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  • Speedway Standings []
    2006 FIM FIAT VANS BRITISH SPEEDWAY GRAND PRIX 03.06.06
    1 2 CRUMP, Jason 25
    2 8 JONSSON, Andreas 20
    3 11 HAMPEL, Jaroslaw 18
    4 5 HANCOCK, Greg 16
    5 6 PEDERSEN, Bjarne 12
    6 1 RICKARDSSON, Tony 10
    7 13 ZAGAR, Matej 9
    8 9 NICHOLLS, Scott 8
    9 10 LINDBÄCK, Antonio 8
    10 7 GOLLOB, Tomasz 7
    11 3 ADAMS, Leigh 6
    12 12 RICHARDSON, Lee 5
    13 15 IVERSEN, Niels-Kristian 5
    14 4 PEDERSEN, Nicki 4
    15 16 STEAD, Simon 3
    16 14 PROTASIEWICZ, Piotr 3


    SPEEDWAY GRAND PRIX 2006

    1st CRUMP, Jason 20 25 25 25 95
    2nd HANCOCK, Greg 5 20 20 16 61
    3rd PEDERSEN, Nicki 25 14 16 4 59
    4th GOLLOB, Tomasz 18 9 18 7 52
    5th HAMPEL, Jaroslaw 4 16 8 18 46
    6th JONSSON, Andreas 8 5 10 20 43
    7th ZAGAR, Matej 9 18 4 9 40
    8th RICKARDSSON, Tony 16 6 4 10 36
    9th ADAMS, Leigh 10 7 11 6 34
    10th NICHOLLS, Scott 9 9 5 8 31
    11th PEDERSEN, Bjarne 5 6 7 12 30
    12th LINDBÄCK, Antonio 9 2 6 8 25
    13th RICHARDSON, Lee 8 4 0 5 17
    14th IVERSEN, Niels-Kristian 2 6 4 5 17
    15th PROTASIEWICZ, Piotr 1 3 3 3 10
    16th LINDGREN, Fredrik - - 7 - 7
    17th KASPRZAK, Krzysztof - 6 - - 6
    18th STEAD, Simon - - - 3 3
    19th FERJAN, Matej 3 - - - 3





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    Monday, October 25, 2004

    Whoopsy

    Following on from my earlier story on The Great Crash , I thought that I would tell you about some of the more stupid accidents and near misses I've had on motorcycles.
    When I was a young tacker, my father and I used to go to Bathurst each year for the bike races. Dad would ride until we hit the Olympic Way just outside Albury, then we would swap spots. (I was too young for a licence, but the points system didn't cross state boundaries in those days, so little harm would befall Dad if we got caught. We never did.) On this trip, we were a little way after Wagga when we came upon the Quarter Litre Club, who had all pulled over for a rest. Or something. They chose to wait until I was right on them before deciding to pull out at a leisurely pace, creating something of a moving chicane. Interesting at the time, but not the incident in question. Just after this there was a long, sweeping 's' bend. Going around the initial right hander, the rear end seemed to squirm a little bit. I was entering the left hander, thinking about stopping to see what the trouble was, when the rear tyre blew out, coming off the bead entirely.
    For those of you not familiar with the way that tyres are mounted onto wheels, this meant that the tyre was no longer compelled to point in the same direction as the wheel. Applying the brakes was not an option, as the back end would have overtaken the front and road rash would have resulted. It was a case of hang on, slow down gently and try to keep in front of the rear wheel. It was at this point that I noticed the first Commodore that I had ever seen as it hurtled through the table drain in a gracious attempt to avoid having a Yamaha bonnet emblem.
    I finally managed to get it pulled up in one piece, a riding effort I am still inordinately proud of, twenty six years later. The Quarter Litre Club, which would have been close enough behind to have seen the whole thing, trundled past, no offer to help. Arseholes. Dad and I had stopped shaking and were starting to get down to the business of tyre repair when the Commodore returned, front stone tray hanging off and grille broken. The driver, who was bigger than Texas got out and I thought that I was going to die. Dad's only five foot six and has to wear heavy boots on windy days so that he doesn't blow away. "Flat tyre, eh?" he rumbled, brushing Dad and I aside as he spoke.
    "O.K., 4.50 by 16, I'll just duck into Wagga and get a tube."
    Which he did, wouldn't take any money for it, either.
    Another two-up incident occurred with a mate, Rod Rocket, who could ride like the wind, but broke bikes with monotonous regularity. At the time, he had a V-four 750 Honda, which went like stink, but had a fragile valve train. Every time he broke it, I would put it back together, like the six-million dollar man, faster and stronger. I never charged him for my efforts, so he used to let me ride it whenever I wanted. On this particular occasion (a Sunday night in 1987) we were riding from Dandenong to some suburb I don't remember. We pulled off the freeway at Warragul Road and stopped at the lights. Nothing happened. Waiting, waiting. Did I mention that we were drunk? Anyway, realising that the lights were operated by a pressure switch, and that the bike wasn't heavy enough to trigger the switch did we a) turn left and then do a u-bolt on Warragul Road, b) just run the lights or c) do something really stupid.
    Big elephant stamp on your report card if you picked c). Leaving Rocketman to wait at the lights I rode the wrong way down the off-ramp, turned around and did a monstrous wheelstand right up the ramp and locked the rear brake in time to thump the front wheel down on the switch. Hey, it worked. But that isn't the incident, oh no, you don't get off that easy. (I knew a girl who did, but that's another double entendre.) After we negotiated the lights, we trundled through the suburbs to Mitcham, or Malvern. Or somewhere else, I don't really remember. We pulled up in the driveway of Rocket's mate's house, which was full of fairly competitive road racers. Rocket thought I put my feet down. I thought Rocket put his feet down. Ker-plunk, accompanied by much laughter from inside the house.
    The most recent one occurred on my recent trip to Cunnamulla. I won't go into detail, suffice to say that when you put a lock through the brake disc to slow down thieves, it is best removed before riding away.

    6 Comments:

    Blogger Hooch said...

    Nothing I enjoy more than a story fool of motorcycle-inspired-tom-foolery. And elephant stamps.

    And boy, isn't she a lucky double entendre!

    10/25/2004 05:34:00 pm  
    Blogger Hooch said...

    Hmmm that was supposed to be "full of" not "fool of". My apologies for the freudian. *ducks head in mock shame*

    10/25/2004 05:36:00 pm  
    Blogger rat said...

    hahaha i saw a bloke on a hardly davidson do that once (lock through the disc). he and his missus nearly went over the handlebars. fortunately they didn't damage too much and got going afterwards.
    i got stuck a few times in canberra at the lights on my bike, never tried option c though :-) usually just either ignored the lights, or if there was traffic, went and pressed the pedestrian crossing button.
    had one of those vf750f honda's as well, nice to ride but annoying to repair it all the time.

    10/26/2004 05:34:00 am  
    Blogger Dirk said...

    Hooch,
    I actually lived with the entendre in question for about eighteen months. I used to call her Billy, as in Puffing Billy, due to all the woooo - woooo noises she made when we were, umm, vacuuming.
    And elephant stamps are much better than gold stars.
    Rat,
    the VF750F was a whole big bunch of fun. Handling was a bit odd, though. Don't know if it was the 16" front wheel or not, but it seemed to shake its head a fair bit on high speed corners. It never actually got into trouble, but it felt like it wanted to, though. Glorious engine, though - once the valve train was strengthened.
    The disc lock incident occurred as I was manouvering out of a tight parking spot, so I was only going about 3kph. Lucky it wasn't a clear run or it could have been ugly.

    10/26/2004 01:35:00 pm  
    Blogger rat said...

    yeah it was fun. the 16 inch front wheel made it a whole lot of different from my suzuki gs550 i had before. it would just fall into the corners without thinking about it.
    i found that if i didn't have new/good steering head bearings and good tyres i'd have a bit of shake between 70-100k's and, like you said, on high speed corners. different types of tyres on the front acted differently as well. i was told to stick with a tyre with a straight front groove, but i can't remember what it was, the pirelli match worked pretty good though and from memory it had a zigzag centre groove. but you're not using the centre bit when you're doing the fun stuff anyway :-)
    i did my first wheelstand on that vf750f, nearly ran up the back of a mate of mine in the main st, and put it back down so quick i blew both fork seals

    10/26/2004 03:45:00 pm  
    Blogger stilt said...

    riding off with the disc lock still on is always fun. After the first time I did that and fell over I learnt to put the lock on next to the fork so that I couldn't go anywhere till I took it off. That, and got one of the flouro orange bungee attachments....

    Most embarrasing fall off was in a servo on the pacific hwy - after about 2.5 hrs of solid riding on the highway (boring run back to sydney after a lap of the Oxley) I pulled in to fuel up, rolled up to the pump, went to put my foot down, discovered my foot / leg had gone to sleep, and promptly fell over. The people in the diner had a good laugh

    11/01/2004 12:14:00 pm  

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