rewind back a bit here ..... tuesday was the day my boss (Yuri) told me about the motogp thingy, he first told me about the bike trip to assen he had arranged with a few other bikers, and then told me about the ticket he had bought for me and had arranged some biking gears as well. i stunned and picked up the jaw i dropped and can't put away the silly smile on my face for quite a while. that was really something i've never expected. anyway, got my gears last friday only to find out none of them were fit .. jacket too big and helmet too small. damn, too late to do any shopping and suddenly i felt a bit sick and didn't feel like going at all. i actually called up Yuri and try to cancel the trip but ticket was actually paid, and i didn't want to upset him, so, only option was to wear whatever i had, which i was very reluctant to do so as i was also never a big fan of motogp, never even went to the one in sepang. only watched on tv, once in a while.
oversized gears.
met Yuri at a train stop that morning and saw the bike he borrowed from his dad specially for this trip, immediately i heard birds singing in my head, it was a bmw 1150cc rockster! the bike appeared in the movie paycheck ridden by ben afflect! very sexy bike. waited a while for 2 other bikes to turn up and off we went. the weather was great, whole week was drizzling and cloudy but last sat was bright and sunny! journey to assen took slightly more than 2 hours. first time sitting on a bike in nl, first time sitting behind someone on a bike for that long, first time wearing someone else's helmet which was 2 sizes smaller and got rashes on my face, i tot that was bad. i had no idea.
Yuri and his dad's rockster.
first time in my life being surrounding with so many super bikes, along the highway, petrol station, literally everywhere as we approaching assen. as we moving closer to the circuit, more and more super bikes pilling up, bumper to bumper, well, tyre to tyre. just imaging yourself on a normal trunk road filled up with 5-6 lines of slowly moving superbikes, we even had to stop at some point. we passed by some camp sites around, full of tents and caravans, many of them have been staying there for nights, just for the event, just like some bike events as seen on discovery channel, only different is that 95% of them are superbikes, all sorts. those bikes you are looking at were like 10-15% of what i can captured on my camera, and there were quite a nos of parking lot that size surrounding the circuit.
inside the circuit was sardine packed, i had to queue up for literally everything, beer, coffee, snacks, toilet etc. found our seat after 30 mins walk. 125cc started before we sat down, didn't know what was going on, just heard some noisy thingy passed by and some jerks blow their air horn, damn annoying. 250cc was a little more exciting, but i had concentrate more on chatting on the phone asking my biking buddies to watch motogp =P. didn't pay much attention on the 125 and 250. there was an hour break between 250cc and 800cc, we went for a walk around that area, nothing much actually, just some stalls selling snacks, drinks, soveniors like caps, t-shirts, cups and etc ... expensive and china made quality.
as i was queuing for my coffee i heard some jet plane flew by, it must be the opening of 800cc. i was wrong. it was the warm up round. damn, that was fucking awesome. quickly i went back to my seat and sat there patiently for the real action. finally, the race begun. it was totally different from 125 and 250 .... i can't describe, but i can tell you i still have goosebump when i typed this email and everytime i recall how they zoom passed the few corners in front of where we sat. it's just so amazing how fast and powerful these bikes are and how some human can control something like that. the majority of the crowd including myself were there for valentino rossi, current world champion. he started the race like ranking 6th or 7th and slowly overtook one by one, and each time he overtook someone, the whole circuit cheered, which spiced up the entire experience of watching it live. that 45 mins of race seemed like 10 mins or less, it was a good race, and he won of course :). i had hell a lot of fun for the first time, only to know they were prices to pay.
we left soon the race finished and the way out was nightmare... we spent like 40 mins just to walk to where we parked our bikes, and another 1 hour plus sitting on the bike trying to get out of the parking lot, i had to push the bike at some points due to overheating, and another hour to get out of the town. of course then i realised there was another 150km freeway to my hotel, and that was an hour and a half. swore to myself that i will never be a pillion with travelling distance more than 20km! got back to hotel around 10pm with fingers, arms, arse and face very sore.
plenty of VFRs spotted too =).
