LOL. :laugh. In short I can't afford them! The coat is a one off Christmas present and the RSV is on finance having traded in my GSXR750K6 there was still about £2k to pay so I've got my work cut out paying for them!!!
Funny you should be a hack as you put it as I did think your writing style was very good so I guess you can't be all bad at your job! :grinning. Incidentally best of luck with getting the time off! If you go are you going to try and write about it and get it in the paper somehow? Incidentally where abouts in Wiltshire are you to have had snow, or did you go further afield for the test? Of all the bikes hey, and in the snow as well!
I've personally never been to any sort of track day other than to watch others really as I don't mind admitting I find it a bit intimidating as I have a feeling I'll be dog slow and run off into the gravel and bin my bike or theirs! However I doubt I'm any worse than your average rider and the fact you will only get better if you actually do it and then practice loads is pretty obvious. Subsequently I'm hopefully going to go to a Ron Haslam race school or something similar with a mate next year so that should get me started. I actually wanted to do one this year but much the same as yourself I was reluctant to shell out too much cash at this delicate financial time etc etc.
Job wise, for my sins, I'm a mental health worker and I support people with long term mental health issues like Schizophrenia etc. I've spent a good fews years at various uni's getting a couple of psychology degrees so I hopefully know what I'm doing although it's a tough job sometimes but has it's rewarding moments. Plus there's never enough people to do this kind of work so there's more overtime going than you can shake a stick at so it could be worse. Although it's easy to get burnt out so I have to be a little careful but otherwise I can't complain.
The complex workings of the human mind - now that must be rewarding and possibly a bit disturbing at times, I would think.
I did a weekend introduction course on hypnotherapy and found it really interesting the way you can manipulate another human mind, Derren Brown-stylee, with quite simple techniques. Not exactly in your league RR, I'll grant you (and you probably think Derron Brown's an amateur tosspot) but fascinating all the same.
As to track riding, I doubt you'd be dog slow because you ride a Mille and you don't buy a Mille to ride slow as they are HORRIBLE to ride slow.
I can recommend the California Superbike course - I did level 1 earlier this year and it breaks each technique down into one individual exercise per track session so you really get it into your brain. We did it at Rockingham in the wet and by the end of the day I was riding faster than I'd ever gone before, despite the weather. It's not cheap (just under £400 I think) and it's well worth reading the books that go with it before-hand but it's a brilliant course.
Then we did a track day at Cadwell a month or two later so got to put all the CSS teaching into practice - completely awesome.
I'm in Amesbury but the B-King in the snow came from Basingstoke (Mott's) so I was punting it around all those lovely roads to the south (A339, A32, A272, etc.) and it bleedin' started snowing in April. Mind you, I SWEAR that I never once touched the 'low power map' button on that beast, not even riding through slush-ruts up the 339 - full 180 horse-enabled all the way (didn't open the throttle very far though).
