BOOTHY YAMAHA MT-10 SP

THIS MONTH I HAVE MOSTLY BEEN… Exploring the Isle of Man.

Inearly had a major disaster with the ‘ten. I’d planned on taking it to the Isle of Man to do some laps around the Mountain Course whilst I was over there racing, but when I came to loading it into my van, I discovered my best ramp had totally and utterly disappeared. Gone. Vanished. Nowhere to be seen. What was I to do? Well, there was only one thing for it. I had to dismantle the shelf in my cupboard under the stairs and use it as a make-shift ramp – it was either that or leave the MT at home which, quite frankly, wasn’t an option. Braced underneath with a few bits of timber my little ramp worked a treat – and soon

enough the bike was in the van, and the van was on the ferry across to the Isle of Man. Now I’d like to say I did a big bunch of laps on the MT whilst I was over there, but with the weather as it was (i.e. pants), and the schedule constantly changing, I found myself without much downtime. In fact, the bike spend a good few days in Road & Track, the Yamaha dealership on the IoM, having its 600-mile service.

I managed to get some laps in on the bike once it had been serviced, and it is such an impressive bike. There is no speed limit on quite a few roads on the IoM, so it’s an ideal place to really open the thing up, and it made

mincemeat out of any of the roads I managed to find.

With it being a naked bike I wasn’t sure just what it would be like up on the mountain section of the TT course. This is a bit of unrestricted road (no speed limit) and it’s all one-way traffic during TT fortnight, so you get all the lads on the out-and-out sportsbike up there

– I’ve even seen one or two up there on their TT race bikes with full slicks on (don’t tell the feds), no doubt sneaking in some extra practice. My concern was that, up on the ‘Mountain Mile’, holding the thing flat out without any real wind protection could well be fairly horrendous. But it wasn’t. Even two-up, with Hoodless, my little fuel man, aboard, we would sail past Gixers, R1s, Fireblades, you name it! In fact, it was quite funny just how good it was.

When I wasn’t embarrassing the sportsbike brigade up on the mountain or waiting to see if race control were going to cancel yet another practice session, the MT was the perfect ally when it came to trundling around the island in search of some different scenery. On the few days off that we had, my favourite pastime was exploring the Mona's Isle on the MT, and it didn’t matter if I got lost because I knew I wasn’t about to get fed up of riding such an awesome bike!

Now I’m home though, I really do fancy getting an exhaust for it, so I’ve placed an order. Should I warn the neighbours now?