From Bottleneck.org
Getting on a bit
Good day,
Well, much has happened since I last wrote anything of substance here. Perhaps most notably, I recently turned 30, which is not really the drama people seem to think it is. I didn't do much with the day itself other than chill out and relax, and have a meal out in the evening, but there was much revelry the day before!
The previous day had been the stag "do" of a friend of mine. The format of the day was to spend a few hours racking karts around at ~60mph on the Thruxton Karting Circuit, followed by a curry and a few beers.
The karting took the form of an 8 minute practice session straight out from the pits, followed by two 8 lap heats with grid starts, and a 12 lap final with grid start. That might not sound a vast amount, but believe me, it feels like plenty of action! I didn't make a fool of myself overall, despite getting well out of shape in the first heat and ending up in last position, two laps down! I started the final in 11th place, and finished in 6th overall, so I'm reasonably pleased with that, for a complete novice at these things.
I can't recommend this karting lark enough, it was an absolutely fantastic afternoon's entertainment!
The evening was spent have a beer or two, a curry at Kuti's, and then on to the classic Frog and Frigate for much dancing on tables! I think I got back into my house at 3:30am, so a good night all round!
Also, for my 30th birthday, I was bought a trial flying lesson at Carill Aviation. The lesson will take the format of a 30 minute ground briefing, a 30 minute flight to the Isle of Wight, a touch-and-go, 30 minutes at the controls, a landing on the Island for a coffee and slice of cake, then the flight back to Lee-on-the-Solent. So pretty comprehensive an experience! Suffice it to say, I'm looking forward to it significantly, and hope to actually have the lesson August 11th.
I'm off on holiday for a week from Wednesday, which will be a welcome break from work and period of relaxation. I'll also be going to Wimbledon on the following Thursday, all being well. After that, there are the usual numerous BTCC events coming along, so still a busy time for me. With any luck I'll get another summer holiday in around the end of August too.
Finally, there have been a couple of changes to this website. A lot of the changes have been behind-the-scenes tidying up and rationalising of things. I've got rid of a load of work content too, I just didn't care about it enough. I've also removed the ability for visitors to use the Comments tabs, as they only ever seemed to be getting used by spammers anyway. Finally, I've (at last!) added the necessary code and structure to support my Photo Gallery which is now linked from the sidebar on the left. I'll be populating this as we go along.
Cheers!