buckle-up

Once again, we only gave ourselves a few days to prepare for our third outing to the race track. This time, we were headed back to the high-speed Willow Springs track – the one marketed as the Fastest Track in the West. We spent the July 4th weekend back in Boulder, Colorado, with family, but had also taken time out to catch up with a number of friends. Part of the plan, in returning to Boulder, was to give Margo as much opportunity to drive the 6-speed stick-shift Corvette and to just re-familiarize with driving the “stick shift” model. After driving through the countryside, Margo improved considerably, but it only reinforced for me that she just needs to drive more often. As with most couples, whenever we take off on a trip, I tend to gravitate to the drivers side while Margo heads for the passenger seat – and this only started in the years we have been married! I am now very aware of this and when we take sight seeing trips I take the passenger seat half the time. Not easy, be...

We have come off a period where a lot of travel was by car. Along the way, there was plenty of time to reflect on what we had learnt on the race track as part of the high performance driver education. Perhaps no better place to put what had been learnt into a real world scenario was driving the Pacific Coast Highway between Carmel, CA and Cambria, CA – a 100 mile stretch of road clinging to the coastal mountain ranges flanking Big Sur and perhaps one of the world’s great drives. Always fighting back the effects of erosion, the road winds around the many cliff faces before diving into canyons where the driver faces fierce switchbacks. Margo was the driver for all 100 miles, and what an improved performance. Not as far as speed was concerned as the highway’s treachery deters any all-out attack, but in terms of a new sense of confidence. I saw in Margo’s reading of the road, and the attention she paid to cambers and apexes, a new-found level of confidence I had not seen before, and ...

We had only just unpacked from our European trip, and beginning to settle back into the daily routines of our business life when we took off for a weekend racing. Car racing, that is, up in the Mojave Desert just north of Simi Valley. Carved into the gentle rise to the west of the township of Rosamond, lies the Willow Springs International Motorsports Park. And after watching others race at other tracks, we decided to try it for ourselves. Well, truly racing? Not exactly, but … How it all started. Earlier this year we had friends over for dinner at our house in Boulder. As we were finishing the meal, talk turned to lifestyle issues. What did we like to do to relax? What were our interests outside of work? And it was during this conversation our friend told us he raced, campaigning a race car in California. He gave us the web site of a club he considered provided one of the best introductions to racing and encouraged us to take a look and to consider joining. After all, you can’...

For regular readers of the business blog I maintain for the HP NonStop community: http://www.itug-connection.blogspot.com/ – you will have come to recognize that travel, food, cars / bikes, and music are pretty much at the top of the list of things Margo and I like to do. While we both like to read and watch movies, our passion to explore places, enjoy “new adventures”, and to sample different food and wines will remain a key part of our lives for years to come. While it’s still fresh in our minds, it is appropriate that the first posting for “buckle-up” (a suggestion from Margo, of course) looks back at our last trip to Europe. While we mixed a little business with vacation times and the enjoyment of the places we visited, we ran into the problem many US travelers face these days – the terrible exchange rate between US dollars and the Euro. By the end of the two weeks, we were really pleased to be back in the US where a simple Starbucks coffee purchase didn’t have us both cringe!...