So what's new?

Just a quick update on where things are at, and a wee blurb about Rally Wairarapa.

Healthwise I seem to be pretty good. I feel relatively well and although I don't seem to have much stamina, I can get through the day without feeling too fatigued.

I'm still running a fever every night, and now find that it's some mornings too. It will happily climb to 39C+ if I were to let it. I've been experimenting with taking Ibuprofen at different times of the evening and whether one or two tablets works best.
I've had more than a few hot, cold and sweaty nights trying to find the best mix.

I've now stopped taking on any new work at my workshop and have just one exhaust system to hand build before I pull the door down next Thursday and start packing everything up.

I've had a constant flow of people coming in and telling me that they have no idea where they will go after I close the workshop.

Take the job I did this morning.. It was a little Lotus 7 race car with a bent rear diff housing. I straightened the housing in place by shrinking parts of it using heat and a lot of cold water. The owner gave me a hand as it's not a one person job. I got the housing to within 1mm of being dead straight. No other wheel alignment shop in the Wellington area offers such a service. I really need to pass on the skills and little tricks I've learned in the last 28 years otherwise they will be lost, and that would be a great shame.

Next weekend Sarah and I are off to help with the Wairarapa Rally. This will be the fifth year we have helped out. Our job is that of "Sweeper" one of two in the rally. What we do is after the last rally car has entered a stage, we follow it through (yes, driving flat out) in a four wheel drive (borrowed from my brother Mark) The truck is decked out with flashing amber lights and we are in constant radio contact with rally HQ at all times.

Once in the stage we stop and collect paperwork from any cars that have crashed out on the stage. We also look for any property damage such as broken fences etc. We collect chris-cross sheets from Marshalls along the way that show how many cars have gone past that point. If the sheet shows less cars than the marshal point before, then we know that a car may have gone off the road and be missing. It's quite an exciting job and all done at high speed on a closed road.

We do this about eight times over the two day event. The good thing about it is we get a room at the Copthorne Solway paid for by the organisers, where we can crash at the end of each day. It's kind of like having a motorsport holiday and helping out all in one.

On the Friday before the event we supervise the reconnaissance run (or "recce").
So what is recce? Basically all the rally drivers get to drive over the roads in a standard car in order to make pace notes. They will decide on how fast a corner can be taken, (giving it a rating from 1-6 is the usual way) and also the length of straight roads and any dangerous sections of road that may need extra care.

This will allow then to drive much faster over the road in competition than if they did it "blind". It's the co-drivers job to read these notes to the driver as they race through the stage. A mistake by a co-driver can be disastrous!

However the recce has to be done at the legal speed limit as the road is open to all traffic, so our job is to slow them down and coral them into shape. There can often be 30 or more cars all travelling in convoy. It takes a full day to drive all the roads, often clocking up over 500km's.

Again a lot of fun if you like driving, plus you get to see places that most people never get to see. That is if desolate tops of back country farms is your thing!



More pics from previous years below.