More to the point, I’ve NOT done it again. I’m not really doing well with my promise to update here more often, but my life in retirement has become so busy that I think I’m busier than when I was at work. So, let me catch you up with my comings and goings since my last entry.
Firstly, and most importantly, my brother and our respective wives have finally finished cleaning out and returning my mum’s rented house to its owners. It has taken nearly a month to laboriously go through each room and keep/trash/maybe the contents. Mum lived there for 45 years as you know so it has been a a mammoth task, but it’s done. Mum is settling rapidly and successfully into her new surrounds at the nursing home and is showing every sign of being comfortable there which is the most important thing.
Last weekend was the 6th and final round of the MotoStars Junior road race series and it was held at the picturesque Pacific Park go kart track outside of Port Macquarie, the venue for Round 2 of the series as well. I drove up on Friday in the Minbago again so that I’d have my own accommodation there and I avoided the Sydney traffic completely by taking the backroad through The Oaks and Penrith, Windsor, Wiseman’s Ferry and out onto the F3 at Peats Ridge. It added about 100kms to the trip but I don’t care as grinding through the Sydney traffic, especially through Pennant Hills, takes years of my personal well-being and that is more important to me.
I arrived late in the afternoon and helped the local go-kart club people unload stuff for the canteen and do some chores. The local club are fabulous people and they really go out of their way to make the venue the best it can be for us. It was looking like I was going to be the only person camping on the Friday night but, just before dusk, Team Middleton arrived so I had some company. Gary Middleton is a well-known racing identity, the owner of the Gregg Hansford collection of racing Kawasakis and he and his wife were there helping out his grandson, Casey, who is just getting started in road racing. They kindly offered me dinner and we spent a very pleasant night around the campfire, roasting marshmallows with Casey and swapping racing yarns.
As always practice and race day were fun, the weather was great and the usual carnival atmosphere of a MotoStars event prevailed. It is so refreshing to see parents sharing their kids’ passion for their sport in a friendly, relaxed atmosphere. Parenting done right, in my opinion.
Since Sunday was the final round Damian and Amy had organised a presentation night at a venue in town and I stayed on, doing the MC duties and helping Damo hand out the silverware. It was a great night with lots of fun, happy faces and a great singer doing some music for us as well. I had decided that I’d drive some of the distance home (around 500kms) on Sunday night, then sleep somewhere and do the rest of the trip home on the Monday morning. The F3 was almost deserted and I made good time to the outskirts of Newcastle where I started looking for a rest area where I could camp. As usual with my organisation it was a little out. Once you get into the Newcastle area and start heading down towards Sydney there ARE no rest areas. There are so many towns just along the freeway that all that is available is a turn-off into the towns and the big rest areas no longer appear. At the bridge at Brooklyn I stopped for a pit stop and a stretch but by now I had decided that I’d push on to home.
At Hornsby I took the left (toss of the coin) and headed down Ring Road 3 through Ryde, Concord and onto King Georges Road. By now it was the early hours of the morning and, from the time that I left the F3 at Hornsby to the time I hit the F6 at Waterfall, on the southern extremities of Sydney, I probably only hit three or four sets of traffic lights that were red. The road were almost deserted and I had the “green wave” all the way through Sydney, something like 40 kms or so, hardly having to slow down at all, quite amazing.
I pulled into the driveway at home at around 0300, around 6 hours to do the 500kms. But, there was a problem. Since Helena wasn’t expecting me home until Monday, I knew that the front security door would be locked. I don’t have a key for that lock on the Minibago key ring, oops. Besides, even if I could have come in through the front door I didn’t really want to and run the risk of waking her up. So I let myself in the back door and hopped into bed in the bed in the guest room at the back of the house. Unsurprisingly I didn’t take long to get to sleep but I did give Helena a fair old shock when she came down to the back of the house to feed the cats in the morning and found someone sleeping in the bed in the back room!
So, MotoStars racing is over for 2017 and what a great series it has proven to be. I am absolutely certain that some of the youngsters who have had their first taste of road racing this year will be the champions of the next generation and Damian and Amy Cudlin and their hard-working team deserve all the plaudits that are coming their way for the series and the success it has been.
So it’s home and into the round of things that needs must be done. Yesterday I took a quick run up to Bundanoon on the highlands for a meeting with Chris who runs the nuts and bolts behind my site and that’s always fun. Then last night my brother and our respective wives had a celebratory dinner at Bombora, overlooking Wollongong Harbour, letting our hair down a bit after the mammoth task of doing mum’s house and getting all the organsation that is required with that process finished. Phew.
Tomorrow I am off to Newcastle again, this time to attend a 50th Anniversary celebration of the year of 1962 class at Booragul High School. Apparently quite a few of our old teachers are going to be there including Mrs Davies, who was librarian when I was at BHS. She’s a sprightly 91 and is reportedly really looking forward to seeing us all. Wow.
Because the MotoGp meeting at Motegi took place in our time zone, I didn’t get to see any of it being up to my eyeballs in MotoStars stuff but it was an epic race, apparently. Dovi has shaved some off Marc’s lead and it’s now down to only 11 points with three rounds remaining. It’s going to be close and this weekend’s round at PI should suit the Ducati with its mammoth speed advantage. Still, I’d rather be leading on points than chasing so the advantage must still be ever so slightly with Marquez. I won’t be going down to PI despite the atmosphere. I went for two years but I just found that there were far more disadvantages to being at the track than there were advantages. It’ll be a TV effort for me.
Well, that’s about up to date. Thanks for your patience again. I won’t promise because I keep breaking them but I will try.