May contain strong language. I don’t know at this point.
So, then. I haven’t posted anything in over two years. I got a second job and have been working at two for over two years now. Haveing sometimes 50 English as a Foreign Language classes a week could be fun but tiring as hell.
In the menatime, I sort of gave up on journalism. I just don’t have the will or the time anymore to do researches or interviews or just write about my race travels.
Oh, have I travelled a bit (this is the drunk bragging part). So after the backstage party at the Monaco GP or the Monte Carlo Rally or the Italian GP I wound up at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the DTM race at the Norisring. Did an undertaking, too, by going to the Daytona 500 during my first ever visit to the US. That was kinda fucked up due to the fact that I didn’t have a place to stay, so I just crashed (not the plane) at Orlando Airport and even at immigration I just gave the adress of “Midway Avenue, Daytona”. But it was the fucken’ Daytona 500. When the Chicago skyline appeared in my window, I couldn’t fucking believe I made as far as the US.
This might seem like a commodity nowadays, to me it’s still a miracle to get on a plane, fly over an endless ocean and the snowed in forests of Canada and land on a completely different continent, which I had never done before. Arrive in winter. Get on another plane, it’s fucken’ summer all of a sudden. At the and of fucken’ February. Still blows me away. That, and the packed 101 thousand seats of Daytona International Speedway. The biggest crowd I’ve ever seen. That is only followed by a 45 thousand-attended Metallica concert I was at eight years ago.
Okay, focus, don’t be so incoherent.
The Mulsanne.
Just sitting in the parking lot at 3 AM without a ticket, watching those prototypes and GT cars whizzing by. Those atmospheric moments that cannot be replicated by anything. That is what fucken’ Le Mans is about. A two-lane country road, a couple of hundred horsepowers, the trees of Tertre Rouge and a night-splitting set of headlights. One of the greatest races on the planet. Monaco GP is quite an EVENT, sure, I was in the fucken’ middle of it, standing next to fucken’ Ser Davos (and I still need to attend the Indy 500 at some point), but man, nothing compares to 3AM at the Mulsanne. Covered in a mylar blanket, after a 33-hour bus ride, taking the same route back a couple of hours later.
I was supposed to go the the Isle of Man TT this year, but then the ferry company miraculouslí fucked up my reservation. Luckily, I got a refund, but not the fucken’ plane. So there’s that.
Fucken’ Norisring.
What can you tell about the former Nazi rally grounds with Mercedes, BMW and Audi cars racingt around the main tribune of the Zeppelinfeld, where Hitler used to hold his speeches during the annual party days. There’s some perverted attraction to it all, which is hard to describe, especially when you walk along the 60 metre-WIDE (!) and 2 kilometre-long marching road layered with granite tiles that currently holds two, full-time roads with an endless parking lot in the middle. The whole thing is just eery, uncomfortable.
It was that weekend when Lando Norris went from the very last place winning the F3 race, redubbing the track’s name “Norrisring”.
You, Americans, know how to make a show. I mean the whole Daytona 500 went without any supporting events and there were loads of programs, still. When my bus approached the lot and the grandstands emerged from the morning mist, I thought I directly stepped into ‘Days of Thunder’. It was Fucken’ surreal to be ACTUALLY there. At one point I would have never imagined I could get even to the Hugnarian GP and I was sitting on the top of the grandstands in Daytona, being able to see the complete 2.5 miles of it. Austin Dillon won the thing, and to see the #3 car doing donuts on the tri-oval grass has eternally burnt into my brain - having seeing the very same thing almost on a loop on YouTube in the years leading up to that moment.
Let’s just say it was a cool moment.
So, anyway, what now?
I’ve been into motorcycles in the last two or three years, let’s say. I still want to see Rossi at his home GP before he retires - Mugello is a must, also, maybe Jerez or Assen. I am still planning to see the F1 Belgian GP and I wish to go to a British GP in the future. The Pau GP would - for me - be impossible to miss due to my immersive interest in the history of motorsports, so there’s that.
Otherwise, I got into bicycles.
The last time I REALLY rode a bicycle was in 2002. Got a flat tyre, pushed it home, put it in my mother’s shed and it hadn’t seen the light of day until I took it out this August. It used to be my brother’s bike, was purchased in 1989 when I was five. I stripped all the unnecessary parts off this racing bicycle, had it fixed up properly and immediately I was on my way around the nearby loake, completing the 23-kilometre loop at a faster and faster pace.
I even bought a fucken’ Tour de France polka-dot jersey (initially for its pockets), because no one would buy that thing, not even at a massive discount. No sane person has the balls to wear it in the day of light. I think, though, that that is the coolest thing you can wear on a bicycle.
I might just go to the Tour de France or the Giro d’Iltalia, or - especially - the Paris-Roubaix (look it up if you haven’t heard about it; it’s just insane). I wear my jersey every single day when I go running (nowadays in the snow).
Oh, yes, because since my last post, I’ve taken up running due to my returning kidney stones (those things hurt like fucking hell, now I know what it’s like to give birth to a child - six or seven of them). So I’ve been running for the last - almost - two years - almost on a daily basis at a mere 3 kilometres at the break of dawn, but at least I’ve been doing it consistently, regardless of weather, so so far I’ve clocked something like 2,000km or so by running my pathetic 3k-stints - and then straight into the push-ups, planking and leg-raising exercises, cursing terribly by the end of it all - this is five or six times a week.
Okay, I still have some wine to drink, my weekend has just started, I am always open for questions.
THAT is the end of my drunk post. Not going to go back and check any of this shit.