Day 1 - Dialing In

Just drying off after a fire-housing by the crew, as payment for a sly-dog trick Catty and I pulled tonight. More of that later!

Today began with a ceremonial start at the Country Club Casino and then a gentle pass over the first three stages. These are designed with an easy base time, so as to allow competitors to warm up without any pressure. The stages proper started with TS4 Paradise and this passed without any major incident, other than the odd overly-quick corner arrival. The gelling of driver/co-driver takes some time, and we were still settling back into this after a couple of years.
TS5 Nookville was downgraded to a transport after the untimely meeting of Porsche and bank.
This lead us into the lunch-break and re-fuel at Sheffield, and then on to Harford. A bit of a wait there while the roadshow got back underway, and then a blast over the stage. This one was covered in oil dropped by something very smoky, and quite slippery. A transport to the Frankford Highway, and the start of TS6 Harford. We settled into this one and set a respectable time, even with a couple of broken cars on the stage, and a misheard call on the finish call. Interesting!

The cars cut through the back of Beaconsfield to go to Kayena. This is a fast stage along the waters edge, and we gave this a big dip. Catty had to work pretty hard with the calls in here, and tried to steer me into the river, but luckily I am "perfect", so we lived to tell the tale! Back to Beaki for a fast little town stage for some skids, and then into the Silverdome for service and Parc Ferme.

The early results have us in 4th for Rookie Modern with maybe 20 secs covering those four. And tomorrows stages hopefully will better suit the car, with the North-East stages tight and technical. The setup changes made for this event have transformed its handling, and allowed us to push much harder than before.

So a trip to Glengarry for a barbi-up with Mick and Leanne Luscombe, and it was exceptional.
A very cruisy way to wind up the day, so many, many thanks to them for the hospitality.
The trip was made with both vehicles to carry all six crew, and the ensuing horse-play on the return led Dave and I to undertake a cruel but effective con. The Cruiser, packed with Scott, Adam, Rob and Kai fired away ahead, jibing at us on the radio. So we called them up with a fake breakdown, and hid down a side road, lights off. As they sailed-by looking for us, the Transit rocketed into town, crying from laughter all the way. By the time it clicked, they were back in Exeter, and we were close to town, discovering that the room keys were not with us. So we sat outside to wait, giggling like schoolkids.
Meanwhile the boys hatched their own revenge, parked the car down the road, and performed a stealth attack to the hallway near us. Add fire-hose to this and you get the picture!!

So now we look forward to a fearful, sleepless night, one eye open for protection from more pay-back. Some guys can't take losing!!

Waldo