Goodwood Festival of Speed pictures and mini-report

Result: very cool!

Google photo album from Friday

Google photo album from Saturday

Google photo album from Sunday

Just to illustrate the ridiculous types of things you can buy there, it’s like a damn motorsports swap meet almost, but here’s the stuff I got:
F1 carbon brake disc, probably Honda, £20, gonna be a spiffin’ clock if I get around to it
Honda F1 ‘chimney top’, painted white, £5 (was going to have Button sign this, I’ll bring it next year) – they had boxes full of random carbon parts, plus wheel nuts, etc.
Super Aguri T-shirt, looks cool, huge logo wraps around the side, size M but still fits me fine, £2
2009 McLaren ‘rocket red’ ‘victory’ shirt, £15 (cheaper than exercise shirts I just got recently)
Rossi blue/yellow #46 shirt, £20
Red Bull cap, £25 – the official team stands were selling all the current season stuff at full whack, I was hoping to get this signed by Webbah

Stuff I wanted to get but didn’t have the money:
Targa Florio history book, £95 for out-of-print English
Honda F1 wheel, £50 (better examples were £95+ or £300+ for tire/wheel combo)
old mechanic’s shirts, £15 and up, pot luck on the size/team/condition
Gulf Aston Martin T-shirt
Porsche 917 T-shirt (the shop wanted £45 for it because they sell a bunch of Steve McQueen branded stuff!)
Lotus cap (but I rarely wear my caps anyways)

Also saw and kinda wanted:
‘orginal’ Renault Turbo black/gold jackets from the 70’s
Spyker team hat (to put in the back of my Saab, since Saab is owned by Spyker now)
West T-shirt (was trying to find old-school McLaren mechanic’s shirts, this was the closest I could find)

F1 drivers that were there over the weekend (probably missing a couple):
Saturday: Hakkinen*, Trulli, Senna*, Chandhok*, Button, Rosberg, Surtees, Bell, Stewart*
Sunday: Hamilton*, Heidfeld*, Kovaleinen, Gene*, Fittipaldi, Surtees, Bell, Hakkinen, Senna, Chandhok, Stewart

* means I got their autographs, cool

Other folks I got autographs from: Ken Block, Kevin Schwantz, Chris Vermuelen, Kerry Earnhardt, James Toseland, quite a few others.

Normally on Sunday the GF and I go to the hilltop area to grab autographs, but we didn’t realize that Button and Webbah were there for Saturday only. Last year Button was there both days but he’s teamed with Lewis so I guess the McLaren PR people had them there for a day each and that was it.

Meeting Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok was really cool, they aren’t as well known as the other drivers like Hakkinen and Hamilton, so they were walking around without a horde of people shoving things in their faces.  I was able to have a very short chat with Lewis, which was nice. The first time he came through, in the modern F1 car group, I gave my GF a copy of F1 Racing magazine with him on the cover, and he signed it and said, “What’s this? I haven’t seen this, I never get to read these.” I told him he should get a subscription. I should have added McLaren could set him up with one – one of those ‘stair wit’ moments.

He then came up in the next batch driving the new McLaren road car (which looks awesome, have pics of the bare frame display, saw the same car on a country road on Thursday…was awesome) and the crowds were much much less and he came through and signed more stuff. He was taking his time signing a mini helmet (the lady behind me was nearly crying with pleasure, like a tiny dog about to piss itself) and he signed the programme for me next and I told him “Keep sticking it to Alonso, Lewis, we love to read about that stuff in the press.” By ‘we’ of course I meant us goons.

He gave me a smile and said something like “I’ll keep trying” and had to move on. Everyone around us laughed, so…I think he was being diplomatic. You never know where these conversations will end up online. As last year, though, he was very cool and calm about the whole thing. His brother came up the hill with him in the McLaren, too.

Hopefully that counts as ‘chatted with’…it’s easier to say “I met Mika Hakkinen” than have to explain I had to get in a paparazzi scrum surrounding him as he walked to the paddock with a press lady saying “He’ll be back! He’ll be coming back!” as some old duffer gets almost knocked off his feet and he PUSHES the wrong dude back as he’s yelling “Watch where you’re going!” – then Mika made a fist and said something like “now we have to fight for autograph!”…then he signed my programme and said “And now I must go”. *sigh*

2700 calories burned…

…for every day I cycle all the way into work.

That’s not bad!

That’s far more than I should be taking in every day (the recommended daily intake for an adult male is 2000 calories), and I don’t eat that much except on the weekends anyway, so every day that I cycle in I’m way into the negative calorie count.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t count calories but I do try to be aware of how much I’m eating. I know that a handful of anything, or something the size of your palm, equals roughly ‘one serving’, but I’ve tried keeping track of how much I eat and it’s just too much of a bother, really. If I can cycle in 2 or 3 times a week on average, or even drive halfway to work and cycle the rest of way in, it breaks down like this:

Cycling all the way from home to work and back:
Cycle 16 miles to work and back = 3 hours total time cycling at approximately 10mph = about 2400 calories burned each day
…If I can do this 2 or 3 times a  week (Mondays and Thursdays at the minimum, maybe also alternating Tuesdays and Fridays as well), that’s…frigging hell, that’s 4800 to 7200 calories burned a week, maybe even 9600 calories if I bike in 4 days!

Driving to a village 6 miles away (the average distance of a cycle commute in the UK):
Cycle 6 miles to work and back  = about 90 minutes total cycling time = about 1800 calories burned
…If I can do this 4 times a week that’s 7200 calories, or four and a half day’s worth of calories burned in a  week.

Honestly, this sounds like a more workable exercise plan than rigid scheduling of free weight exercises, going to the gym or anything like that.

An added bonus is that I’d be saving nearly £5 in petrol/gas every time I cycled all the way in and back! 🙂 Not too shabby.

(for anyone in the US, gas prices are over $7.50 a gallon here, so no complaining about $4/gal gas, okay!?)

Another win

Well what can I say…I really am speechless! I won again playing No Limit Hold ‘Em poker with some workmates.

While in Germany recently, we played 3 nights of poker, all of which I won (either outright, or splitting the winnings because of the late time), so the guys at work (who aren’t that experienced at playing, I guess) attached this ‘rep’ to me and my amazing luck/skill/whatever. I didn’t think I played very good, I did have some amazingly lucky draws but whatever – ‘the legend was born’ I suppose.

So after we came back no one else was organizing anything but a few of the guys wanted to play, so I set up a poker night and we played our first game tonight and I won! £35 profit after a £10 buy-in and a £10 rebuy (I won £55 total), so I’m still up. I played some really stupid hands, went way down a bunch of times and had to go all-in several times to double up, but in the end I was chip leader by far after a couple of good hands of hole cards, and I split the winnings 60/40 with the other last person standing after I couldn’t convince him to see my raise that would have made him go all-in.

Hey, it’s a good way to spend the evening! Good times.

The New Zealand All-Blacks Haka

The Rugby World Cup is going on at the moment, and New Zealand gave Italy a massive beating, winning by something like 55 points. Some folks claim it’s because the Italian team snubbed the ‘haka’, a traditional chanting challenge that is done before every All-Blacks match.