Stock car racing

Last Sunday my wife, Mat and I went over to Bovingdon airfield to watch the stock car racing. My wife and I went at the end of the season last year and I remember giving Mat a call to tell him what a great day we were having as he was planning on moving to Berko at the time. It was meant to be yet another incentive to move here. Well, he and Steph have been here for quite a few months now and I thought it was about time that we paid Bovingdon another visit.

It was a gorgeous sunny September day so we took a big picnic blanket and lots of goodies. The racing really speaks for itself in the photos that my wife and I took. The first time we went I thought it was pretty insane with one ‘destruction derby’ race starting with cars lined up on three-quarters of the total track space. I didn’t think it could get any more crazy with cars going off left, right and centre and on one occasion bursting into flames. But they seemed to eclipse the level of nuts-ness this time with the introduction of a ramp halfway through the day that various cars, some decorated as mice, used to try and flip and roll over as far down the back straight as they can to score points. Unbelievable. I’m sure we’ll be back.

You can find fixtures for Bovingdon here and even rent a car for the next event if you wish!

Jenson Button wins in Hungary!

Fantastic stuff – Jenson Button has broken his duck and had the first win of his Formula One career in Hungary. It was an absolutely brilliant race, the best one I’ve seen for ages, with wet weather, lots of overtaking and some big crashes and mistakes. I don’t think this was a fluke; Jenson made his way up the field from 14th place at the start and was right up there with Alonso before the Renault driver had his drive-shaft failure. Let’s hope he can now go on to be one of the great British F1 drivers.

Congratulations Jenson!

Chloe Catling Cycle Challenge 2006

A few weekends back my wife, my dad, and a few uncles and cousins of mine all took part in the Chloe Catling Cycle Challenge to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust on behalf of Chloe Catling, a relative of mine who has CF. We had a great day out and managed to complete the 25-mile course in under two hours, which I didn’t think was too bad a time.

Jez, the event organiser, had a problem when his tyre burst on the first mile so we all scooted past him while his friends hunted around for a bike shop that was open early on a Saturday morning. The rest of the ride was pretty much problem free. Jez had roped in a number of friends and family to help with registration, signage, marshalling along the course etc and they all contributed loads to a making it a really enjoyable event. It was great to get out and about; I’m tempted to try some more charity rides this summer – watch this space.

Thanks so much to everyone who donated to or sponsored the ride – it’s all really appreciated. If anyone still wishes to contribute some sponsorship money you can do so at the justgiving.com page. Thanks!

See you on the ride next year?

World Cup fixtures for Outlook

If you want to add the World Cup fixtures to your Outlook calendar, download this zip file from Andrew James Morgan’s website and drag and drop them over. Easy as pie!

(Via Mark Harrison’s blog.)

Cycle for Cystic Fibrosis

Speaking of cousins, one of my relatives has organised a sponsored cycle ride around West London on Saturday 24 June 2006 to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis. My cousin Chloe suffers from the disease and has to undergo a lot of physiotherapy, drugs and spells in hospital – by raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust we hope to help her and others.

If you’re not doing anything on the 24 June why not join us for a ride? If you’re not a rider you can still donate using the justgiving.com page. Every penny helps!

Broomball again

Last night was the turn of our second team to take to the ice at Broadgate for our broomball matches. Things didn’t go right from the start – one of our team members had a slip during the warm-up and did something nasty to his hamstring, ending his evening before it even began. We then went on to lose all four matches! Well, at least it was lots of fun. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to enter again next year.

Broomball

I seem to be able to count the years passing by the number of times the ice rink at Broadgate gets assembled and dismantled. A few years ago a few of us from work entered a couple of teams into the broomball competition and this year I thought it would be a good idea to do it again. We’ve got two teams and tonight was the starring debut of The Frosty Balls. The team had loads of fun and although I wasn’t playing it was great to watch. If put up some pictures in a Flickr photoset. Unfortunately they didn’t make it to the next round but they did win one of their matches very convincingly.

My team play next Wednesday from 18:00 – you can catch the games on the fab webcams if you like!

Ashes on the desktop

At work yesterday morning I received an email telling me that due to the “high level of interest” in the Ashes we would be allowed to watch it on our desktop using an internal feed! Fantastic! This comes at a great time when we’re trying to get our new system live and hitting a few teething problems; it’s a welcome distraction.

F1 at Indianapolis

Well, by now even those not even vaguely interested in F1 will know what a debacle the Indianapolis GP was yesterday. Metro made it their cover story and it was all over the national news. It was quite a shocking event – in all my 15 or so years of following F1 I have never seen anything quite like it. It’s a shame all round – for the crowd who had paid lots of cash to be there, for the drivers, for the fans at home and for the sport itself.

To add my opinion, the blame for the problem lies squarely with Michelin, a view that is reinforced by reading their correspondence with Charlie Whiting at the FIA – see also the FIA’s summary.

Button takes pole in Canada!

Unbelievable! I didn’t manage to catch the qualifying, but I can’t wait for tomorrow’s race. It’ll be on ITV1 from 17:00 with the race starting at 18:00. Schumacher has also qualified much higher than he has done in recent races, so I’m hoping that it’ll be edge-of-the-seat stuff. It’s been an amazing F1 season so far and the championship is wide open. Who knows what will happen?