Welsh Rally

After 25 years of not going to watch the RAC Rally (as it was then), I got an invite from WW & Hubby to go down and see them - and as a bonus WW got some tickets for the final leg of the WRC, SS13 in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. "Look," she said "it'll be sitting down in the warm and under cover, not standing around for hours in a cold & damp forest!". Well, at least one of those was correct...

WW managed to wangle some parking under the stadium itself. We had to go into "Gate 4, car park W", which happened to be the start of SS13 itself. Having driven through something marked "Timing, Stage Start", we parked next to a car marked "FIA Steward" and proceeded to wander off looking for a way up. A nice man stopped us. "Err, who are you? Where are you going? Are you staff?". WW looked at him blankly "You mean we shouldn't be here? I thought the place looked empty!". "Look," he said "take the VIP lift over there and don't say anything..."

"Who was that?" I asked
"Dunno, Ari Vatanen?"
"shuddup"

To digress, I'd bought a nice new camera with lots of knobs and settings and this is the only decent photo I took that night. It's too smart - on the setting I had it on, it's smart enough to know that the flash won't reach what it's focused on. Damn Japanese.

BTW: When you are actually parked on a special stage under the control of the RAC, then you can't leave until all the cars have gone and the stage is shut. It's amazing how quick 6 hours go by when you're having fun.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"The delivery extension for this subscription could not be loaded" when using SSRS

Image
OK, so we upgraded our server farm and put on the latest "stuff" (SSRS, SQL Server etc.) and the engineers gave me two servers to play with - SQL01 & SQL02. The idea being that we used high availability to help keep the factory running. We employed a contractor to load up and configure everything. At this point I wasn't involved. My involvement was to move all the reports and subscriptions from the old servers to the new ones once the servers had been configured. All went swimmingly, until I actually started to fire off the subscriptions to test them. Randomly (like 5 out of 10) I got the error in the title. I would edit the failing subscription and/or change the schedule time and it would work. I finally got around to moving 81 subscriptions for the same report (all slightly different parameters going to about 6 different engineers). I press the "go" button and every single one failed. Let's cut out the long story about how I went through about...
Read more

Oooh, look, an Eagle...

Image
The Scottish Holiday . After the trauma of the Astra-breakdown episode and the gutless hirecar, we'd recovered sufficiently to begin to enjoy the rest of our holiday with our friends at the Castle... Chapter Seven: One of the things my wife really wanted to see was a seal, or seals if she was really lucky. So we decided to take a day out and around the Mull Of Kintyre. We stopped at "St Columba's Footprints" and carefully studied the jumbled collection of rocks and seaweed. "No seals there dear, let's carry on" "Oh, alright then, never mind. But that's where we were told they are most likely to be." We drove on and took a gated road signposted " To The Lighthouse ". This took us right up into the hills. As we were driving slowly along admiring the view, my wife whispered quietly... " Ooh, look an Eagle! " "Stop that, that's not funny." "No, really. Stop the car." ...
Read more

What else could possibly go wrong?

So. I got the new radiator hoses from Vauxhall at a stupid £45 for the two and fitted them the weekend before we were due to go away on our Touring-Trip-Of-Scotland. I used this as an excuse to get out of helping with my sister-in-law's 50th birthday party. "But, I need to make sure the car is OK for next week dear!" "OK, I'll take the smart, and woe betide you if you're late for the party!" The Astra is now in bits and has no water in it. It is 6 minutes to 12 o'clock on a Saturday morning. I know this. For some bizarre reason, I decided to test the tightness of the -ve battery terminal by gently shaking the clamp. It was loose. "Ah, I wonder if this is the cause of it cutting out last week?" I took a 10mm spanner and gently tweaked up the bolt. The lead post (as in led, not leed) offered no resistance and gracefully detached itself in its entirety from the battery, the terminal now firmly bolted to the -ve lead (as in le...
Read more