Nervous, who, me?

Hi All

Well today's the day that the final preparations are underway.

I know we're getting near because my 40th birthday present Rolex has been swapped for a very cheap looking plastic G-shock watch and my wife has told me to take off my wedding ring! Apparently a trapped wedding ring or similar is a sure way to lose a finger whilst diving in to fix a roadside mechanical breakdown and the medical crews only have a hacksaw to take it off... the ring I am told, not the finger!

My wallet has been emptied of all but the essential items and so instead of the usual collection of credit cards, hotel cards, business cards and all the other associated crap of being a businessman, I am left with 2 x credit cards, a driving licence and some cash. I know it's serious when my Tesco clubcard has been removed...

The flight tomorrow leaves Heathrow for Beijing (Peking) at 4.30pm but Ces is keen to arrive as early as possible for the flight, as we have elected to travel First Class with BA and as she says "I want to get value for money".... I anticipate a hole in their champagne stocks!

On Tuesday of this week in anticipation of a 1000kms Endurance Race at Brands Hatch in November, I entered a practice session with my son (Chris) and my friend Adam Bewsey.
My company http://www.intellekt.com/ part-sponsors Adam to race in the Elise Trophy http://www.elisetrophy.com/ and over his first season he's had some mixed results. Having been lucky enough to perform well in a few classic rally events and some sports car events (http://www.guildofmotorendurance.com/) I have collected quite a bit of silverware and have been teasing Adam about his dry spell.
Rather foolishly, I said to him "How hard can it be, turn up, key-in, drive around in a circle a bit and win"
His response was to suggest that if it was that easy, I should enter to 1000kms Endurance Race with him as his team mate....

So one ARDS test later (Racing Licence) here I was in a racing Lotus Elise S1 on the Indy circuit at Brands... It was at this point I thought, god I hope I don't crash and injure myself before the Peking-to-Paris! Forward planning has never been my strong point....

Anyway my first lap time was 1:02 and Adam responded with 57 seconds. So throwing caution to the wind, I thought I'd push myself a "little" harder and reduced my time to 58.9 seconds... The thing I noticed as I climbed out the car was that Adam hadn't looked at all flustered when he set his 57 seconds, whereas I was shaking some much I couldn't undo my crash helmet! Incidentally, my son on his first outing in the car set a time of 58.1 seconds. I put this down to the fact that he was running a lighter fuel load.... ;-)

How hard can it be...... well we'll see!

Nervous now!

Speak soon

CD