AE35

Did the Queensland Challenge again this year at the end of last month (28th to be exact). Had heaps of fun, certainly reignited my passion for driving :) I'd been umm'ing and arr'ing about it for awhile, Pauline couldn't do it due to family commitments so I had more or less made up my mind to give it a skip this year...

But then Josh came to the rescue and said that he'd be interested to nav... And then I discovered that my harness and fire extinguishers expire at the end of July... A sign? Oh well, stuff it, I'll do it! Dug through my mountain of old tyres and found two barely legal ones - some old semi slicks that I'd gotten ages ago. Got stuck into preparing the car and found a big exhaust leak, tried to fix it but failed so sent it to Rob Bliss up at Geebung...

Morning of the Queensland Challenge came around quickly, and oh boy what fun! This year saw a change in the scoring system, to give a lot more bias towards the driving aspect of the competition. Previously it had been heavily biased towards the navigation, but with the new system it was more or less balanced. No pressure Fook!

Note: I spent my whole train trip home, and a bit of time after I got home, writing up a big long post about the 2007 Fulcrum Suspensions Coastal Challenge... And then my laptop crashed. I think it's the battery, it went from 70+% down to 0% in one swift motion, which effectively corrupted my hard disk and caused me to lose my _entire_ post! Even the saved file! NOT_HAPPY_JAN, I want a Macbook, and I want it now :(

Anyway, to cut the long story short - both Pauline and I had an absolute ball doing the event again this year, but without seeing the results, I don't think we did a very good job of upholding our title from last year. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't even do very well in class. But that's all secondary - we did have a lot of fun :)

Highlights of the event for me:

• Lakeside driver training circuit
  This was a tiny little circuit, not much wider than a go kart track, with lots of different configurations. HEAPS of fun!
• Gympie Roadcraft Center
  This year we didn't get to run the circuit (what a shame!), however we did get 3 goes on the skidpan - which was wet this year! A very inconsistent level of grip due to the water mostly puddling made for a very interesting drive!
• Nambour Super Special Stage
  OK, so it was a drive around an oval track, with 2 chicanes thrown in. Sounds boring? Add the fact that it was under lights (night stage!), was made of wet, loose granite chips, and had a massive crowd of people cheering, and it became one of the best stages in the event. It was bumpy and wash-boarded by the time I went on, and I had to go alone (the other cars went out in pairs), but the cheers from the crowd made it all worthwhile :)

Came across this tutorial on how to take a photo of a car and make it look like one of the cars from the animated film CARS, and thought I'd have a bit of fun with Hal :)