TT 2013 Is Nearly Here

My favorite time of year on the island, when the place has some life about it and normal island life is forgotten about for 2 weeks.  Unfortunately it's also the time of year when the island's roads are turned into the motoring equivalent of a mental asylum.

With this in mind I had a brain wave yesterday to strap a 3D camera to the car and do a lap of the TT course before it gets too chaotic.  The plan was to upload it to YouTube because there are plenty of TT nerds out there who appreciate this sort of thing.  It was supposed to be a nice leisurely drive taking in all the scenery of the worlds most famous road racing circuit, leisurely it certainly was but as for scenic...not so much.  Not unless you count looking at the backs of HGV's.  Overall it took nearly an hour and a half to do the 37 and a bit miles, that's an average speed of somewhere around 25 mph!  Read it and weep speed freaks!  That is the reality of driving on the Isle of Man, even on what should have been a nice quiet Wednesday afternoon with people in work and kids in school.  For all but about 10-15 minutes of that I was stuck in a queue of traffic behind one thing or another, 3 HGV's, 1 tractor, lost count of cyclists and 1 old person who wasn't going to go above 25 mph in any circumstances as if his life depended on it.  All in there were about 3 safe opportunities to overtake in that 37 miles.  It took so long that just as it got interesting up on the Mountain the cameras battery gave up, that'll be sods law for you!

Overall then it was a fairly shit experience.  The footage was for the most part useless, I wasted petrol going nowhere quick and then there was the cunt over the Mountain.  I was happily following a visiting biker who was doing 60ish (fast enough), I don't think they were sure where they were going so I was happy to give them some room.  Not so the twat behind me who decided he must get past.  So when I slowed down to give the bike in front time to turn right onto a side road the idiot behind decided he was going for it, totally oblivious to the bike slowly turning right across his path.  Having been watching this bell-end in the mirror for a minute I could almost guess what he was going to do so I just had enough time to slam on the anchors and let him back onto the left side of the road in front of me before he hit the bike.  I did get a nice nod and wave from the passenger on the bike who probably needed some new knickers, welcome to the Isle of Man mate! And the carnage hasn't even started yet.

=====

And so it begins...took all of 1 day:-

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/hunt-for-car-after-biker-is-hurt-1-5712605 

and to keep up to date with the fun and games

Isle of Man Police Facebook Page

Iron Man 3

Thought it was OK, a bit long for one of these types of film and also quite surprisingly lacking in action.  Iron Man seemed to spend most of the film moping around feeling sorry for himself for no apparant reason.  Would I go to the cinema to watch it again? No.  Will I buy the Blu-Ray? Possibly, if only to watch it in 2D because the 3D brought nothing to the party except a pain above my ears where the cheapo glasses dug into my fat head.

In other Iron Man news me giving up the gym didn't last very long, but it is on its last chance now, if I'm not cut by the end of the month I'm definitely packing it in.