12May, Day 5, Superbikes

I woke after 5PM today. I hope this event signifies the end of my jetlag…

Since it was way too late to do anything that I planned on doing today I decided to go for a long jog to try to make sure I was tired enough to fall asleep at a semi-reasonable hour. The destination would be the Monza racetrack: about ¾ hour jogging each way. They’re having the superbike competitions this weekend, and I thought I might try to sneak into the pits for a close up look at the racing teams like I did for F1. The races were over and most of the people had already left by the time I arrived. I perused the public areas for a while before convincing the guard to let me onto the track for, “just a minute.” –Which stretched into about a half hour. The superbikes are cool, but there was much less activity that when I was here after formula one. Each racing team had four to six bikes in their garage. Most of the bikes were disassembled as the teams replaced any worn parts, and cleaned any deposits from inside the engines, but they were not practicing changing the tires like they do for F1. I think if I got there sooner I might’ve been able to seen them practice refueling, but I don’t think they do the tires for motorcycles. I saw the pilot of Honda on my way out. A group of people gathered around him for autographs and photos, but I didn’t have anything to sign and wasn’t very interested anyway. I jogged most of the way home, but walked the last 10 or 15 minutes because I didn’t want my feet to get blisters in case there would be dancing later tonight.

Ricardo called a minute after I walked in. He was at my door to pick me up within 20 minutes. Tonight we would go meet a few of his friends here from Sardinia. I’m hoping to go there within the next few weeks, and hoped this might be a good contact to make. Unfortunately, the girls were some of the most lifeless I’ve met in quite a while. I was the one to have just run about 10k but they were the ones acting tired! To make things harder the two of them were notorious mumblers and I could hardly understand the few words they spoke. Too bad…