it seems to be more of a family occasion and I would think that maybe 50% of the bikes were outfits. I have never seen so many outfits at a Treffen.

Day’s 5 and 6
All in all there were approx 1200 Goldwings on site from all over Europe, bikes from UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Austria and Switzerland. Excellent on site facilities always help make the weekend, the toilets and showers were some of if not the best we have ever seen at a Treffen and with some great music on every night and great catering facilities all made an excellent weekend.

We rode into the local town of Sevenum a few times and all the locals enjoyed their town being invaded by the bikes.

Day 7
Due to my daughter arriving in Spain on the Tuesday we had to leave early and departed from the Treffen site on the Sunday morning, unfortunately it was raining very heavily, this rain continued for hours and it was not the best riding conditions, luckily the traffic was light and we managed 1140 k’s that day and arrived in the town of Nimes at approx 6 in the evening. What fantastic timing that was as it was the towns fiesta and after finding a small but expensive hotel we watched the bull running up the main street, once again it started to rain and we found a restaurant and had a very nice meal and back to the hotel for an early start in the morning.

Day 8
8 o’clock saw us leaving the hotel, we had not gone 2 k’s and it started to rain, only light rain and much to our relief we left it behind us and carried on in cool but dry conditions.

All went well until we got to Andorra and then we rode into very high winds, this reduced our speed down to approx 60 k’s an hour, caravans were stopping on the motorway, we followed a coach at one stage and the wind was lifting the back wheel off the road, we carried on for about 2 hours in this wind and at one stage I did consider pulling off and hoping it would die down, luckily we rode out of it and once again set off at a good cruising speed.

We arrived home on Monday evening at 7 o’clock, tired but we both enjoyed our weekend and both enjoyed riding our bike through 5 different countries, we covered 4535 k’s in approx 36 hours riding time, we spent 391 euros on fuel and spent 181 euros on tolls.

I think and hope that we avoided the many speed cameras en route (unlike the one at Albacete) and are now planning our next Treffen trip which should be the Italian in July.

In my opinion the Goldwing GL 1800 is the ultimate touring machine, I have owned a 1200, 1500s and now the 1800 and have covered many miles over the last 8 years and find them very comfortable and enjoyable, they are a heavy bike but very easy to ride. A lot of bikers seem to knock and ridicule them but don’t knock it until you have tried it.

Gold Wing Club Holland

Friday, May 25, 2007

Roberts Harley

Robert is a more or less regular attender at the Tour and Track Club Second Sunday Ride Outs. This is his new Harley Davidson FLSTCI Heritage Softail Clasic. 72 and still going strong. Look out Italy as he's comming to visit you on the bike next week!
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Alcala del Jucar Ride Out

The May Second Sunday Ride Out has got to go down as a classic. It was our first all day Ride Out and we chose to visit Alcalá del Júcar, the spectacularly beautiful town carved in to the valley walls of the Júcar River.

Is that Bruce on the road in the background?

12 bikes of varying power, ridden by 12 riders of varying skills, with 4 pillions, set of from the Meson El Jardin, in Castalla, led by me, Lol, in the direction of Biar, Villena, Yecla, Almansa and finally Alcalá del Júcar – or at least so I thought. Ray was to bring up the rear. Oh, I shouldn’t forget to mention Bruce who set of a short time before us on his 500 cc quad, map in hand – well not literally but you know what I mean.

On the autovia from Castalla, heading towards the Biar turn off, we came across another group of riders. Our group was mainly sports/tourers, theirs were mainly Harley style cruisers. I waited behind the other group to see if they would turn towards Biar which they did – uh-oh. As the other group was going relatively slowly and they were moving over to let us pass I took the opportunity to lead our group past them. What do you think happened next?

Well I came out the other side of Biar, heading towards Villena, with five bikes following behind. The other group of cruisers left Biar, heading towards Bocairente, the opposite direction, with 5 more bikes than they set off with! I won’t mention names but Ray was still bringing up the tail but this time for another group of bikers.

Suffice to say that we all eventually met up, after lot’s of phone calls, at Almansa where we added Will, from the Ayora Valley, to our group. The weather was great, fantastic roads, beautiful views and great food taken at a restaurant overlooking the town.

And Bruce on his quad? Apart from catching a glimpse of him leaving Yecla for Almansa we never saw him for the rest of the day. On Monday he told us that he had arrived in Alcalá about 20 minutes after us but never found the restaurant and spent most of his time looking in the bars for us. Good excuse Bruce.

The next Second Sunday Ride Out is on the 10th of June, 9:30 am, from the Meson El Jardin in Castalla. Come along and join us – you never know where you’ll end up.

Rally Organised by Penya Motera de Fontanars dels Alforins

Join the Alforins Motorcycle Club at their Rally on Saturday 23rd of June.

-Regalo de la Peña - Gift from the Club
-Almuerzo - Breakfast
-Ruta por las bodegas del pueblo - Ride out to local Bodegas
-Exposición y pruebas motos BMW - Exhibition and try outs of BMW bikes
-Paella gigante - Giant Paella
-Actividades varias y divertidas - Lots of entertaining activities
-Sorteo de los esponsors - Draw for sponsors gifts
-Feria gastronomica - Gastronomic Fair (food)
-Verbena - Evening village Fiesta

Penya Motera de Fontanars dels Alforins

ISILON MSS Discovery Kawasaki Ready For ‘Unique’ 100th TT Challenge

ISILON MSS Discovery Kawasaki Ready For ‘Unique’ 100th TT Challenge

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Tour and Track Club Classics Rally - 8th to 14th October 2007

The dates of the Tour and Track Club Classics Spanish Rally have now been confirmed as Monday 8th October 2007 until Sunday 14th October 2007. The format will be rides out every day in the quiet mountain roads to places with beautiful scenery and places of interest.

Each event will start and finish in the village of Castalla 15 miles from Alicante on the Costa Blanca. All the rides are very relaxed with no pressure the idea is you come and enjoy the sunshine in real Spain.

There are provisions for camping / caravanning/ flat rental/ hotels, the choice is yours.

For further details please contact Peter Dawson......Phone 0034 607434802 mobile. Or better still peter@vintage-motorcycle.co.uk.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Las Vegas Ride Out - 06 March 2007 (2)

So we eventually got to the Hoover Dam and as spectacular a feat of engineering as it is, and it is very impressive, at the moment it looks like a giant building site as a very impressive bridge is being erected stretching across the valley high above the dam.
We had travelled through Nevada and we now parked up in Arizona to view the dam and the lake, Lake Mead. The view of the lake from the dam is impressive enough but later on in the journey we got to see the enormity of this resevoir and to think about the people who built the dam.
This is from Fortune Magazine, September 1933:
"ARTHUR POWELL DAVIS is the chief unsung hero of Boulder Dam. The others are the men who sweat out their days, and many of their nights, in Black Canyon. The Boulder Dam worker of 1933 is a national type of some importance. He is a tough itinerant American--the "construction stiff." His average age is thirty-three. His average wage is sixty-eight cents an hour. He is taller and heavier than the average U. S. soldier, runs a greater risk of losing his life, and has passed a more drastic physical examination. He has been in most of the states of the Union and can find his Way in a dozen different kinds of unskilled and semi-skilled labor--a hoist in a Pennsylvania coal mine, a saw in Oregon, a shovel on a dozen road jobs. He has boiled a string of mules in Bluejacket, Oklahoma - followed a pipe line as it crept across a prairie, a few yards a day, toward a town invisible behind a hill range. He is inured to ceaseless, frightful heat--and fearful cold, too, for that matter. Four or five of him in an old car can always get to a row of lights on Saturday night and if some four-flusher cops his roll or his girl it may be a fight or a laugh-what's the difference? He has earned $10 a day roughnecking on top of 110-foot oil rigs, driven a steam shovel, been slashed in a dance-hall fight, thought a lot about getting married. He is sentimental, moody, and literate; he does not believe he will ever be anything better than what he is, and isn't trying, regardless of the schoolbooks, the adage to "make your spare time pay," and the example of Abe Lincoln. He leaves some money every week or so in Block Sixteen, Las Vegas (legalized prostitution), but has enough left to send a money order to somebody somewhere once a month. He shares the universal superstition of miners that if a woman ever walks into a tunnel where you are working you'd better get out quick because there's going to be a cave-in. He keeps washed. He smokes a pack of cigarettes a shift. When he travels, he rides freights. He knows how to live in jungles, but has never begged. The most he ever had in his life was $5,000 after the pipe-line job but he hung it on a wrong deal and lost it. He likes hunting better than baseball, horse racing better than either. He'll pick a grudge, or smell bad luck, mosey out and hit the road or the rails, but while he works he is inspired with a devil of loyalty, shrewdness, and skill. He wears Friendly Five shoes, and sleeps seven hours a day. He is the man, as much as General Superintendent Crowe and U. S. Engineer-in-Charge Young, who is putting up this dam faster than anyone thought it could possibly be done."

To be continued ....

Feria de San Isidro - Castalla, Alicante, Spain



If you fancy a ride up to Castalla for the Medievil Fair then the weekend of 18, 19 and 20th of May is the time to do it.

If you do decide to come up on your bike then let me know and you can meet up with some of the Tour and Track Club.

lol@tourandtrack.com

BRP Can-Am Spyder

Well take a look at that for a trike. The spyder is designed to give a sort of motorcycling experience to those who chose not to ride a motorbike?

It should be available in Spain/Europe in 2008 but check their web for details.

http://www.rotax.com/

Monday, April 30, 2007

Interphone Bluetooth

Saw this at the Mas Moto Madrid show last week and decided to try two of them as bike to bike communicators on the way back. We asked Carlos, on the Interphone stand, to charge them up ready for us leaving an hour later. The batteries weren't fully charged but we couldn't afford to wait any longer.
The setting up was easy and we were off on our way back to Castalla. We were very impressed. It rained most of the way back and the Interphone didn't falter. The Interphone worked well between the two bikes and we manged to talk all the way to Albacete before Ray's battery ran out.
I later tested it with a bluetooth phone and it took less than a minute to set up and worked great.

If you want one - the recommended price is 175 € - then contact me at lol@tourandtrack.com and we will guarantee you a better deal - especially for Tour and Track Club members.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

International Fire-fighters Event

Tour and Track will be organising an international motorcycle event for fire-fighters from the UK and Spain later this year. The event is aimed at being fun motorcycling for all skills of motorcyclists with an edge of competition just to keep the wits sharp. The initial plans include at least 2 track days and 2 touring days with a Spain vs UK event.
If you are a fire-fighter or retired fire-fighter and you are interested in the event then contact Lol Duffy on (0034) 678 628 660 or lol@tourandtrack.com.

Tour and Track Club Classics

From Sunday 30th September 2007 until Sunday 7th October 2007 the Tour and Track Club Classics section will be holding a rally in the Foia de Castalla northwest of Alicante, Spain. The full details will be released soon so keep checking on the web.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Welcome to iomtt.com - The official Isle of Man TT 2007 website

Welcome to iomtt.com - The official Isle of Man TT 2007 website

Peter Dawson to Ride in TT

Club President Peter Dawson will be taking part in the Isle of Man TT this year as part of the centenary celebrations. The bike Peter will be riding is the 1911 TT Matchless pictured left.

In the words of Peter, "This is the bike I will be riding in the re-enactment of the first TT in the Isle of Man. Although the first TT was held in 1907 they are allowing bikes of the general era as there are not enough of the 1907 bikes left.
There is no gearbox or clutch - when the engine stops the bike stops. It is rated at 3.5 hp which equates to 500 cc. as far as I know this was made for the TT for the year 1911 and is the only one left. The brakes leave something to be desired but luckily all the bikes will be going the same way."


There was a rumour that Peter was at the first TT. Good Luck Peter.
The re-enactment is on 28th May at 10am. Send your messages of support to Peter at pdengine@fsbdial.co.uk

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Mas Moto Madrid - Motorcycle Show

Feria de Madrid

Does anyone know much about this as the publicity on the web site seems poor.

BMW K 1200 R Sport - Try Your Spanish


Web Page


BMW completa la gama K 1200 con la nueva R Sport, la versión semicarenada que se sitúa entre la deportividad de la R naked y la comodidad de la versión S, aunque su precio, de 15.750 euros, es superior a las dos versiones anteriores. Mantiene el mismo motor de cuatro cilindros en línea y 163 cv, y un chasis heredado de la versión desnuda. BMW la ha diseñado para disfrutar de largos recorridos.


Esta K 1200 R Sport, que ya deslumbró en el Salón de Intermot, cuenta con un semicarenado fijo, en el que se inserta un faro idéntico al que monta su hermana la S, que es la nota discordante de este modelo. Esta diseñado para proteger el pecho y los hombros del viento y la lluvia durante la conducción, permitiendo que el usuario tenga una postura erguida.

BMW ha rebajado su altura con el fin de incrementar el equilibrio sobre el asfalto. Además, es cuatro kilos más pesada que el modelo K 1200 R y siete menos que la K 1200 S. Respecto a la imagen externa, se ofrece en color azul y aluminio, ambas con sillín negro.

El motor es el mismo que el resto de la gama K1200, tetracilíndrico de 1.157 cc que entrega una potencia de 163 CV, que cuenta con una caja de cambios de seis marchas integrada en cuerpo del motor.

La K 1200 R Sport destaca por su amplio catálogo de equipamiento opcional, como el sistema ABS integral, al igual que la suspensión de regulación electrónica ESA, que permite, mediante un botón, ajustar la amortiguación y suspensión trasera haciéndola más dura, según las necesidades de la conducción.