Saturday 28 April 2012  - Jerez MotoGP Qualifying races. Rain Rain go away! Happy Birthday Marty.

Day 16 and 142 to go.

Earplugs are the best! When we called it a night last night the earplugs went in and boy are they worth their weight in gold. Paul and I both got a solid night’s sleep despite the raucous lot partying around us. Before we knew it, it was 9am but we stayed put until 10am. A lay in. Yippee.

The rain was back with a vengeance. Grrr. We decided we wouldn’t go into the race grounds until the afternoon session when it got serious. We hoped this would allow most of the weather to pass over so we wouldn’t get too soaked.

In the meantime we played cards. Looking outside it was very quiet around the grounds. We could see many campers holed up in their vans as well.

We ate lunch before preparing ourselves in our warm and dry gear before walking over to the track. It was somewhat busier today. Our first stop was for hats and badges and then we decided to walk around part of the track just to check out the view. It is amazing where some people will sit. They were like goats sitting on rock crevices.

We headed back to our stand and settled in watching the end of the Moto3 qualifying. There was a bloke with his son in front of us from Norway and another guy from Belgium and of course all of the Spanish.

The MotoGP qualifying was not particularly eventful. The sun came out and it was generally warm though there were moments where the skies looked menacing and we grabbed our ponchos for cover. Casey Stoner picked up 5^th spot with the Spanish favourite Jorje Lorenzo picking up pole.

We then watched the Moto2 Qualifying with another Spanish Favourite, Mark Marquez, topping the time sheet.

We were going to hang around and see some of the Red Bull young guns, 14 year olds, race, but it began raining again so we wandered back to the van at 5pm.

We played cards again biding time until 8 when we had dinner and started the wind down before bed.

It was quite tame outside. The noise levels were quite reasonable. I assume the rain was keeping many of them in their own vans and tents. Not such a bad thing.

I went to lay down and read Lonely Planet when we had Sam and Dave visit. So out of bed it was and in they came to sit around and talk about the race. We had a few drinks and enjoyed the evening talking about bikes and life before they went back to their van at 11.15pm. A very late one for us.