A Weekend As A Racer

Firstly, Krabi Go Kart Speedway.  Where else but Thailand could you find yourself racing around in scenery like this?

The track winds around a series of small limestone kastes.

Even has a little Thai temple so you can ask the gods to keep you out of the tyre wall as you drift the kart through the sweeper and onto the main straight.

The 'Make it or break it' chicane in the straight, where you hit it at full speed .  Get it just right and take half a second off your lap time.  Get it completely wrong and check into the hospital. 

The scene of my Sebastian Vettel moment (see later).

The pits early on qualifying day before the masses arrived.  The staff and teams did a great job as usual, making everyone feel like the serious professional that most of us aren't.

Number 32 takes its place in the paddock.  Slight lack of sponsor decals etc compared to the others.  Anyone want to throw thousands at an up and coming race star????

AND THEN CAME THE RACING!

Qualifying......

After a series of practice runs we came to qualifying.  First session and I qualified 4th of the ten entrants.  Good news : only three people in front of me.  Bad news : there are six mad people behind me and a few others who were coming only on Saturday and would be starting at the back of the grid with a reputation for being fast and aggressive.

Heat 1

Got past one, but the fast guys from the back of the grid came through and passed me.  Result, 6th.

Heat 2

Starting 6th with a couple of people just in front of me I thought I could compete with and maybe get ahead of.  Get through the madness of the rolling start, get around to the chicane, step on the throttle and.... no drive.  Broken chain!  First retiree in heat two means starting at the very back of the grid in the final.

Final

Start at the very back.  Make a big move to get past a couple of slower karts at the end of the back straight and get punted wide.  Last by about five seconds.  Its a longer race though.  Get back onto the last runners and started making some passes.  See a kart or two retired on the side.  Make a couple more passes and then do what one of the mechanics described as my Sebastian Vettel.  A big pass on one of the fast guys, around the outside of the sweeper missing the tyres by about an inch on the exit.  I think I was mainlining adrenaline as I did it.  Then last couple of laps on my own, pulling away from the people behind but can't see the people in front. Pull in and try to start breathing again.  Then doing the maths, if I passed four, saw a couple of retirements......  Get distracted by the mechanics congratulating me on my outside pass on Michael.  Get my race gear off and sit in a corner to get my overalls off and take a moment to settle.  Then get the mechanics telling me to hurry to get to the podium.  I thought I must have snared the final spot as fifth but get called up for fourth! 

I'm the old bastard in amoungst the young guys. 

Confusion!!  As a foreigner am I supposed to "wai" (thai sign of respect) to the dignatories like all the Thai's do?  I settle for a slight bow and he speaks to me in English, so I don't think it was a diplomatic faux pas.  The police have not come looking for me (yet).

 Notice the inspiration on the podium... 

Firstly Jerome in the wheelchair.  No use of his legs at all.  Has a kart specially modified with both brakes and throttle mounted onto the steering wheel.  He passed me in the first race and simply drove away from me.

Secondly little Harry.  The track celebrity and rightly so. Weight is a big factor in Go Karts.  We worked out that all 26kg of Harry and his little national championship competition junior kart was probably 70kg lighter than the combination of me and my kart.  Albeit with a lot less power as well. Harry's fastest laptime was about the same as mine, but he would do it lap after lap like a metronome where I could get it right one lap in three.  I was on his tail a couple of times but did not manage to pass him once in the whole weekend because he knew exactly where to place the kart on every corner.  Smooth, consistent, and give him a millimetre of space and he was past you.  Oh, and by the way, Harry is 8 years old!

Two great lines to come out of the weekend.....

First from Greg (in his sixties and still loves to race)

"All the young guys only look for the apex of the corner.  All I see these days are the trees!"

Second was when I complained to someone that I keep drifting wide by getting into certain corners too fast.

"Thats all right.  I used to make the same mistake when I first started driving."

Harry, 8 years old.

The Return Of Number 32

Newer, Faster, Better

Well, it will be when I learn how to control it!  Got the opportunity to buy one of the karts used in last year's championship series by one of the leading teams and the temptation was too much for me.  This is a KF2 kart.  30% more power, 100% harder to drive.  At the moment I am just trying to keep it going where I want it to rather than always going sideways because there is too much power.  At least I am keeping the mechanics entertained as they laugh at me trying to manage it.

One requirement to enter any race meetings was a number.  I stripped all the bright coloured stickers and sponsors off it right back to the black plastic.  It did look like this...

So, black racing machine??  It had to be 32 in honor of the much missed R32.  The chassis is a 2011 Intrepid which won most of the major championships around the world last year.  Watching the mechanics playing with all the handling adjustments is interesting, but probably a waste until I can get somewhere close to being able to drive it. 

Doing faster laps than what I achieved in the old Leopard class kart, but still a good second a lap slower than what the kart is easily capable of.  Lots more to learn, lots more GForce bruising to endure, and a lot of fun doing it. 

New Toy (oh-eh-oh)

Does anybody remember Lene Lovich?  A crazy rock girl of the early 80's whose most famous song was about a "New Toy".  In her case the new toy I believe was quite small and vibrated.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7VgDSNxlGU

This is my new toy.  It vibrates too, but is somewhat larger...... 

We went to one of the local Kart tracks for a play with some visitors and there was a man running around the track in a full competition spec kart.  Very different from the hire machines!   I had a chat to him about how he ended up at the track and found out some interesting info.  Turns out the track is owned by the current Thai champion and there are a group of guys there who run competition karts and go to events together.  When I asked about getting a kart he took me out the back and showed me one that was for sale right then because one of the group had just bought the latest gadget and was selling his previous machine.

So I now own a racing machine again.  I have a little garage at the track to keep it in and can run around there whenever the track is open.  I'm sure there must be something illegal in it because it is to much fun to be legal!

Quite an impressive little track there.  Hosts one of the rounds of the Thai championship each year, so not just a silly little hire track like many.

Its a Birel chassis, one of the most common ones used in competition racing.

Motor is a 125cc water cooled two stroke with an output of about 30HP.  In these tiny little machines that is enough to light up the back wheels if you step on it too hard, and to propel it up to about 120 km/h.  No gears on these things which is lucky because it takes all my concentration just to get it around the track without the back wheels ending up in front of you.  Ventilated disk brakes on the rear axle.  That close to the ground and wth the motor screaming away next to your right ear, 50kmh feels like about Mach 2!

Whatever it does, it is capable of doing it a lot better than me at this stage.   I have a laptimer/transponder on order to see how fast I am going and how I am improving.  I ran some laps today with an ex South African champion and learned a lot about the difference between the lines you take in a GoKart compared to my motorbike racing days.  Even different to the car.  A whole lot of learning to be done on my part before I will be capable of finding out what it can really do, but this sort of learning will be too much fun.



I know I have been very slack with this, but I have also been busy as these pictures will show.  My goal was to create a garden that I could grow losts of different plants in, but that would be kind on my weak lower back.  Combine a back that gives me all of a few minutes bent over before locking up, and knees that I cannot kneel on, and gardening at ground level is a nightmare.  So a complete new garden was planned.  Then I did my shoulder in which meant I was basically one armed (and left arm at that) for four months, and things got more complicated.  Anyway, the garden is now at the planting stage, so here are some images.

Firstly the 'Before' photos.....

Front Garden.  Lawn??  Hate the stuff.  A waste of space where you could be growing interesting plants!

Side garden, more of the same.  Note the bed of plants along the wall.  Heliconias.

From the front.  Pretty non-descript, and a copy of all the other houses in the area.

That horrible entrance room. An eyesore and completely useless space.

All those Helicoias came out and were replanted along the front fence.  This was to create a hedge for both appearance and privacy. The huge mature tree in the front has already been chopped ready for the crane that would come in to remove it.

Nobody would be suprised to know that the first things in were the orchid houses.

Before anything else could happen the pool had to go in.  All the heavy machinery came through the front garden.

A small pool is still a big hole.

After a bit of Phuket rain, the heavy machinery no longer made it through the front garden.  After a while the trucks only got as far as the gate before sinking in the mud.

But the Thai are used to doing things manually.  The concrete got transferred a bucket at a time by a line of men and women.

It only took a week from the first load of dirt to having a working pool.

The eyesore entrance hall is now a link between the garden and the house.  It has a clear roof over half of it.  A wall of bromeliads, two fish bowls and a lot of pots.

Including a couple of Tacca plants, commonly called Bat Flowers.

The area around the pool was paved, and the surrounds planted.

Two big new sliding doors have been punched through the walls and now you can walk straight out into the pool from the two most commonly used bedrooms.

From the front the Heliconia "Hedge" is now starting to grow strongly and will soon be a full screen from the street.  The Electric gate also adds to the privacy and is a lot more convenient to use when you are coming and going.

The Heliconia is not just there for its screening function.  The flowers are pretty spectacular as well.  This is commonly used as a florist flower around the world.

After all the lawns and a few truckloads of trees were removed.  The new gardens started going in.  A series of walls were built to lift the garden beds up to a height where I could work in them without bending, then the paths in between done with white pebbles.  It took about ten truckloads of soil to fill the beds!  The house was all painted.  Every house in the area was originally the same two tone beige colour.  This one is now sort of yellow/cream.

Then a series of "arches" were put in.  They match the orchid houses, divide up the space, add some cooler shaded areas and, of course, more hanging space for the orchids!

Then the real planting could start.  Another ten truckloads of plants and a good year or two of growth is now needed!

On the left here is Grammatophyllum speciosum.  The worlds largest orchid species.

 

  

Three Bismarck palms through the centre make up the skeleton of the garden.  

  

This fern was originally growing in the big mature tree in the front.  It took a bit of a battering being sawed out of there, but is starting to recover now. 

Still a lot of planting and other work to be done.  The old IT saying applies........  90% of the project is done, only 90% to go.