Liftoff!

We're headed to East Midlands on our journey to Donnington Park for the British GP. I'll be arriving after midnight, then driving a while to get to the outskirts of Nottingham. It's going to be a late night and an early morning, because the work starts sharp at 8AM and there's a bit of a drive to get to the circuit in the mornings. Not to mention that driving on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, really trips me out, haha.

Anyway, it's packing time for 2 weeks out. I leave in less than one hour for the airport. It's not bad planning for one week, but two on the bounce is a little trickier. We can get some laundry done at the second hotel when we arrive, but managing the small details gets complicated when the whole team is charging things up, and as we're small and private (read: not as heavily funded as the big boys), they really don't like us to wash a ton of stuff. Normal, I guess. Instead of bringing my giant Alpinestars bag, I'll be taking two smaller A*s carry-ons, like I used to travel with in seasons' past. I would prefer the big dog, but it's often overweight just because it's so large, and I'm able to use the space in two smaller ones more effectively. Sometimes two are just better than one!

I don't expect that the Team make the MotoGP test at Indy for budgetary and mileage reasons, but we'll be ontrack for the next two weeks straight, first at Donnington Park and then straight to Assen in Holland. While normally we might get a rest day in between the races, Holland has a tradition of running their races on Saturday, so our travel day (which also includes a few hours of driving from Nottingham to the airport, and then a few more hours from Amsterdam to Groeningen, near the track) will be the rest day. The earlier days of the race week are usually the hardest for me, barring crashes, because we do the most maintenance and prep on these days, so parts are always flying out of my truck and I'm effectively cut off from my factory connection because I don't have the internet installed until Thursday afternoon or so. In years past I've used a 3G connection to the computer, similar to a cel phone hook-up, but this has proven to be a very expensive option and when you're racing around the world, everything adds up quick.

Just before I leave, I thought I'd drop a song to carry us into England. Not sure why, but this one just feels british to me right now, hahaha. A quick meal of a four cheese risotto (thanks meal-ina-bag!), and I'm out!

Posted by Liam on June 17, 2008 05:21 PM | Permalink