Sim & Bek's Place

Well,
...what a weekend! it'll be a long post...

Lets start from the beginning:
Saturday -
up nice and early to keep organising the house in preparation for my 21st that evening. Then, at around 10:45 we headed out to the rally drive place.
I suited up and headed into the briefing/video room just as Rob and the others arrived.
After watching a very cool rally video for 20mins or so we were advised on the best techniques to try and put into practise while driving.
Then, of course, it rained. :)

Finally my turn came around for the drive. Very excited and yet not quite sure what to do with myself, i jumped into the drivers seat. They buckled me in nice and tight, gave me a pat on the leg and i was introduced to my co-driver Gavin. He said a quick hello and off we went!
The first lap was to get my bearings, around the track, learning the corners etc.
Then, the moment we rounded the last corner... go go go!!! he immediately started the pressure for me to flog it! I loved it, going round a corner at what i thought was my limit, i was rewarded with nothing but: "c'mon, harder! Accelerate earlier and harder!" This continued, i got several; "good"s out of him etc. and my confidence grew until i was having a ball and was going round corners harder and faster.
Clearly my favourite part was losing it big time and fishying after the first corner.
It was also satisfying to catch up to the other driver that was on the track...clearly they were not having the tremendous time that I was. Or else they were to scared to drive the car hard...i looked at it from the angle that it wasn't my car, it was a rally car, built to be positively flogged!
So i tried. :)

The 10 laps finished all to quickly, but then i was rewarded with 4 hot laps with Gavin. By this time the track was rather slippery and boggy. We found this out as he took a corner on the first lap quite nicely, and by the 3rd we drifted a looong way off course, due to mud in the tyre tread apparently! But the drift was awesome and he was having as much fun as i was...good job i reckon!

So yeah, thanks to all for the gift, it was well recieved and well used!




Saturday night -
After that bek and i headed home to relax for a short time before people arrived. To cut it short, plenty turned up for an awesome and extravagantly provided dinner, we had a great time playing table soccer and singstar into the evening/morning (around 1am). I had setup some canvas' to be painted on, to and they are hanging up in the spare room, they've come up really nice!



Sunday -
a slight sleep in before getting up to finish tidying the house back to normal, mum and dad popped over with a decent vacuum cleaner and before long it was spic-and-span.
Then it was time for Bek and I to head to the airport to farewell Bek's sister Claire on her way to England!
It will be an epic trip; Claire and Jacqui are off to England for several months to work, and are then travelling Europe, some of America and popping into Canada! All up they should be gone for around 7months, but we'll wait and see if its longer... :)
You can follow their travles at: http://www.claireandjacqui.com


mm...quite a weekend!
I have got some photos so i shall put them up in a tick!