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My Secret Mission in Madrid
I only had a few days to do the tourist thing, and I was fighting a cold for part of the time. The weather wasn't helping, but I survived by drinking lots of pacharan. Early one morning I headed towards the outskirts of the city to meet up with a friend of mine named Javier. He lived a ways out of the city so I took the subway to it's final stop to meet him. While I waited at a bus stop the sky looked grim and the cloud cover wouldn't burn off for several hours.
The bus stop happenned to be right outside of a large Bull-fighting arena. I don't really condone it, but who am I to talk?
We drove for about forty five minutes listening to techno (wake-up music for Javi) and chain-smoking. We finally arrived at a very non-descript building in an industrial area. The doors were bullet-proof, and heavy!
The only thing that tipped me off that this building was special was this truck parked in the alley on the side. What's that sticker in the window say?
Upon entering the warehouse I immediately noticed all these shipping containers. We all know what fits inside of these, right?
Things like *This* go inside boxes like that!
You know, stuff like *This*
Crouching Tigers. . . . .
Welcome to the home of D'antin's racing headquarters in Madrid! It's a large warehouse building that is split into various storage and work rooms. On the main floor there are the Spanish CEV bikes in one room, and another large room dedicated to the MotoGP effort. Upstairs is mostly storage and was filled with all manner of things.
Lots of old leathers upstairs. The stories these suits could tell! Several Championships represented, and some old suits of Shinya Nakano, Norick "Norifumi" Abe, and more.
Another room was filled with almost a hundred magnesium wheels, and pricey parts were everywhere. Here's some of the old scooter and bikes that were tooked away in a corner under the stairs. I see an old Bultaco and a Montessa in there, somewhere!
These are the old Spanish Championship bikes, a couple R6's and R1's. Next season promises to be fun, and there was a beautiful ZX-10R stripped down and ready to be converted into a Superbike. . . and it looked just like the ones the Kawasaki USA team is putting together for the AMA series . . . . . .
I had fun wandering around, playing with parts, and giving a helping hand when possible. This chassis was missing something or other.
So I helped stuff this engine in. Gotta figure that when I'm around people are always asking me to do something or other, haha. Just kidding. It feels really good sometimes, really nice to be learning new things and not just stuck in the same routines day after day. You know what they say, you may have worked somewhere for five years . . .but chances are you only have one year experience.
That's all I can show, and all I can say about this really cool GP Mecca outside of Madrid. . . .
