Day 6

Everybody took off this morning to the motorcross, 80 km away from impound and hotel, Lee and I stay behind to start loading the container and making an inventory. Still nice weather, cold this morning 11C when the sun raises it gets even colder, after the club guys Frank en Scott left, we went for coffee and sandwiches to a cafe close by to warm up a bit, the Thropy guys followd short after that.
We started packing around 10.00 driving back and forward to hotel to pick up check crew stuff.
Hopefully we will be done before everybody turns up to pack their crate.

another day in paradise

Another very nice day started this morning blue sky's and cold 16C. I wished I took my pants with me.
Yesterday went well, despite break problems and a broken side stand for Jay, he picked up some minutes so did Scott and Frank, The organizer decided to add 10 minutes to the loupe to avoid the first riders running into the last club riders, this caused some stress to riders and check crew. It worked all fine.
This morning everybody was happy specially Burt, he still can not believe that he is able to ride his motorbike in Portugal. The guys were not very happy to ride the sand roads again, they seem to be no fun. We saw a nice downhill yesterday, we planned on checking it out today, but I did not feel pretty good today, so we decided to go to the hotel and sleep for a couple of hours.

Halfway day 3

I did not have very much time to write the blog, Early mornings, seeing boys off at the start, racing in the car to a enduro or cross test, lunch, helping the boys impound getting gas, dinner, shower, getting the next days startlist to everybody, the day usually ends with a cappirinha in the lounge of the hotel aroudn 10.30. 11.00 is bedtime. The riders are doing fine, today is a harder day than 1 and 2 were, more rockey terrain, up and downhils, a long section of sand road with lots of ruts. Jay is about 20 minutes down at the moment, het had some trouble with his rear brake and side stand. He also realized that there are a lot of really fast riders amongst this pack. Frank is taking it easy too, we ran in to him this morning on check 3/6, he had lost about 7 minutes in the first loop. Hopefully he will not to loose to much time. We are now preparing for the afternoon impound the guys are preparing the tools, tires and everything else.

Start day 1

Very early morning breakfast at 18.00, have to get used to that ......
It is still dark out, nice to hear the birds sing when the sun rises .....
The weather is beautiful, noon it is 27C very sunny the morning started cool. Every body got off the start pretty smooth, no work to be done on the bikes hanging around the work area doing nothing, but being nervous. After we saw Frank off we went to see a ET and check 1,4,7 and found out Brian had a problem with his rear brake unfortunately Lee was not able to help him out, in the 10 minutes he had at the check. We are now setting up the work area for their arrival this afternoon, in 30 minutes.

almost

Just 1 night sleep and it will finally happen, another start of the six days. The weather is wonderful, around 25C lots of sunshine, cool at night, foggy in the morning, so very humid. We attended the opening ceremonies yesterday, parade on the boulevard, was nice but not spectacular, because of the cold wind we took off right after the parade for dinner. Was nice with a big group of Canadians in 1 restaurant, getting to know each other better. Some Canadians stayed at a bar and had a few drinks, a couple even had a little bit to drink and felt really bad on Sunday morning. We had a nice swim in the ocean on saturday afternoon lovely once you were in. getting in was the hard part, very cold. The tide was low so a lot of rocks were high up. Some skin came off on several body parts, a nice dip in the pool to get rid of the sand and gravel in the bathing suit.
Sunday became the rest day, shopping, laundry, walking tests for the riders, We went to the presentations of Mexico 2010 and Finland 2011, both very nice presentations, nice areas for future six days especially Mexico looks pretty spectacular. Our last support crew people showed up on sunday afternoon. An early night if possible.

building bikes

The riders have been building and riding their bikes yesterday, the weather cleared, it was a very nice day in the impound area. We are signing at 16.00 today. Scott had some trouble with his bike yesterday and could not change his tires in time yesterday, we got up early again today to give him the opportunity to change his tires. Everybody came up and started practicing tire changing, and went to get lunch around 13.00. They are all returning now the get prepared for sign in. We got internet acces at impound this makes time go by much faster. We found a very nice Italian place last night, close to the hotel and really liked it, we reserved it for race week every night, The riders will have the pasta, support crew can order from the menu.

container

The container finally arrived last night in the pooring rain. We got word around 18.00 hours the container would arrive around 19.30. The only problem was the crane driver was going home at 19.00 and would not be back before 13.00 the next day. Jan and Lee raced to the impound area to try and stop the crane driver from going home and unload the container if it arrived. We had a meeting scheduled around 18.30 several people from the crew forgot about the meeting so we started pretty late, after the meeting Mike, Butch and I headed for the impound area to check on the unloading progress, at that time it is pooring rain, lots of lightning and thunderd, a lot of wind. But the crane drive carried on to do his job an unload our container. The container was wigling in the wind. The crane driver Lee and Jan were soaking wet. But the container unloaded. This morning we were happy to find some action at our workarea finally, the container was unloaded by hand before 09.00 and the first bikes were out of the crates soon after that. In the afternoon the guys went riding on the practice track complaining about sand in their mouth, shoes, underpants. They found the track pretty heavy with all the sand. In Holland we got a lot of sand also, Jan spoke to a Dutchman that was on the track, he said the sand was even heavier than in Havelte, this is the hardest track in Holland.
Another day at the work area tomorrow, we will try and impound the bikes on Friday morning so the riders can go and walk tests after impounding, we will go and organize check crew stuff in the next couple of days.