What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday ~ The Surprise Edition

And it was me who got the surprise!

Hello again desk hoppers, Wednesday once more, thanks for popping in.  So how did I get a surprise?  Well, you may recall I was in Mexico at the end of May, when the crop and the atc swap was going on and didn’t take part.  So imagine my surprise when I got back from the weekend on Sunday (June 29th) to find an envelope from Julia in my mailbox which was full of beautiful atc’s, along with a lovely note!  So they’re gracing my desk this week.

 

 

Poor Julia must have been wondering why I hadn’t mentioned them before, or thanked her for them, but they must have traveled the long way round as they were posted on May 27th and arrived here on either the 27th or 28th of June!  I can’t believe it took 31 or 32 days for a small envelope with correct postage and address on to reach me.  But I had a fantastic time looking at each one and putting names to blogs.

So Julia, thank you so much for taking the trouble to include me in the WOYWW ATC swap.  And you truly surprised me too!

So, it was the last weekend in June and I had the Friday off work as we headed down to Mid-Ohio racing track for the annual Vintage Grand Prix that they hold there, and this time we were able to take the little Ginetta G15 with us too.  They have a featured marque at Mid-O every year, along with a special race for the featured marque and this year it was the classic mini that got its turn in the limelight.  They came from all over the US and Canada too, 54 of them to be precise.  I love mini’s, we had three at different times when I was growing up, I learnt to drive in one too, I think most of us probably have a mini story somewhere in our past.

I’ll leave you with this photo from Turn 1 of lap 1 of their race, 49 of them started, 48 finished (no mean feat in itself!).  It was impossible to get them all in one shot, they just kept coming and coming and coming around turn 1!  Wonderful to see, absolutely fantastic actually.  It was the most minis in one place that both Andrew and I had ever seen, or are ever likely to see again.

So that’s me this week.  Head off to Julia if you have no idea why I’m showing you a desk, and while you’re there make sure you

wish her a Very Happy Birthday too!  

And at the other end of the birthday celebrations scale, Happy Birthday America, 238 on the 4th.  And while I think about it, today (2nd July) is also the 20 yr anniversary of Andrew and I arriving in America!!  Plus it’s Darnell’s birthday!  Wow, lots going on this week!

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday

A mess if I’m honest.  It contains EXACTLY the same stuff as last week AND the week before, all I’ve done is add a bit to it!  I don’t know why I’m procrastinating, I’ve got stuff to do but I’m just not doing it!

Anyway, the new stuff is two lovely skeins of Alpaca sock yarn.  As I’m knitting many more patterned socks now I need yarn that can show off stitches nicely and not swamp them with lots of colours or quick colour changes, and that means solid, semi-solid or tonal yarn.  I got those two on Monday after work at another little yarn shop in the area.  Beside the yarn is a free sock pattern that they popped in the bag too, and underneath that  is a little pile of stamps that arrived on Tuesday in a little love parcel from the home front!

The other small ball of yarn is one I’ve listed for sale or trade on Ravelry, it was given to me but I can’t think of a single use for it!  Maybe someone will want it.

We had our first camping jaunt of the season last weekend when we went over to the SW side of Michigan.  We were at a race track with the Vintage racers that we’re friends with on the Saturday, it was fun but really cold, wet and windy.  Sunday brightened up and although it was still cold at least the sun was out, but the breeze right off the lake was mind numbing.  Still, at least we got out somewhere!  Roll on summer, lol!

That’s me this week.  To find out about this weekly desk lark head on over to Julia’s at The Stamping ground for all the info.

Vintage Grand Prix At Mid Ohio

I’m a car nut I admit it, a bit of a petrol head to be honest.  I love road racing, proper racing none of that stupid Nascar stuff.  I’m not into F1 either, cause you have to watch that on the telly and I’m not much of a telly person, I prefer to be in the thick of things, to actually be there at an event, to watch the racing live from the track, to see the cars in the paddock and to chat to the drivers and their crews, to really smell the race fumes as it were.

We go to the Vintage Grand Prix at Mid-O quite frequently, last year we entered our 1972 Ginetta G15 in to the British Car Showdown car show and brought home one of 10 blue ribbons handed out that day.  This year, we spent the week before the event watching the weather.  We’ve had a lot of high humidity recently which has given way to some quite spectacular and vicious thunderstorms in the afternoons.  The reason for the indecision was based on the visibility of our tiny, tiny car to other road users.  It’s hair raising stuff on a motorway at the best of times, but put  torrential rain, hail and road spray into the mix and we’d be completely invisible to the other much bigger and heavier, road vehicles.  The second reason for watching the weather so closely is our inability to source 13″ tyres in this country.  The tyres on the car are now very worn, almost slicks.  They’re still ok in the dry, not bad in a bit of rain if you’re careful but potentially lethal in the kind of sudden downpour associated with strong thunderstorms.

Last Thursday afternoon I drove home from work in one of those storms and had to avoid fallen trees and debris on the road and rivers of water.  I could hardly see a thing with my wipers on full speed.  Once home I had to sit on the drive while the thunder crashed directly over head and double and triple fork lightning and hail came down thick and fast.  Once in the house we found a picture on the floor, shaken off the wall by the force of the thunder.  That storm sat over us for one and a half hours, brought down trees and power lines, left almost 100,000 people without power, knocked out a surge protector on my house and left us with no phone or internet until Monday morning when the utility company turned up.  It also drenched us with 3″ of rain in that one and a half hours.  And it made up our minds that the Ginetta wasn’t going to Mid Ohio with us, one storm like that on the way down there and it could have been curtains for us.

As it turned out, Mother Nature played a big part in the weekend.  This photo was taken on the way down, shortly before the weather deteriorated even more and we pulled off the road, parked up under an overpass and waited for it to move on.  There was no one left on the road until this storm was done, everyone had pulled over.  Imagine the M6 in England with no traffic and every single vehicle parked on the hard shoulder.

This was taken with the wipers on full speed too.  You can just about see the shoulder and the lane we’re in, but you can’t see the outside lane, the central reservation or the lanes on the West bound side of the road, and you certainly can’t see all the traffic in front of us, which IS there, people hadn’t pulled over at this point.

Anyway, we made it to the track safely, got registered, paid for the camping and put the tent up… all in the rain, and then wandered into the paddock to do a bit of car spotting as the rain was passing and the sun was coming back out.

[Lola – hate to think how much this beautiful race car is worth]

[Two Austin Healey Frog Eye Sprites, known in America as Bugeyes.  Still one of my favourites classics of all time]

[Lotus Super Seven]

[A very rare 1972 Ferrari 312 brought along for display purposes.  Ex Brian Redmond car, currently for sale for $800,000 if you’re interested!!]

[A stunningly beautiful Porsche.  The number 39 in the background with the rear engine cover up is a Porsche 917, used in the film Le Mans and driven by Steve McQueen]

We managed to see a couple of the practice sessions before the storms returned and racing was abandoned for the day, so we retired gracefully to a nearby bar for a drink and some food, and also tried to dry out as we got soaked to the skin in the second round of storms as we weren’t quick enough to hoof it back to either the car or the tent before the heavens opened!  It did clear up late evening though and we were treated to a pretty sunset and a peaceful night.

[Sunset over the campground, with rather a lot of standing water]

Saturday was lovely and clear and they managed to run almost the entire program until the heavy rain returned around 3:30pm.  We started hearing reports about roads and a couple of bridges washed out locally, flood warnings were now in pace for much of the region and later when we drove through Lexington on our way to dinner we saw the creek had broken and the road was flooded.  The police were redirecting the traffic and the water was pouring into the parking lot of a nearby office building and the cars that had been parked in there were up to their wheel arches in flood water and it was still rising.

But we saw some great racing that day…

[A motley collection of mostly British cars.  I can see a Fiat 148 and at the back is an old “Special” a one off car built in the 30’s for hill climbing, now restored and on the track.]

[Mostly Alfa’s, Datsuns and Porches with a Spitfire and an MG, and the white car just going over the brow of the hill is a Spec Racer Ford]

[Me sitting on the front straight watching the cars being released from grid, behind me, for the next race]

Sunday started damp and drizzly but the racing went ahead.  The track was very slippery and made for some interesting races.  It dried up quickly and we moved back to the grandstand in the esses, one of our favourite places to view from and watched out friends Andrea and Dave Robertson compete in the 1 1/2 hour Enduro in one of their Ford GT’s.  They started their racing career with us at Waterford Hills and we’ve known them for about 12 years now.  A few years ago they moved up to ALMS (American LeMans Series) and eventually formed Robertson Racing with a full crew, huge rig, team manager (“H” from England) and two Ford GT race cars.  Three years ago they entered the real Le Mans 24 hour race in France and beat out all the factory sponsored race teams to finish third in their class.  They became the first husband and wife team to EVER stand on the podium at Le Mans and Andrea was the first women since 1926 to stand on the podium.  Quite a feat for the two “unknowns” and their little race team from Michigan, and a huge source of pride for everyone who knew them from Waterford Hills.  They’re always happy to see us at any track and still come to Waterford Hills when they can to say hello, we spent part of the wet Friday in their garage and trailer dodging the rain.

Here they are in their yellow and silver Ford GT competing in the Enduro, sandwiched between two Lola’s.  They started dead last as their Saturday races were victim to the weather and they had no on track time to set their position on the grid, so that put them at the back of the pack in 21st place.  But they finished a very respectable 8th.

We watched more great racing and then had to leave around 3pm to get home.  The rain was reappearing anyway and as we left the complex it was starting to get heavy again.  We almost had a repeat of the journey on the way down, and that very first photo taken from the car in the rain could easily have been Sunday and not Friday.  We got home much later than planned because of it but it was still a great weekend and very worthwhile to make the effort to attend.  Hopefully next year the Ginetta can go again too.

A Little Late…

… but I thought I’d show you some photos from our 4 day camping trip over Independence Day Weekend!  Sounds funny saying it like that but the Monday was the 4th of July and I also had Friday off so we made a weekend out of it!  God I can’t believe it was three weeks ago!  The summer is absolutely flying by!  I heard something the other day say it was only 163 days until Christmas!

But, back to the piccies.  We camped in Ionia State Recreation Area about 2 hours drive West of where I live.  It’s run by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and we always try to stay in these type of parks as there’s usually lots to do, they’re clean, well maintained and quiet at night too.  So here’s a few photos and not too many words!

We set up our pitch and got the important lounger chairs out!

We wandered down to the lake the first night to catch the beautiful sunset.

Which we spent ages trying to capture…

The next day after doing the mountain bike trail we checked out the beach

and then went and checked out The Grand River for our big kayaking trip the next day

We kayaked The Grand…..

We got totally fed up of kayaking The Grand!  After 5 1/5 hours of paddling against the current in 32C temps… can you tell????

But it was easily put right with a rest and a cuppa!

And another sunset.

We hiked the 4 mile trail around the lake and spotted this seriously cute little garden growing on a log  that had fallen over a stream…

And then I turned around and realised that the bank behind me was full of beautiful wild Turks Cap Lillies!

Whilst Andrew got up close and personal with some freshly emerged, and freshly nibbled, fungi!

And then we spent the final afternoon chillin’ out on the beach and swimming in the lake.

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I have another racing weekend ahead of me, so there won’t be any new cards posted, but I did do a bit of stamping last night so hopefully I won’t be out of action for very long!  We also have a car show at work today and Andrew is bringing our 38 yr old Ginetta G15 in to work at lunchtime, and our friends are bringing their Triumph TR6 too, hopefully the rain will hold off.  More thunderstorms this weekend again!  With a bit of luck though we won’t have to deal with tornadoes!  Catch you all on the upside!

Dodging Tornadoes And Other Stuff

No, that’s not a metaphor, but more on that later.

I had hoped that life might just slow down a little and that I’d be able to get back in the craft room and back to blogging more frequently, but as you’re probably already aware, that’s just not happening!!  Don’t think I’ve stepped foot in the craft room for a week, and no more cards have been made or challenges entered either.  So, what has been going on?

Taking up quite a bit of time right now is the racing that I volunteer to help out with, I seem to have become Chief of Grid again, after our other Chief quit at short notice, due entirely to the crap going on in her own life right now and having way too much on her plate to deal with.  On the one hand, she was very unhappy at letting people down, but on the other she was relieved to have got at least one thing off her plate.  I, on the other hand, have had to jump back in, taking full charge of the safety of 100 race car drivers, organising them to get out on the track at the correct time, training new Grid staff as we have been short this year, and being completely answerable to both the drivers and the track stewards for anything that happens on grid or any decisions me or my team make.  I’ve done it before and generally have no problem with it, but I’m getting a bit tired of a lot of people relying on a few so they can go and race and have fun, but not being willing to step up and lend a hand themselves.  *Rant over!*

We’ve also been experiencing a storm laden start to summer, can’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before but we’ve had some pretty severe storms and a number of tornadoes since the beginning of June.  We had a tree come down in our back garden and our neighbour had a large tree come down in his that partly blocked the main road behind him.  There were also trees down further down the street, some of which had snapped the utility poles and brought down the power lines.  We had no power for over 18 hours and a flooded basement with that one.  There have also been numerous smaller outages too.  We were at a friends for a barbecue dinner a couple of weeks ago and it suddenly got really muggy, the wind dropped completely and then the tornado sirens in the area were activated…. dark purple and orange might be a cool colour combination for card making, but it really spells trouble when the sky is that colour! It was gone midnight before anyone was able to leave the party, but it didn’t matter, we were still having fun!

The weather was once again a factor this past weekend at the race track and we actually had to abandon racing for only the second time in our 52 year history.  We got through Saturday just fine, it was just hot (86F) and a bit humid, but there were scattered, severe storms forecast again for Sunday.  We ran everything as quickly as we could, trying to stay ahead of the weather fronts that were whipping all around us, until one of our young drivers got a little off track and put about a third of his Camaro race car through the sound wall, popped one of the boards right out!  That was right before lunch, but we had to extend lunch in order to get the wall fixed and by that time it had started to rain.  We managed to run just one more race when it started thundering and lightening, that’s an automatic shutdown for us as we have corner workers out on track in exposed positions hooked up to headphones and stuff and we have to bring them back in to the paddock for safety.  It was just after this that Independence Township activated all of their tornado sirens.  That sent everyone scrambling to get down their canopies and secure all their stuff as we’d be sitting ducks in high winds.  The Competition Board had a quick meeting, checked the radar, listened to the police radio reports and decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and we should pack it up.  People needed time to get their paddock and/or camping spot cleared and packed away before whatever was coming our way hit us.  As it turned out, the storm veered North and missed up completely, but id did rip right through a campground, tossing big American RV’s and caravans into a lake like they were Tonka toys, and sadly claiming one life.  We made the right decision.  There were also two more confirmed tornadoes a little South of my house that plowed through a rural area and caused no significant damage.

So, what else?  I’ve been having a bit of car trouble recently, mainly in the mornings on start up, my little old car has been idling very badly and twice has stalled completely as I’ve gone to pull away.  Andrew gave her a thorough service on Monday night and found a perished bit of hose on the vacuum system that would definitely have accounted for the trouble.  Tuesday morning she was as sweet as a bell and I drove to work happy and confident in my car again, only to find myself broken down on the side of the road about five miles from home after my alternator packed up!!  Sodding Murphy’s Law or what???  I called AAA (US equivalent of AA) to arrange for a tow truck, and then called Andrew to come out and sit with my car so I could take his car and carry on to work.  By the time the tow truck arrived he’d figured out it was likely the alternator and the tow driver said exactly the same when he heard how everything shut down so suddenly.  I now have a reconditioned alternator that Andrew fitted and a smooth running car once again!

We have had some fun though too.  Last Friday night we went to the park with some friends and their two children for the annual Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s free concert at a local park.  It’s always brilliant, and it’s amazing that a world class symphony orchestra puts on free shows at five local parks over the summer, we always make time to go to at least one.  And we’re off camping too, literally in an hour or two.  I’m just finishing my lunch at work and I’ll leave at 1pm today to head home and we should be on the road by about 2pm.  Monday is American Independence Day (4th of July) and where I work is also shut tomorrow (Friday) so we’ve decided to take a mini camping break.  We’ll be taking the kayaks and the bikes too, and for once we have a lovely forecast, hot on Sunday at 91F, but NO STORMS!!!  Probably shouldn’t have said that though should I????

Tomorrow (July 2nd) is also our 16 year anniversary of arriving in America!  I’ve now officially spent more of my adult life in America than I have in England.  I think I’m turning into a “half and harf”!

So That Was April

My God!  Where did it go??  Reminds me of one of the sketches in Fawlty Towers where Basil has just been chastised (again) by Sybil and is talking to himself….. “Zoom!  What was that mate??  That my friend, was your life, did you miss it??”  Or words to that effect!  Busy, busy, busy sums it all up.  After the shock of a late season winter storm which left us with 5″ of snow, the rest of the month turned out quite beautifully.  So much so, that we have:

• Completely finished tidying up in the garden
• Planned and started working on our new container vegetable garden
• Sowed lots of hardy vegetable (and a few flower) seeds out side
• Fixed the mailbox that got smacked by a snowplough and was at a bit of a precarious angle!
• Taken down, fixed, treated and put back up the three trellises for the clematis
• Put down the first of the lawn fertilizer
• Completely re-stained the deck ready for summer
• Put out the barbecue, deck furniture and water fountain
• Had our first barbecue of the year
• Had our first trip to the lake with our kayaks and got sun burnt!
• Scrubbed out and cleaned all the garden pots ready for summer flowers and herbs
• Sanded and re-coated the two big half barrels we normally put by the front door with annuals in
• Made a corral out of chicken wire and wooden stakes to keep the critters out of the new vegetable area
• Got out in the sun shine on our bikes a couple of times
• Made three cards for birthdays
• Attended the on-track portion of Drivers School for our new recruits this year

Quite a list eh?  Basically we’re an entire month ahead of where we were last year at this time, especially with the outdoors stuff, it’s brilliant.  There was a bit of time for photo taking but I’ve been so busy that the pictures are still on the camera, I’ll try and sort some out this weekend.  Although the weather has generally been great we’ve had a fair amount of rain, higher than usual so the garden has tuned lush and green almost overnight.  Our average April rainfall is a shade over 3″, this year for the same month we got 5.5″…. some of it at the weekend during Drivers School.  I got soaked to the skin on Saturday it came on so fast, by the time I’d found shelter (about 10 seconds) I was like a drowned rat!  Made it interesting for the rookies though I can tell you!

As I’ve no photos for this post I’ll leave you with a short video from Drivers School.  Pay attention to the left side of the track, close to the trees, for a wayward Ford Mustang… and no, that little maneuver wasn’t on the curriculum!  Happily though the driver is just fine, although a little shocked at first, and the car is already in the workshop being fixed and will be ready for the first race weekend on May 9th/10th!  Such is the resilience of youth!

A Mixed Bag

A few more that got away!  It’s incredible how many photos I actually uploaded last year that I never used, perhaps a rather belated New Year’s Resolution should be to be a bit more organized with my blogging and photos…. and if I don’t end up using the photos then delete them off the website!

Today is very dire and grey outside, our forecast is rain, interspersed with sleet, interspersed with bursts of snow, then back to rain with some high winds before turning to all sleet then snow overnight as it cools down!  Tomorrow is more of the same.  By the time it’s all done on Friday we will have about 4″ of *something*…. rain, sleet, snow, slush, ice?  Don’t know what but we’ll have four inches of it!

Remember when we went to the Awards Banquet for the racing track  on November 1st last year?  For whatever reason I ended up not showing you the pictures of em all dressed up, even though I had tempted you with the “before” shots, you never actually got any “after” ones did you?  Here are a couple taken before we left the house:

My God, I look like a stuck-up, haughty so and so don’t I??  There is one more, but you’re certainly not seeing that one…. A took it from a low down angle looking up at me and I was looking slightly down at him.  Hhm, Cruella De Vil sprang to mind immediately when I first saw it!!

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I’m very much looking forward to the weekend, I’m taking both Friday and Monday off work as I have some “banked” or “comped” hours to use up at work and my boss what’s me to use some of them up, so I’m having a long weeekend.  Monday is also A’s birthday, he doesn’t want to do anything really special, but I’d like to cook him a nice meal at least.  I don’t know what that’ll be just yet, I’m going to ask him what he wants.  I also want to take him out on Friday to the local shops to choose a couple of things, I know he wants a couple more winter tops but he’s very particular and wants to pick things and try them on himself.  He’s actually more picky than I am!  I much prefer to take him shopping than to shop for him myself!  Me, I’m easy, just give me some money to spend in a craft store!  He’s always said I’m a cheap date.  Really!  I am!  And he does tell me that. And apparantly I’m “not high maintenance”! Lol!

The Morning After The Night Before

I completely forgot I took these photos last Sunday, they were still on the camera and I only remembered them when I was looking for the photos of my friend Bob in a dress!  And no, it wasn’t his Halloween costume either, it was what he had to wear to the banquet I went to on Saturday night, but more on that later as I’m waiting for some photos to be emailed to me from someone else who was also there in order to make a complete post for you all.  I t was a crazy night that’s for sure!

So how does one “get over” festivities of that nature?  Late nights, time changes (our clocks went back that night too), running around in skimpy dresses?  For me, the best antidote is a huuuuge cooked breakfast at a local diner, washed down by 3 gallons of strong coffee, followed by a beautiful, restorative stroll through the woods behind where I live.

Thankfully, there are no photos of the huuuge breakfast and the 3 gallons of coffee (bet that’s a relief!), but there are photos aplenty of the mellow, yellowy/goldeny goodness of the woods at this time of year.  And as usual, I can’t decide which photos to show you so I’ll regale you with them all!!!

[Absolutely loved the bright redness of these berries against the golden yellow of the trees behind]

[You may be wondering why we have bridges over what looks like just a carpet of fallen leaves!  But let me assure you, that if you walked anywhere but across that bridge you’d have rather wet feet.  There’s a stream in there, you just can’t see it because of the density of all the leaves!]

A Night On The Town

It’s Saturday..

The hair appointment is booked

The facemask is doing it’s job (I hope!!)

The slinky, purple dress is ready to be worn

As are the cute little purple sandals

The little purple, irredescent bag is at the ready

The stunning purple beaded choker necklace is waiting to be worn

Along with the lovely, little amethyst drop earings

And finally, the beautiful purple/blue beaded silk wrap is just waiting for the right shoulders to adorn

It should be a good night!

Photos From The open Track Day

Almost forgot, here are a few photos from the last Open Track Day at Waterford Hills on Sunday, October 12th.  It was packed, we had about 90 drivers on track, not all at the same time though!, they run in 5 different groups based on experience level.  The day was outstanding, it was directly after the Fun Run, and we had another fabulouso day, I ended up changing out of my tshirt into a strappy tank I was so hot.

My lovely hubby decided to run one of our old British cars for a bit of fun.  He’d also been making some adjustments and had fitted a home made anti roll bar that he wanted to try out, the track is perfect for that, closed conditions and lots of people to help out if a problem arises etc.  So, he had himself some on track fun and I got to hang out with my friends again.  Of course I volunteered too, we were at registration at 7:30am, A helped to tech inspect all the cars going on track and I, along with Becky (Grid Chief) got everyone signed up and paid for.  Later, at 10am, I worked the Grid with a Spec Miata driver, Dave.

We had a pretty decent day, only one person wrecked, sadly it was in a very bad way and in his Dads car, he wasn’t hurt though, although we sent him to the hospital for a check up just to be sure.  The car is toast though, not sure what his Dad was going to have to say about it.  We had a car dealer show up (pre-registered) with 5 Crown Victoria ex-police cars!  He runs a program with a local high school to teach the students about safe driving, the consequences of not driving safely, and perhaps more importantly, car control if you do get yourselves into any difficulties.  There were 15, 18yr old high school students in this group alone, and despite a few minor off track excursions and a spin here and there, they all did remarkably well.

One of the guys who showed up happens to write for a major Detroit newspaper, so we got some great coverage from him, here’s his article if any one is interested.

[A sitting on Grid in our 36 yr old Ginetta G15]

[Our friend Nick brought out his 4 yr old son for a few hours.  Little Quentin was blown away by it all and hasn’t stopped talking about the racing track since!]

[Even the race track is pretty in the Fall]

[Setting up cars in pit lane for their next on track session.  A is in front of the white Mazda race car.]

[Our tiny little car entering Turn 3, directly behind a modern sedan!  The yellow/green car is a Lotus Exige, and even this manages to make the Ginetta look small!]