It's the old story that you only miss things when they've gone, and usually once they've gone, you can't ever get them back no matter how hard you try.
Girlfriends, the nice pair of shoes you left in the hotel room or that favourite place where you used to go on holiday that has now been built on. Never to return, finished, over.
Without banging on like a furniture salesman during a Bank Holiday weekend, the great thing about MotoGP at the moment is not the racing, but the fact that Valentino Rossi is in it.
He is one in a lifetime phenomenon that I have been lucky enough to commentate about for every one of his races in Grand Prix, going back to a muggy, thunderstorm-affected Sunday afternoon in Malaysia in April 1996.
It was the start of something great.
Fast-forwarding to 2008, Rossi said last weekend that he's nigh-on got the pen out to sign with Yamaha for a further two seasons, taking him to the end of 2010 - which is great for fans and great for MotoGP, but what are we going to do after he is gone?
Now I'll be the first to say that no one is indispensable, but we are talking about the most charismatic motosport people ever. There is going to be a rather large hole when he's gone back to sitting around with his mates by the pool in Ibiza, chilling rather than being bothered with phone calls from corporates wanting him to sign posters in Cologne on the Wednesday of his week off.
My point is that Rossi pretty well saved the show in Barcelona. If it wasn't for him blitzing through from ninth to second, there might not have been much else to entertain people. Less for Andrea Dovizioso or an English bias towards James Toseland ...
Excerpts from Barcelona Review: A look into the future
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