28/02/2008

Va Va Varsity

My last two posts have all had a smattering of karting content, so my apologies for those who find all this petrolheaded talk a little tedious and unintelligible, but today I intend to continue the trend and recount the experience of yesterday's Varsity Kart Race.

Unfortunately, it was one of those "this'll sort the men from the boys" type events, where I ended up resolutely in the boys camp. Having only really taken up karting last year, and having only driven the Pro karts twice, the step up to yesterday's Club 100 karts was going to be a shock, but I didn't bank on it being quite such a shock. Firstly, they can do 0-60mph in about 4.5 seconds. Second, they have a top speed of about 65mph. And thirdly, they're clutchless, so they need to be bump started, and if you brake too hard, spin, or go too slowly, they stall and need to be bump started again. On my first lap out of the pits in practice I spun about 4 times, so it took about 5 minutes to do one 45 second lap, my distinctive red helmet didn't do anything to lessen my visibility.


Fortunately I eventually got the hang of it (just about) prior to the race. Unfortunately, one the first lap the engine refused to fire up, leading to the rather embarrassing situation of my kart being pushed around the track by a pusher kart trying to kick some life into it. It didn't work, and I had to swap into another 'cold' kart. Starting 8th, I made it to the first hairpin in roughly the same position before being hit and spinning out, needing a bump start. This entails dragging your kart back onto the track and waiting for the pusher kart, by which point, we were last, and there we would stay.




I can though claim that this was not entirely my fault. Early in the stint I realised that something was wrong when the car seemed to 'top out' along the back straight. In the practice the thing just seemed to keep on accelerating, but now it wasn't. Having already changed kart once and not knowing if it was something I was doing wrong, I plodded on while all streamed past me. But even with what turned out to the automotive equivalent of a blocked-artery it was a pretty nerve racking and bone shaking experience. But one I can't wait to have again.

My teammate Graeme subsequently went out, and came back in right away to get another kart, and managed to salvage things - we finished second-last, some way off of the podium, with Oxford retaining their title.


Needless to stay, I've got this bug, and I don't think it's going anywhere.

24/02/2008

From RAGs to Riches (of a sort)

Today's been one of those eclectic days where everything was planned in advance, yet altogether everything that went on doesn't really fit into one whole.

It started as with many others, in the library, but fortunately that didn't last terribly long. Today is the start of RAG week here. RAG are a student body who organise different events to raise money for charity, and today was RAG Carnival day. I needed to do some shopping for 'Dutch Dinner Do' that I've perhaps unwisely agreed to do tomorrow night, so it seemed a good way to combine the two.




The parade started at the Grafton Centre and made its way to the Drummer Street bus station, which didn't really seem that far, and a little out of the way for something that's supposed to be quite high profile. But a lot of the people had clearly made an effort with their costumes, and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves.


It was certainly colourful, and provided a nice diversion while buying my 'British Fenland Kale' from a Dutch market stall - who says globalisation doesn't work? But RAG today wasn't just a parade, they also organised a rubber duck race on the Cam. For some reason, this really caught my imagination. I had visions of them flinging bucket loads of rubber ducks from Magdelene Bridge and people shouting their ducks on from Quayside. Unfortunately it wasn't quite like that, and instead they offloaded them from a punt in bin liners. In fact, if you look closely, you can see one bin liner that got away before it was emptied leaving a bin liner for of ducks in line for victory for quite a while.



Fortunately, the bin liner didn't win, and neither did mine or Amy's duck. The Cam's probably not the best place for such racing, as it's a pretty gently flowing river, and for quite a lot of the time they just bobbed along in a very uncompetitive unison, but eventually one duck broke free of the others and was hoisted onto the waiting punt to be proclaimed the winner. Apparently all who entered do get their duck to keep. So I shall look forward to being presented with my bright yellow/green/blue/pink duck at some point in the future once they've all been fished out.

This evening though I was presented with something of an all together different kind at the Cambridge University Automobile Club annual dinner at Downing. After a half-hour battle in front of the mirror with my bow tie, and despite some interesting service and a menu that didn't always reflect what we found on our plates, it was a really good evening, and it was nice to get to know the people who I've been racing against a little better while we didn't all have helmets on. I'd been told in advance that I was going to get an award, and I had a sneaking suspicion what it might have been for. But at the end of the meal I was presented with the CUAC award for 'Best Crash', or as I prefer 'Best Example of Driving Beyond One's Capabilities', or as it actually says on the trophy 'East Essex Pony Club Brew Cup for the Best Tetrathalon Performance'.


No-one was quite sure where the trophy came from, but I think it's great, and it has taken pride of place on my mantelpiece. Maybe I'm an equestrian extraordinaire just waiting to be discovered. I'm planning on writing a little piece on the crash so that they can start building up a catalogue of idiotic driving to pass down the generations. For a Society that's over 100 years old, it could be some list.

16/02/2008

The Three R's


Late last term saw the second-round of the University Karting Championship at the Rye House circuit. Then was the first time that I'd been the circuit, and the first time I'd driven what I now know to be a 'Pro Kart'. As such I was pretty chuffed to have come sixth in the team endurance.

Today it was time to 'Return to Racing at Rye House'; three R's that are much more exciting than whatever they're supposed to mean in Government-speak. We've just got back from the third-round at the same circuit and in the same karts, and second-time around it was even more of a blast, even if it did take about 15 minutes for the blood to return to the extremities of my fingers after I'd finished my stint.

There's not really any way to recount a kart race on a blog in a way that's going to be interesting to people reading. So I'll restrict myself to saying that having qualified 7th as a team, I'd got up to 4th by the first corner, before falling back to 6th in the second. It's amazing how exhilarating a standing-start can be. 10 karts, all only a metre behind the one in front, accelerating away into a sweeping right hander is guaranteed to raise a smile. Sixth was fine, but I got into a two lap-long battle with a guy from Churchill college, which resulted in me getting a warning, before he punted me off on the fastest part of the circuit. Not that I've a problem with that, it was close racing and I could have just as easily done the same to him. Unfortunately I didn't have to time to lift off before I hit the grass, so pirouetted twice before rejoining the track, only to be penalised for driving off the grass. Such is life. This left us last and chasing the whole pack, but by the end of my 43 laps I'd got us back up to fifth, and on my penultimate lap I finally managed to break into the 43 second boundary having done solid 44 seconds lap all the way. I managed a 43:83, which was only 00:20 slower than our team's best lap. So chuffed with that!

After that Will took over for another 25 laps before Roy took us the rest of the way with his 57. He managed to get us to fourth as well, so only one away from that first podium. Can't be that far away.

Racing in the dark is extremely atmospheric, but bitterly cold, especially when you're grasping the wheel for dear life and your knuckles are in the wind protected only by millimetre thick gloves. But it's all part of the experience. But boy, did I look rough once I'd finished my stint. It's surprising just how demanding 30 minutes of racing appears to be! But I'm never going to get tired of that last sweeping right hander; it's worth the asking price alone.






Come the end of the evening I was being cajoled into taking part in next week's Varsity race at the same circuit, but on the next karts up, 'Club 100'. Seeing how I still find these one's a bit of a handful, I'm not sure. But although they're a handful, they're tremendous fun, and I'm not actually sure I can pass up the chance to drive something even faster seeing how much I'm enjoying al this. Watch this space.

14/02/2008

Blasts from the Past

It's not often that reading a Law Report produces the kind of 'wow' feeling that makes you stop what you're doing. Last night, after getting back from working at one of the Careers Service events, I was reading the case of Re Hallet's Estate from 1879 in a law report actually printed in said year. It's always quite satisfying pulling a 130 year old book off the shelves, and you usually end up covered in dust, but this case was a little special and was rather like a legal message in a bottle. Someone had carefully annotated it in the margin with a list of citations for subsequent cases that considered it.


Of course, today you can just look on the internet to find out such information, but in 1919 (the most recent date in the old-handwriting) you couldn't do that, so this person had apparently taken on the task of writing it into the law report to save others the trouble of doing the research. Of course, it's a bit naughty to write in such an old book, although it would only have been 50 years old when they did it. But today it struck me as a great insight into an older world, and got me visualising Dickensian visions of legal studies. The handwriting was scholarly, and so regular and neat that I thought it was typed at first. It certainly makes a change to today's scrawled and barely legible annotations, the sort that I peddle. In fact, back in 1919 it was probably quite a heinous thing to do. I can't help but be intrigued by who it was, and the fact that we'll never know somehow makes it all the more interesting.

Unfortunately I rather deadened my appreciation of finding the book when I proceeded to walk into a door after leaving the library. College has taken the rather dubious step of fixing 'controlling' mechanisms (like posh versions of those 'arms' that stop doors slamming) to each of the outside doors, presumably so that they can be opened and closed from afar. This unfortunately means that doors now open and close very slowly, even when pushed very hard. I forgot this, and while walking apace, put my hand up to open the door, and before I realised that my hand was remaining stationary against the door while my body was rapidly approaching it, my nose had connected with the glass panel, leading to a presumable comical rebound. What's this 'progress'?

09/02/2008

In search of a conclusion

For a student of the arts, I have a worrying, and often unrealised, fondness for 'yes' or 'no' answers. Unfortunately, legal questions rarely come in digital and we're left hanging and have to make do with "if this, then this, but if this, then this" answers. Occasionally, but only occasionally, I'm known to crave a bit of trigonometry.

And that's very frustrating, and I guess that's why I'm not all that interested in pursuing a career as a lawyer. I'd much rather sit in a library and try to make the law come to nice 'yes' or 'no' answers, so the world cane be a happier and better place. But it seems that that's just how it is for me in real life too. I've noticed recently that increasing I try to finish every conversation with a concluding remark. It was quite funny at first, but now it's started to annoy me (and probably the people I speak to as well), mainly because I often can't think of something suitable. So instead of finishing naturally, these thing tend to have two or more abortive endings in search of a departing comment, before stuttering and tailing off most unsatisfactorily instead.

It's probably related to my desire to have things planned out months in advance. For instance, after my internship in Washington DC this summer, I'm going to have about three weeks free to spend in North America. Now, this isn't for another 6 months, and I can't figure things out definitively for a while yet, but it doesn't stop me trying to plan out all the different possibilities. It would be much easier if I just decided to believe in fate.

I wonder if that's a product of the unilateral nature of writing a textual blog? After all, writing is much more discrete than conversation and actions, and I can finish a conversation with myself anyway I want. See?

04/02/2008

A Flying Visit

There are two things in this world that I will never tire of; (a) the feeling of acceleration when a plane takes off, and (b) stroopwaffles. As a result, flying to Holland this weekend proved a perfect way to get a fix of both, and I'm still enjoying the latter while cleaning the crumbs out of my keyboard.

Last year I made a promise after winning the Dutch round of the Jessup competition that I'd come back the following year to hand over the winning-cup to this year's victors. And being a man of my word, that's exactly what I did. So after spending Friday afternoon in London being briefed on my Summer-scheme to be, I boarded a train to Stansted for a journey that ended up taking considerably longer than it should have done. All the time wearing a suit, my plane was delayed for an hour-and-a-half (it left Edinburgh for Stansted after it was supposed to leave Stansted. My train from Schipol to Den Haag then broke down at Leiden. All of this wouldn't have been too bad had it not been for the facts that it freezing and raining, and my hostel closed at 1am. Fortunately I got there at 12:30am, so all was good. but getting up at 7am the next morning for the competition was less good.

The competition was fun, but unfortunately the Utrecht team didn't win this year, although they did make it to the final round and split the judges 2-1. So this year the Netherlands will be represented by Leiden, who amazingly had a guy who I know from my Jones Day vacation scheme on their team. It never ceases to amaze me just how small this world of ours is.

It was great to see people again; Emma, Bart, Lobke, Ellie, Rachel and Sabs, to name a few and I'm thankful to them all for making me feel so welcome. But it was really heartening to see how it didn't feel strange being back, walking down the Oudegracht felt quite normal - just like going home to Cornwall does in the holidays. In fact, the strangest thing was how it didn't feel at all strange. I guess I expected that more would have changed, but there's no reason for it to have done as it's only been 7 months since I lived there. More odd was knowing that so many of the people I spent last year with have moved on, or back to where they came from. Andrew wrote a fantastic essay for the Erasmus essay competition which sadly and unfathomably wasn't appreciated by the competition judges, but I think he summed up this feeling perfectly, and I hope he doesn't mind me quoting a little here:

[Our accommodation was a] blank page which I realize, we entirely filled out and erase in our departure. The glad, cheery heat of a family which left with the last of us, leaving - only to be renewed by other faces. If we return, it is as an intruder: a true stranger out of history - without his family - who are flown across the surface of the earth. You wound yourself by your disappointment when you rediscover the place unyours.

It's hard to disagree. Utrecht is the same, but it's not mine, or ours, any more. A new generation of people have taken over and made the city their own. Graf Floris isn't my hang out any more. Going back to Jessup really brought this home. While it was lovely seeing the new team and seeing them moot (and not having to do it myself!) nothing could be a clearer indication of how things have moved on there, and I suppose that I must too.

But really, I have one request to Easyjet. The train company First Great Western puts on special trains from London to Newquay in the Summer, presumably because the general crowd going to Newquay would make a 6 hour train journey rather unbearable for people going elsewhere. This is a fantastic idea. You can always tell which flight is the Amsterdam flight at Stansted; it's the one with all the British stag/hen party entourages crowding the boarding gate before boarding has started (invariably with the wrong boarding card) and generally hollering to each other. Why not have special stag/hen flights? Even I'd pay to put them on one!