Nice Weekend

It has been a busy but enjoyable weekend.  The test day and two races on Saturday were great.  Had lots of fun, Oulton Park really looks like a fun track.  Much more elevation change than a lot of the ex-airfield tracks that are all around the UK.  Testing on Friday went very well, times were fast compared to the competitors we chose to sample with stopwatches.  Unfortunately this didn't translate well during Saturday's qualifying session, Jamie only managed 9th, and well over a second off his best times from Friday.  But he managed a good first race, working his way up to 4th over the 30 minute event.  That meant he would start 4th for the second race, as there was no additional qualifying session.  Things were going as planned as the end neared, he had stayed 4th trying to not overheat the tires for something like 25 minutes.  Then on nearly the same lap, the guy in second took out himself and the guy in the lead, but the next time Jamie came around he was obviously slow with some sort of problem.  He limped it around to finish in 18th.

In the garage I discovered it was a broken A-arm link in the rear suspension.  It turns out this is a pretty frequent failure on the Caterham's, so we'll have to keep an eye out for it in the future.  We actually replaced the piece on the spot before loading the car up in the truck.

Today I've been getting some work done on our project while mixing in a workout, some MLB.tv, and a few beers at Wetherspoons with their festival deal still going on.  The weather continues to be pretty good, it's been around 55 all day, just a spit or two of rain, and the wind hasn't been too bad.

I am finally officially moving on Tuesday.  It's been the most frustrating thing for me in a long time.  I started packing some things today, it's gonna be tough to get all my stuff into the suitcases I have with me I think.  Been trying to work my food stock down so that packing should be minimized I hope.

The week will stay busy, I'm trying to get some good project work done still, and of course Jess is coming on Thursday morning too.  Super excited about that, so I'm trying to have a few super productive days so I can relax when she's here.

Raining Again

I had begun to wonder about all this rain that was supposed to be coming with the spring and summertime here.  I have to say either I've been lucky so far or my expectations of rain nearly every day were incorrect!  Anyway, it's raining today, and rained just a little yesterday.  Tomorrow at Oulton is supposed to have showers too.  At least it's not very cold or humid!

Today is going to be a bit hectic.  A few meetings will fill up the morning quickly, and then I have to go look at the bigger room that is now available in Newport.  I'm 95% sure I will take it, unless it is just absolutely awful.  Yes the other room fell through again, and no I don't feel like giving details, I'm really fed up with how frustrating the search has been.  Then I have to get back home to finish packing up for the race this weekend.  We're leaving at 7 tonight, so I should have enough time.  I almost tried to pack last night, but wound up deciding to wait.

Maybe I'll be able to catch a little MLB Opening Day action too before we head out tonight.  I have no idea what my internet access over Friday and Saturday will be by the way, but I'll be back home late Saturday night.

Sleep!

After going pretty late and early for both basketball games and racing this weekend, I hit the sack pretty early last night.  Fell asleep watching the first few minutes of a BBC documentary about the years of F1 when fatalities were a really regular occurrence.  It was interesting, but I was really tired.  I also managed to sleep in till almost 8, which is amazing and I haven't done that in a long time.  I'm going to do some work on our project from home this morning - building a ChassisSim model of a rally track to use for car simulation.  Usually you generate the maps from data logs off of a car, but seeing as this track doesn't exist, we're doing it by guesswork and hand!

I did make myself a nice breakfast, egg and bacon on an English muffin.  Tasted good with some green tea on the side.  The weather is nice again today, a little over 40, but sunny and not too windy so it feels good.  Temperature might actually hit 60 this afternoon too!

Busy is Good

Finally I'm getting back to being truly busy with things going on.  Even if some of it is stuff I'm really just choosing to do.  Saturday was pretty much consumed with going to Silverstone to watch the Britcar GP.  There was some other racing too, an original Mini series, an Alfa Romeo series, ex Formula BMW cars and a couple others.  We migrated around the circuit and watched just about every turn at some point.  It was good, as I actually hadn't been around to some of the turns.  Watched a little basketball at night and went to bed relatively early as we finally lost the spring hour this weekend.

I got up early and got a ride from Rob to campus to watch the Australian GP with a group of us.  We had a BBQ breakfast of sausages and bacon, which honestly I think filled me up for the whole day.  I got back home and did a couple loads of laundry while finishing up booking trains and hotels for Jess' trip in a couple weeks.  Then I took a bike ride down the Canal to a garden center that I'd figured out has a good food and beer selection, mainly Scottish stuff.  Picked up a few goodies, but did resist their baked goods, mainly their scones, which looked really good.  From there I rode home and then back out to the gym for my first workout in like 5 days, which was good.  If you like inflicting pain, look up and try an exercise called a "manmaker".  Good stuff.

Then I stopped at a couple of Wetherspoons to see which beer festival ales they had on and found a few good ones.  The best part is they were £2.05 each!  Best one was a beer from San Diego - Ballast Point Calico Amber.  I think they fly the brewer over here and have the beer brewed on a system locally to avoid having to ship overseas.  An interesting concept that seems to work pretty well.

Going to have a light dinner tonight, still not truly hungry - probably just a little bread, cheese and a spinach salad.  I will attempt to stay up through the UNC game, don't know how successful that will be, since I was up at 5:30 this morning for the race!

Picasa Album from the BTCC Test day and Britcar event

2011 BTCC Media and Britcar Silverstone GP

Exciting Stuff

Yesterday was really enjoyable.  The 8 hours of track time flew by.  We were busy learning the car, adjusting ride heights, sway bars, front toe, and constantly filling up the gas tank!  The car was really easy to work on, it is quite a simple car, and nothing like working on the production cars I'm used to.  No more having to take of six other things just to get to the part you really need to change!  The weather really couldn't have been better, sunny all day, and almost 60 degrees too.  Wore a T-shirt most of the day for the first time in many months.  It was really great being back out at a track, I really was missing it.  I forgot my camera, so no pictures, sorry :(  There were some very nice cars there, M3's, a race prepped Porsche and Lamborghini, and a selection of Caterhams, Radicals, and a few other similar cars that I didn't recognise.  Standing on the pit wall as the Lambo was screaming by was just really great!

The racing is really getting going here now.  We're off to Silverstone twice in the next 3 days - today for the BTCC media and test day, and Saturday for a Britcar event.  Of course F1 is finally back too.

Our project is coming along too, still tons to do before April 12th for our next review.

Committed to a Place...

But there is still some uncertainty, the owner needs to find out when her tenant is exactly moving out.  Luckily I can extend my stay for a few days in my current place, so it should still work out.  It will be tricky because next weekend is the first Caterham race, so I'll be gone from Thursday night to Sunday night.  The place is in a great location, and there's only one other tenant.  30 second walk to the bus stop.  2 minute walk to 2 different Co-op grocery stores.  I'll have to figure out if I want to continue a gym membership, I might not honestly.  Hopefully I can nail down a move date this afternoon.

We have a presentation from Chris Aylett, the CEO of the Motorsports Industry Association today regarding Energy Efficient Motorsport.  It should be interesting to hear his opinions on where technology is headed.  Hopefully it will align with some of our choices for our project!

I did get a couple of key responses from 2 companies on our group project that we had been waiting on last night.  Things that we were kind of waiting on to further progress with our design.

Someone convinced me that I should go to the BTCC day tomorrow, so I'm going!  Yay for 2 weekdays at the track, the weather is shaping up to be (I think) unseasonably warm and not completely overcast too.

Semi Update on Housing

The place in Willen that I saw on Saturday will work I think.  Finally got two responses on other options in Newport last night and this morning.  Hopefully I can see those tonight.  At least I have one as a fall back now, though I don't want to keep the owners waiting on an answer from me.  It would be an improvement I think, but still a few drawbacks - smaller room, no real living room, and no desk area in the room.  It would cut about 10 minutes off the bus ride, which is better than nothing, but not as good as I'd hoped.  At least the bus stop is much closer to the house though - appx a quarter mile.

Been a busy morning so far - and have a small group meeting this afternoon.  We are definitely going to Snetterton on Wednesday for a test day with the Caterham.  Leaving at 6am!  Should be a good day.  Then on Thursday some of the class is going to Silverstone for the BTCC test and media day.  Since I'm gone all day Wednesday I might skip that to continue working on the project stuff.  Undecided on that, we'll see how the rest of today and tomorrow goes with that.

At the risk of jinxing my bracket - I am in first place after the weekend somehow.  Though my Southeast bracket is completely in shambles, I only have Florida left out of the 4 teams, and I had them losing the next game anyway!