London Motor show

Chris, Johno & I popped off the motor show on Thursday.
Not too bad but only about ½ the size of the motor show I went to earlier this year but still got my full of sculptured metal, plastic & carton fiber.Starting with the car that I would buy tomorrow if I won Lotto tonight, the DB9 Volante.
Then we move on to the battle of the SUV front grills.

Range Rover Sport, Hummer H2 & the Escalade.
Hummer even supplied a loud fat American in matching singlet to hang around the area annoying everyone. The 2 Yank Tanks are easily twice as big the wee Brit & also they have more ‘Bling’ than Mr T, still I love the understated look of the RR Sport.I’ve always had a soft spot for Corvettes, & the N06 is not exception.
There were some really phat modified cars.

Like this Stretched Hummer & one of the coolest Porsche I’ve ever seen…Love that front bumper.

Of cause there were some F1 cars kicking about.

I even found one of the cars used in the Grand Prix Masters series that Nigel Mansell plays in. It will be interesting to see how Damon Hill places in it later this year. Also with Alain Prost rumored to be driving in the series next year it could be one to watch.

Although I’ve now been living in Cities for over 12 years I still can’t go past a good Ute…like the Mitsubishi L200.

They had also rustled up a few classics…Like Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine above & the 1929 land speed record holder, The Golden Arrow below
Then the spanking new concept cars like the Mazda KaburaThey even had a Top Gear stand showing off the amphibious vehicles, like Clarkson’s Powerboat Hilux

Some super saloons like the Evo IX & this AMG Merc
Of cause heaps of uba fast cars like the Pagani Zonda & the Ariel Atom …A road legal super Go-Kart.

We then found a super yacht that was living out its days as a Hotel. It seemed to be listing badly due to being over stocked with beer so we did what any decent guy would do & kicked aboard to rectify the problem.

Random going on’s, Camber Sands & Rye

Hi all, things are moving on at their standard frantic pace over here. We are in the middle of a heat wave…Seems like a mild Sydney summer, but if that’s what the Brits want to call it who am I to disagree. Average day for the last week has been in the early to mid 30s but we have had a couple of 36°-37° days. I never realized that England has better summers than NZ, but at the moment I’m finding it very hard to remember the freezing days of winter.

With it being summer & there being a fairly large Antipodean crew over here we’ve pulled a touch team together & play every Tuesday. Georgia has some Pics over on the girl’s blog. You may notice that I am not in team colours in one of the photos, this is due to me being sidelined with a foot injury for the last 4 weeks...& the team having one of it's longest winning streaks. I see no connection!

The Tri-nations have been providing a large amount of enjoyment lately (F1 has been rather depressing for me this year, more on that later), & with the games starting at around 8am Saturday mornings they have been leading to quite a bit of shenanigans… even some tom foolery from time to time. This weekend was no exception with the kick off at 8:30am we popped down to the club rooms to hassle the Safers as we ground them into the dirt 37-17. They didn’t mind (that much) as the game was a lot more respectable than their 49-nil loss to the Aussies last week. Then it was on to Adams for drinks in the back yard, but it started raining (Typical) so it became drinks while watching Futurama re-runs. By 4pm I had a headache but we couldn’t let that stop us as Johno had brought new Patio furniture so we had to pop over there for a BBQ…( On a side note there was more drinking to be done there as well). But never let it be said that drunken ideas are not good ideas. (I guarantee the first guy to say ‘Let’s go to the moon’ was off his face) someone came up with the idea of popping to the beach for Sunday.

Sunday morning was extremely rough getting up at 8 but by 9 we had managed be packed into a couple of cars for the 2 hour drive down to Cambers Sands. Unfortunately everyone else in London had decided the same thing…4 hours later we slunk into the car park.

Surprisingly the beach was REALLY nice with good clean sand, clear water & good views. Although it was a bit weird to see Dungeness Nuclear power plant in the distance at the end of the beach. We then moved onto Rye for lunch, a very quaint fishing village that seemed to have a disturbing Morris Dancing infestation. Interesting but I must say that you would have to be very in touch with your sexuality to do that dance & still respect yourself.

On the way home we popped in for a cuppa with Chris’ Nan & Pop in New Romney. We also drove past the ‘Millennium Dome’...what an ugly building!!!

Also I’m living across the road from a Hindi temple & they had a parade the other week. Check out the Elephant…& I thought Kiwis were ingenuitive.Now for the important bit… F1! (Non F1 people can stop reading now)

Here are my stats (Including new placings table)

Now for my rant.

What the *%#!@^! are Willaims doing this year? We are now in our worst scoring stretch since 1984…and we’ve only been competing since 1978 (good year that). Plus Mark Webber has retired from more Grand Prixs this year than any other driver. I’m sure we can turn it back around but I’m worried about how many more years Sir Frank has in him.

Honda: Umm I’m not too sure what to say here. They seem to have swapped places with Toyota & are falling down the leader board while Toyota are beginning to drive how everyone expected them to at the start of the session.

Ferrari & Renault: What can you say about these two teams? They are miles ahead of the rest of the field, not just in race pace but the all over package. Here’s hoping that Alonso crashes in one of the next races so we can have a tight conclusion to the session.

Mclaren are once again soooo close to being a contender but once again tripping over there own feet. It’s a real shame to see the back of Montoya, I don’t think it was any secret that I thought he was the most exciting driver in F1. Here’s hoping he’s not replaced by a brilliant but boring Alonso or MS, & please god please not a Raikkonen.

The big surprises are BMW & Red Bull racing, both punching above there weight a year or 2 before I though they would. Also Big ups to Coulthard for giving us one of the coolest moments of the year by wearing the Superman cape on the podium at Monaco.

OK till next time.