"I enjoyed riding the bike around on the parade lap, but it was still almost too much for me because I'm not retired, I'm not an old man, and I almost feel like I'm being put in those brackets. 'Wa-hey! Let's roll out the ex-champions!' and all that. I just feel like saying 'whoa, I'm still a young guy who wants to race bikes and I've got a lot to give the sport'."
Earlier in the season it had been rumoured that Hodgson might be taking a much more active part in the
Donington weekend, by signing to a late deal to ride a second Team Yamaha YZF R1, alongside Shinichi Nakatomi, from round three onwards.
"Nothing came of it really," revealed the 33-year-old. "They were exaggerated rumours to be honest. There were a couple of phone calls and then it became apparent that they had no money and no bikes - not to a decent standard anyway."
Are there any opportunities at the moment?
"Not really, no," replied the 16 times WSBK race winner, 16 times pole position holder and 41 times podium finisher. "There are a couple of really,
really, bad opportunities that you wouldn't want to take. It's frustrating not racing, but it'd be even more frustrating taking a really crap opportunity and battling for tenth place and thinking 'what am I doing?'. So I'd rather not do that, wait, and certainly focus on next year.
"I'm keeping as fit as I can. I do quite a lot of motocross and mountain biking in the Isle of Man," he continued. "I race every weekend, either mountain biking or motocross. I love the competition. I've actually been quite busy. It's surprising, you'd think I'd just be sat watching Jeremy Kyle [UK daytime chat show] or something, but I've been really busy. I also own quite a lot of properties so I've been doing some buying and selling.
"Keep your fingers crossed that I'll get a ride sorted soon."
![Neil Hodgson [Ducati Fila] leads race 1 at Misano](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/59634.jpg )
