Friday 27 April 2012  - Jerez MotoGP practice .

Day 15 and 143 to go.

It’s raining! We are hoping that it doesn’t last. The ground we are camped on is caked mud, too much wet stuff and we will be swilling with the pigs. Mud glorious mud NOT!

Did I say it was noisy last night? Loud wogs talking, voo voo zelahs (is that how you spell it?) You know those long noisy horns from South Africa that have been banned at most sporting events but not here lucky us. Young blokes revving the absolute guts out of their bikes to entertain the masses. Am I painting a clear picture for you? And this is only day 1, I have 5 more races to attend, though not all will we be camping at!  That being said the noise did not last all night and I did wake a few times to silence.  Tonight I will sleep with earplugs.

With practice day ahead we were up and about by 830am. Paul had rung home to touch base and then we were out the door to find the spot to collect tickets. You’d think we would have taken notice of the looming grey skies and the locals dressed for cooler climes, but no. Here were the 2 Aussies heading out in shorts. DUH!

We walked to the front entrance about 500m away and found someone who spoke English and could point us in the right direction. Simple.

With tickets in hand we checked out the merchandise stands looking for Casey Stoner paraphernalia so we could proudly wander the track and the camp ground as the Aussies but not a thing could we find. However, we did find wet weather ponchos thankfully, as we were going to need them.  

We entered the gate and did a scan of more merchandise. We located one store selling 1 Casey t-shirt woopee. We didn’t bother with it and instead walked to our stand and found our seats in X-1. It seemed like a pretty good place to be with views of many of the corners but not the straight. So with wet weather ponchos on we watched a little bit of the practice before the shivering got to us and we decided we could walk back to the van, read up on the official program, eat lunch, get changed and then return with more appropriate apparel and plastic covering, including fruit and vege plastic bags over my socks to keep my feet dry.

Looking like little red riding hood and Kenny from South Park we left the warm, dry van and got out in the rain joining the other gumbies dressed in the stylish and colourful ponchos. Walking back to the merchandise area we decided to pick up a t-shirt each to commemorate our visit to Jerez and at 10 Euros each we thought it was a bargain.

We returned to our stand where the crowds were camped under the stadium trying to avoid the rain. We moved down to our area that was a little less packed and within 20min the rain had stopped and we went up top to watch the end of the Moto3 practice before the MotoGP riders came out.

We were so thankful that the rain held off for the entire hour and we were able to watch in relevant comfort. Following practice, in which Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi were up there in the top 5, we returned to our home to remove the wet clothes and enjoy some peace and a very Spanish siesta.

By 6 we ventured out to have a wander around the camp. There were 2 planes flying around entertaining the masses with their aerial display. We stopped by an English couple’s (Sam and Dave) van for a chat. Paul had plenty in common with Dave and we hung around talking for a couple of hours. We watched the crowds as they whizzed around the camp on their mopeds, listened to the music that was thumping away and shook our head at the duelling revving of motorbike engines. It was everything we expected.

By 8 the cooler air had set in and we were getting hungry so we returned to the van to make dinner and wind down. With our Ipod on we were almost able to drown out the noise going on around us. ALMOST.