13 Things That Will Make Your Comeback a Little Less Stressfull
February 14, 2007
Article text by Tim March
01. Don’t ever travel in a convoy, even if you’re on time you can guarantee that the two other herberts you’ll be travelling with will be late, by a half hour minimum. Of course we were lucky the track was only two and a half hours away, no I am not joking. James’s comment ‘I didn’t know it was so far away’ was an interesting one and may account for him being late. I don’t know where he actually thought Horsham was but I had guessed it was in the same place on the map as it’s always been.
02. Find out where the track is before you leave, rather than drive around Horsham’s many lanes with one hand at 25 mph for another 10 minutes while on your mobile phone trying to find out.
03. When your told there’s no need to bring tools this really means ‘bring your own tools’ as it seems tools aren’t that important these days in other folks minds. Especially when you need to move the gear shifter up two notches to get your foot under it. Oh and also checking your bike between races is so yesterday in the MOTO camp, which might perhaps explain why my kickstart fell off and Jeff’s plug cap fell off when he was in second place.
04. Leave it a lot less time between racing than 23 years, preferably don’t ever stop as when you do you’ll wish you never did. And you won’t have to eat the humble of the humblest pie of all time ever.
05. If you ever want to add half an hour to your journey time I suggest dropping into McDonalds on the A272 at Petersfield. It took us that long to not get a burger and me walk out five quid lighter with no food.
06. Make sure you can find neutral on your bike, I searched for it all day and found it twice, neither time when I wanted to, apparently that’s normal on a new bike.
07. Do not use a very strange contraption that has been in the Perrett household for about 20 years to fill up your bike with gas, especially if he tells you to. Of course as you lift it up it will spray petrol in your helmet before you even get the nozzle to the tank.
08. When Jeff says ‘don’t worry Tim I’ve got tear offs’ what he means is that he’s got me two tear offs. Both of which were used up by the first turn in both races. In his defense I guess he did use the plural.
09. When Jeff says he’s run the bike in, what he really means is that he’s started it up and ridden it in first gear somewhere I don’t know. He can’t have changed into second unless he has size 3 feet. I could not fit my foot under the shifter at all.
10. Always a good idea to get to the track before practice has started. Nothing worse than asking when our practice starts and someone telling you that’s them riding round when you’re in your civvies and haven’t even signed on.
11. When your practice is on and your trying to start your bike for 15 minutes and you miss practice, it’s always reassuring to have an 11 year old come up to you whilst you have sweat dripping from your face and your goggles steamed up to point out that the bung is still in the end of the pipe from when Jeff washed the thing the night before.
12. When you are given 911 as your race number instead of thinking to yourself ‘Yes! Cool 911 Porsche.’ Think, ‘no 911 emergency’ and get it changed to anything else, even 666 but not 911.
13. And finally this is my favourite. Don’t wear the same make of gloves as Jeff Perrett (I didn’t know we both had the same make and same colour, cheers AK47) when yours are XL’s and his are mediums, why? Because when he finishes his race and puts his gloves on your bike seat you won’t have to spend 5 minutes trying to put a pair of gloves on your hands that have mysteriously shrunk to half their original size since you last had them on. I really did think I was in an alternative reality and had dropped some mushrooms by mistake and my hands had grown into monster’s paws. It really freaked me out. It took three people to get them off me.
Send this article to a friend
