I signed on at 8am, so had half an hour or so to wander around the paddock and take some photos - theres a collection on my Flickr account HERE
This is my favourite photo of the morning, the rider pushing his bike, another having his bacon roll and the general milling about in the background sums up that time of day at the circuit.
At 8:40 it was time to drive onto the track and let the vRS stretch its legs - although it was a very short stretch as I was marshalling at the first corner "Country", so with my 4 wheels safely protected behind a line of trees, duties were allocated and we were set for the start of racing. Apart from a short stint of 6 races when I was on flag duty on the Railway Straight, I spent the rest of the day on pick up duty at Country, and a busy day it was too.
Our mad 10 minutes came just before lunch when 3 bikes came off together on the opening lap of Race 7, no sooner had we sorted all that out when another 2 did the same thing. In all we had 8 bikes and 1 sidecar come to visit us, but fortunately nothing too serious, only dented bikes and wounded pride.
As ever on the weekend before the TT gets underway, we had a few riders who will be making their way to the Isle of Man, including a full Sidecar grid.
A fantastic day of racing, and I look forward to the next meeting on 14th June, when with the system of marshal rotation I will be on Village Corner.
Of course the other meeting on last weekend was the NW200 in Northern Ireland, a place I've never visited, but must do so at some point. The main news coming from across the Irish Sea was of course the accident, and subsequent death of Simon Andrews. I've only met Simon once, at last year's TT, and he was really friendly, I've followed him on Twitter for a while and whilst most of his posts seemed to be from a hospital bed, as he was accident prone, they were always full of humour and his zest for life shone through. A sad way to end the weekend. RIP Simon.
More awful news was to come from the Isle of Man when I found out that a young lad that my sister is housekeeper for when his dad is away on business was involved in a car crash on Saturday afternoon on the Cronk y Voddy straight. He was seriously injured and was immediately transferred by Helimed to the Walton Centre in Liverpool, but it seems that his injuries were such that he had no chance of recovery and sadly died on Monday evening. Dosch MacLeod was just 17 with a promising future in the medical profession ahead of him. I never met him, but my sister always spoke of him and his brothers in glowing terms. I know his family and friends must be totally devastated and my heart goes out to them. RIP Dosch.
So this week started a bit numb and subduded.
Next week I'll be off to the Isle of Man on Thursday and then marshalling at the 27th Milestone for Friday practice and all of race week. Here's hoping for good weather, safe racing and friendships renewed and made. Until next time and my TT report, be safe and live life to the full - its the only one you get!
