1. Best Firestorm.
]I nominate
Fabiostar’s Mori replica
KevL blue rinse special
2.Best non Storm.
This is a wide open category but I will nominate
My RD400
James Husky SM701…. Purely for the way it can run rings round bikes double its size.
Fabiostar’s RD250LC
Duffy’s neat TDR
3.Best tinkerer of the year.
Buzzer by a country mile
4.The least progress on a project.
bazzer for the storm in a shed
Flatline for the infamous Ducafe
5. Most helpful member.
sirch… he holds this forum together for all of us to benefit
MacV2 for spare parts and the way he stepped up to help Malc (Popkat)
6 The Best 'Wicky bin shot' of the year.
Iill have to go and look
7.The best VTR meeting of the year.
I think I did them all again this year, as well as adding my own Spanish one. so here in no order are my reminders
Yorkshire… it always feels good as it’s the first time we all get to meet up after the winter hibernation…. So lots of drunken banter and also some good riding. Downer on this one was Victor crashing his bike on the way to the event. Fortunately he was ok and turned up in the car the next day.
I think Yorkshire has the best accommodation
Devon…. Catching up with the southern softies for the 1st time in the year and being by the sea is always good, but knowing that Popkat was fading fast, and that we wouldn’t see him again after this weekend, made it a bit thought provoking . We had hoped that at least one of us could visit him that weekend, so he knew we were thinking about him, but when Mac got the phone call that he had passed away at noon on the day we were arriving…. That hit us all hard.
I had to invent some routes for us to ride, as we had always relied on Malc for this…. These were big shoes to fill… I got a good 80% of it right, but there was a few shitty single track roads …. Sorry about that lads.
I think Tony.mon suggested that we scrap any plans to ride and just use the weekend to drink toasts to Malcs memory, from the hazy recollections I have I think we did both.
Ireland…. We had moved location out to enniskillen, and I knew the roads out there were good from previous times I had been there, so this was going to be fun
.
Until the rain started and didn’t stop till Sunday.
Still got some good riding in, and had the added joy of dropping in on the way past and taking the piss out of Fabio who had messed up his leg crashing his Pegaso…. And for me the fun of getting to ride alongside that mild mannered wild man James on his 700 supermoto.
Some of us then added a cheeky trip up to Forfar, to play in the Cairngorms for a few days….those were good roads, and we even had dry weather in the middle of it bookended by more torrential rain. Big thanks to Grumpyfrog for hospitality and showing us his favourite places
Scottish trip…. Smaller crowd for this one, but perfect riding roads and good banter were the order of the day….dont think there was a downer.
Wales …. This is the biggest turnout, so always fun. weather was perfect and Tony, flatline and I went a day early to make the most of it…well it would be rude not to..
I had to get home on the Saturday night so missed the last night of fun, but I can bet it was good.
Spain and Martys house….. to start with there was going to be 4 of us but in the end there was 2 (and even Marty didn’t show up ) but it was still probably the highlight of my riding year. The roads, the lack of traffic, the scenery, the craic… oh and the wall to wall sun
I just worked out as I made these notes that I now plan all the routes and lead a group at every one of these weekends!!!! Does that qualify me for being helpful
8. The Operation Storm Highlight/Low point of the year.
Touched on some above, but I nominate
Highs..
1) just the joy of meeting up, drinking and riding with the community on here
2) toasting Malc
3) the delayed high of not getting an NIP after wales
lows:
1) loosing Malc 3hrs before we got there
2) the speed camera saga in wales, where I was sure I had gone through 3 new average speed cameras at at least double the limit….. that put a right downer on the rest of the ride and my holiday the week after.
9.The poor Partners award. The Partner who has to put up with the VRT nutter the most. Partners in Grime...
Mrs Mon and probably Mrs AMcQ46
10. Operation Storms Drunken memory 2023.
i think it would be Devon drinking port….but can’t remember
Or perhaps the 50cans of beer that we demolished in the stay at Marty’s cottage in Spain.
for us. 
)
.
