Ash clouds and weddings
Red sky at night, shepherd's delight
Red sky in morning, shepherd's warning
That's how the old saying goes, but what would shepherds make of a slightly yellowish sky? Not even farming folk have heard the one about the giant ash cloud over Northern Europe, leaving a trail of chaos and costly disruption in its wake.
One race into the season and the skies became a giant no-fly zone, prompting Dorna, the organisers of MotoGP, to decide it was impossible to go ahead with the Japanese GP. All of a sudden, every member of the BBC team - and every other media and GP team across the world - were left twiddling our thumbs and wondering what to do for the next few weeks ahead of Jerez and Le Mans in May.
Well, for some of the riders, like Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa, the unplanned break has come at the perfect time.
Hello, I'm Jennie Gow and I'll be guiding you through this year's MotoGP coverage on the BBC. I've been working in the biking world ever since I started out in TV, covering Speedway and Motocross before my move into the world of Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner, Nicky Hayden et al. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my blog and all the gossip and tales I'll be bringing from the grid and paddock.
