Solo 2: not my thing!

Last week I participated in the Solo 2 Canadian National Championships. Have I mentioned before that I am not that good at navigating the cones? I'm not. I decided to participate with my race car, which I would be sharing with Marc Normandin, one of the ASE gang and master BBQ chef. The weekend can be summarized as follows: Marc was faster than me in my own car on pretty much every run, the driver-side trailing arm on the car broke on Sunday, and I finished 8th in class out of 9 participants. Carl won the whole thing with ridiculously fast times in his stock-class Integra Type R.

Marc offered to fix the Civic's trailing arm and he did so in the past couple of days, which is good, since I have a track day at Tremblant next Wednesday. This will be my first visit to Tremblant since 2005, when I blew my engine. I am quite looking forward to it, and plan to run the car at St-Eustache on Monday to make sure everything is OK. It should be, as the car was aligned today at the shop.

Yesterday, I took the race car to the nursery school where my Mom works to show it to the kids, along with all my racing safety equipment. I was honestly surprised at the level of interest and the smart questions asked by kids only 4 or 5 years old. We even staged a mock race with kids wearing cardboard cars, using real flags!

Cooking news: I was at a lovely restaurant yesterday and was hesitating between ordering the duck and the sardines. I chose the duck and decided to try to make my own sardines today. Here is the result:

Sardines!

I am quite satisfied, having yet again learned how to make something new. This dish reminded me of our 2008 trip to Portugal, as I hoped it would.

In other news, I have not been running at all in the past few days. I saw a new Mazda 2 and a new Ford Fiesta. Both are nice small cars, but the Fiesta is not as small as I would have liked. I saw a Saab 99 with a blown head gasket in the classifieds for 950 $... tempting!

News of Alex:

We have been running around a lot getting Alex ready for her semester in Chicago. It will be tough while she is gone, but I plan to rely heavily on Skype and to occupy my time with automotive events. Alex attended the Academy of Management conference last week in exotic Montreal. She has been getting ready for Chicago mainly by planning the class she will be teacing at UIC.

Cool cars spotted:

Ford GT

Maybach 57S

Ferrari 575

Ferrari California

Maserati Quattroporte

Fiat X1/9

Alfa Romeo Spyder

Aston Martin Vantage

Aston Martin Vanquish (!)

Audi RS4

Audi S8

BMW M6

BMW M5

BMW M3

Saab Turbo X

Lotus Elise

AMG SLS

AMG C63

Porsche 997 Turbo

Porsche 996 GT3

Porsche 993