The cool break!

Blimey Snetterton seems like a long time ago doesn’t it!!.. i mentioned in my last Blog that i had a cool/busy couple of weeks in between Snetterton and Brands so i’ll fill you in on what I've been up to… two days after Snetterton i flew out to LA to spend a few days with a good friend of mine, i don’t know what it is yet about going to California but as soon as i’m like halfway across the States heading towards LAX i started feeling really happy and excited, i love spending time there and was really looking forward to this particular visit, some of you who have followed me since the old FastBikes days may remember one of the riders nicknamed Hammer, well he lives out in Bel Air now so i flew out on his and Americas birthday the 4th of July to hang out for a few days with him and his family, to catch up with the guys from Arch motorcycles and we even managed to squeeze in a visit to the legend that is Roland Sands at his design shop to sort a few bits out for a new Harley project i’m building, he was real cool and ended up spending a couple of hours or so showing me all around the shop and even doing some design work for the bike with me, proper cool!!, we managed to get plenty done before i headed up to Laguna Seca to work for Eurosport at the World Superbike races, i had a mega time up there and some interesting chats with lots of people which was cool, the work if you could call it that was great fun as was the down time, after Laguna Simon and i went on a road trip back down to his place in the Chevy Camaro SS i hired which was highly entertaining!! The trip back started slightly later than we’d anticipated but we got back in the evening to LA just in time for an hour or so in the pool before heading out for a nice dinner, the following day was my last day there and Simon had a meeting so I headed back down to Roland’s to collect a couple of bits before meeting Simon down at Venice Beach, that place always amuses me, to me it almost symbolises everything i think of when i think of California, sun, beach, skateparks, laid back lifestyle, it kind of has it all, another bit of chill time by the pool back at Simon’s followed by dinner and it was time to head back to the airport, the 8 days or whatever it was went so so fast but at the same time i was real keen to get home as the following day was my children’s school sports day and I desperately wanted to be back for that!! Sports day went well, both kids did well so i was super proud, the day after was the school presentation then the day after that it was time to load the van and head off to Spain, i’m planning some full on training out there and was really looking forward to getting there, unfortunately for me i only had literally one day there before having to fly back to the UK Monday lunchtime for a test up at Cadwell park on Tuesday. The weather at the test was absolutely perfect, it was kind of bizarre as i literally rode out of the pits, done one flying lap then pulled back in to sort a few bits but that one flying lap was only 0.4 off of the lap record, fortunately the test continued as it had started, very fast, the bike worked really well and we got plenty of work done, i did have a tiny tip off at the first gear chicane but when i say tiny i mean tiny, it broke the screen and scuffed the brake lever guard so i picked it up and rode it back for the boys to fix. We went fast again afterwards and by all accounts unofficially i was quite a bit faster than everyone else there so i was chuffed to bits with that.. i guess all that was left to do now was go cycling on Wednesday as i’d done no training for two weeks then look forward to kicking off the big Brands bash on Thursday, i’ll let you know how that went real soon, take it easy guys and girls, Shakey #67