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Isle
of Wight International Scooter Rally
Fri 22nd - Mon 25th August 2003
Exactly where
do I start???
My first,
as well as others, rally and its the biggest of the year in
the world, the IOW.
The Pilgrims were attending in force for their first rally as
a club, some leaving at Stupid O'Clock, others leaving later
and meeting up with the St. Albans Scooter Club and taking a
more leisurely route. Needless to say, I went on the Stupid
O'clock run.
| So
4am I pull up on the market square in Bedford town centre
to be met by Nick (Smokey Joe), Stewart (Wossisname),
Bernadette, Squirrel and Mod John. After a few pictures,
which will hopefully turn out, we set off for Flitwick
to pick up Boxer and then onto the Toddington Services
on the M1 to pick up Pete Burgess and let the smokers
have a quick fag. I think we all thought the M1 was busier
than we expected, although not too bad. |
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Off
we went and before we know it we are zooming down the
M1, onto the M25 anticlockwise and keeping pretty much
together. Mod John was certainly doing some serious slipstreaming
I noticed, which is fine until I could see nothing out
of my mirrors but his headlight trying to hump my rear
carrier :-) We pretty much all took turns in taking the
lead and soon we stopped at the first services on the
A3 after coming off the motorway and topped up with coffee,
fags, breakfast baps and of course petrol. Mind you, it
looked to me like someone was hitting on a pretty woman
in the diner too, you know who you are! |
As
we're sat there, another group of about 15 scooters pulled
in, some lovely GS's and GT's among them. Turned out that
they were from South London or as one of them put it, "Saff
Laandan". When we said we're on our way from Bedford
I believe the response was along the lines of "Fack that".
Of course it wasn't long until we noticed their lack of luggage,
apparently they had a support van bringing it down for them.
Lightweights :-)
| So
back on the A3 and its daylight by now, at this point
our backsides are pretty numb and Pete is leading us
onto lay-bys every five minutes and I'm changing lanes
all over the place, but within another hour we're at
the ferry port.
Pulling up at the ferry port we are met by a group of
about 10 - 15 other scooters all obviously going to
the rally, and luckily for one of them, our lot spot
that one of them has a slow puncture! After buying the
return tickets and getting on the ferry he manages to
change his rear wheel, lucky he had a spare!
The
trip across is literally 40 minutes which gave us time
for coffee and smokes, we also noticed the guy who had
the puncture on the bridge of the boat! Turns out that
the girl with him is a cousin of the captain or whatever.
By the way, a hint: when parking your bike on a ferry,
park it sideways on, its apparently more stable. |
|
At the
other side it's a case of "Gentlemen, start your engines"
and we rode off the ferry; well, except Smokey Joe, er, I
mean Nick who had to push his off the ferry and up the hill
where we bumped it into life. It turns out that the running
theory is that crankcase oil's leaking into the cylinder somehow.
But to be fair, that was the only trouble with the scooter
all weekend.
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Another
15 minutes and we're riding through Ryde, down the hill
to the roundabout beside the King Lud and parking on
the green. We're here!!!!!
The
next three days are a haze though so that's all I can
write. Only
joking, click here |
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