"Thewitch". I think that you're refering to my friend, an italian journalist who presented me the legendary Harry that year. He is a good friend of Harry.

Was Harry also this year to make his marshal duty at Bray Hill?

Don, you're speaking of the main man's problem: the things flow. We conserve _signs_ of the concrete experiences: what we call "memories". But to give them an intersubjective value we need the language. Great western invention: the "photograph", another kind of sign.

So you're right. The only thing we can do is to ask to write the memories down. "Graham hit a manhole cover before to crash on the Quarter Bridge road": it's a proposition that describes a "fact". Of course the condition of the meaningness of this request is that we recognize a _value_ in the memories we ask to write down.

I recognize in the TT races a _value_ that I do not recognize in any other sport event. When I look at the MotoGP or F1 car races in tv I think: "it's IMPOSSIBLE that those things will do history". Perhaps I'm wrong and the future will confute my opinion. But there is a "but": the MotoGP and F1 car races are more and more thought and organized _already_ for the TV (for the "image"). While any TT race is absolutely out of any image control: it's based on the _concrete experience_. So I come to an apparently paradoxal conclusion: the value that I recognize in the TT races is based on the fact they are not completely subordinated to a system that produces and conserve images of the event (and what makes possible this is first of all the lenght of the course...). This is also the reason why a TT tale on the 2006 TT has a value much greater than any tale about what Rossi made in the last GP etc.

WHY are the TT races unique? I think that this question can still reserve us some surprises.

I see. No, Harry is now retired...I won't tell you his age, but he comes and watches at Bray, and, of course, meets all his old friends. A lovely man. We had a few Italian journalists with us this year.

So how can we remember them, these champions like Les Graham?
Only with words and photos, but most importantly they will live in the memories of those who saw them.
"Correrai ancor piu veloce per le vie del cielo"
They will travel faster through the heavens.

"Thewitch". I know the age of Harry: he is some years over 18 and some years under 100:-).

Yes, he is a lovely man. Because he loves something.

Careful Marco - don't start Don on the subject of Nivola and the Isle of Man in 1926 :!:

:wink:

Larry, don't start ME on that marvellous subject, as my aim is to show that Nivola MADE a lap of the TT course in 1926 (preferibly during TT practices). He MUST have done that damned TT course lap!;-).

It's not only because of what Count Lurani says in the english edition of his book. It's that Renato Tassinari, in his _1930_ book (the first book about Nuvolari), writes it! And 1930 is only 4 years after 1926, and Tassinari was a serious motorcycle journalist, and above all he was on the Isle of Man together with the Bianchi team!

Nuvolari beat the English overseas so often they made sure he didn't do it at the Isle of Man.
They knew he could have beaten them one handed just like Robert Dunlop did.
I wonder if they will let Rossi ride with broken bones and check the make of his spark plugs if ever he comes to the TT.
You stirred this up Larry, it was 80 years ago but I have not forgotten.

The great man fixing his Bianchi Bialbero 350, don't ask me where.

You forget, Don, as we old men do . . . . . . . . .

On seeing the famous photo which I sent you some time ago, with the plastered finger held vertical, you agreed that you wouldn't have let him ride, never mind the crooked English :!:

Incidentally, your photo was taken at the IV Circuito di Padova, held on May 31 1925.

He's repairing a puncture at the pits.

He won the 350 class at 98.4kph with a new lap record at 103.71kph, and was 2nd overall.

Oh, and one more thing, Marco - I always thought that the English translation was "you will travel faster on the roads of Heaven".

Or am I wrong again, Don :?: :?:

Marco Wrote:P.S.
If we traduce that shot in modern terms, we obtain as result Joey Dunlop with his hands on his machines (but in the paddock, not during a race!)

Ops, please read: "if we _translate_...". For you english "to traduce" has all a different meaning from our "tradurre"!

Perish the thought, Don :!:

But . . . . . . . . you are an academic, after all :wink:

Don, yes there is that difference, of course. Infact I think that, in the context of that phrase, "through the heavens" can be a good translation of "per le vie del cielo".

About Ballaspur. Yes, yours is an interesting hypothesis. But first of all we should look at a damned TT shot from that jump!

No trace of the jump on the onboard videos, yes. But first there is a climb of the road, then a downhill (before Ballig bridge) - and this is the "right" place for having a jump located there.

About "the thought". You have to understand your friend Larry as he has been a TT course rider and the TT course riders..do not have the time for thinking. They go too fast:-)

Larry doesn't....

Oh, for me _any_ TT course rider goes MUCH faster than Valentino Rossi and companies.

To floozie:

1 Not "Larry doesn't", but rather "Larry never did" :!:

2 Miaowwwwwwww

:wink: