Hello darlings.
I’m on a boat.
Lots of us are on a boat.
I didn’t want to write about it because not everybody is on this boat, by any means. But fuck it. I’m on it. We’re on it. This is fun.
When I was in Saudi, I ended up getting very involved with the situation around a young racing driver who had been injured. I got on very well with his mother/manager. We shuttled back and forth past the guards in the military city in Tabuk until I was a known quantity by the fresh and suspicious young boys with machine guns. Eventually the opportunity came to come to this boat. “There’s a spot in the helicopter!!” My car was parked in the military hospital car park. The boat was moored in the red sea close to Egypt. I could have helicoptered to the boat. My instinct is usually to say a hard YES and then sort out the details later. But I had an early morning pick-up or what have you. And I knew that I would wake up fuzzy and on the wrong side of the desert from my car, and a helicopter back was not guaranteed. “Where are you?” “Um…”
Had I got in the helicopter it would have been a slice of life. But I wouldn’t be here now. And this is a slice of life too. I’m glad I waited. And I’m glad I’m here now.
The boat is essentially a floating party. “They’ve been going from Monaco to Nice and back for the last month,” said one of the guys who think that maybe the crew aren’t aware that it can be tracked on GPS. The boat is also a huge reason why we can do this race. All the dolavs and loads of the vehicles have to go all around the world with minimal air miles and so forth. At one point the idea was to run the race from the boat. Not possible though as you just need too many people to make this work.
But they can run the party from the boat.
This is great. This is dangerous in terms of booze. Every time I finish my beer, Olga shows up with a tray and replaces it. Apparently there’ll be a 4th July barbeque soon. That’s good. It’ll be a long day tomorrow, and I’ll need to eat soon as I missed lunch and that is likely to be my fourth beer…
The sun is setting. I’m gonna plug in to the party. This sort of opportunity is rare.
Wahoo
AlBarclay 