After staying for another day in London, I went back home for a few days before leaving for Sachsenring. I was sick of waking up and looking at the rain, so I decided to go to Germany for a couple of days and watch a GP for the first time this year. I didn’t stay for the race as it was cutting it a bit fine for my flight to America, but was there throughout practice and had a good couple of days catching up with a few people who I hadn’t seen for a while.
After Germany, I only had a day before I was back on a plane from Heathrow to San Francisco. The flight was a long one, just over ten hours, but it was with Virgin who always have good movies on offer, so that always makes it go that bit faster. Once we arrived, Hattie and I spent all of Wednesday in San Francisco, going around a few of the tourist areas, including Fisherman’s Wharf, as, after the weekend, we would be staying in the city for a few days, and wanted to find out where the good places were.
On Wednesday night, we met with my mechanic, Mark, who took us to the circuit, about two hours south of San Francisco. We were staying in the team's truck at the circuit - which is always handy to beat the GP weekend traffic. On Thursday, I walked a lap of the track with Hattie. Laguna has always been one of the places where I had really wanted to ride, so I was definitely excited about the weekend ahead. I remember watching World Superbike there years and years ago, thinking how cool it would be to ride the Corkscrew. As always, the camera never does elevation changes any justice to show just how steep things are - and not just the Corkscrew, as most other areas of the track were a lot steeper than I expected. The whole place was like a rollercoaster - but I couldn’t wait to ride it.
