Month: July 2022

An old dental abcess from some eight years ago carved a huge hole in the right side of my skull. I had that tooth rooted, but something has clearly gone very wrong with it again. I first noticed it was going south a while ago, but I’m an eternal optimist even though I really know this pain. “I’ll be fine,” I told myself. Nevertheless, it’s not my first rodeo. I went to the medic and asked him for some antibiotics in case of emergency.

I hate taking antibiotics. I held off as it got more and more persistent. That deep internal twisting sensation in the gum up near my brain. The beginning of a course of pain in waves – pain so all encompassing that it made me sweat in air conditioning and made me shout in empty rooms. The night before last I woke up semi feverish, but then it abated. Last night again it flared with pain and propelled me from deep sleep at about 2am. I went into work on fire, barely rested with my breakfast banana soaking up sad ibuprofen. I needed to be clear headed for driving. Pain wakes you up. No codeine. Bad idea. Not with passengers. But ibuprofen wasn’t touching the sides. I went to the chemist. Ketoprofen in a packet? Worth a try. “Will it make me feel tired?” “No.” It makes me feel sick though.

I’m glad of Lou. She can be clear headed.

“Why aren’t you taking the antibiotics?”

I didn’t want to have to. That is the main reason I left it this late. I didn’t want to have to. Last time, I didn’t take the antibiotics until it was much much worse, but last time… it was so bad that the emergency dentist in some out of hours student clinic in Kings Cross said I could have got septicaemia, and that it was boring into my skull. Waiting that long again would be foolish in the extreme. In the heat of the afternoon, just as the last race started on site, just as my stomach recovered from that ill advised burpy ketoprofen and I started to walk back into the land of constant pain, I chucked that first dose of cipromax down. I’m allergic to penicillin. This is Saudi cipromax – part of the haul from Doctor Jesus. “It might give you diarrhoea,” the medic said when he gave it to me. I didn’t care anymore. This needed stopping. Fast.

Two hours later, I was trying to help take the ped down while occasionally nipping off to the nasty on site portaloos. I had informed a few people I had toothache but didn’t want to make a big fuss.

My phone rang and somebody wanted a lift back. Reader, I took the opportunity. The boys watched me leave them to their labour. With a full car, I went back to the hotel. Dougie was in with me. He knows his way around toothache. “Get some rest,” he suggested. Bloody right mate. I looked at my phone. One of the drivers needed picking up… It wasn’t directed straight to me. I very very nearly turned round and collected him anyway. I think if I had been directly asked I would have done despite my pain. But no. Sometimes I can look after myself. I went to my room, drank a sachet of burpy ketoprofen, put on the Aircon, showered and fell into bed. About an hour and a half later I woke up and realised that I’d been feverish. It was breaking. I could feel it leaving. I hadn’t noticed until it went. Too much to do. I no longer feel the weight of it.

I got up, still in pain but no longer all encompassing. I thought to join the lads at a party at Aldo’s, just to get some food to line my stomach for those painkillers that will get me through the night. Part of me wanted to avoid joining the group just to leave, but I wanted the chance to say farewell to some and figured a brief show was better than none.

“Where you going,” asked Todd though as I tried to sneak off. I explained.

“Oh that’s convenient. You’ve got toothache. Are you sure you’re not hungover?” That’s Joe. He’s still got the knives out, bless his heart. “Always looking for the low blow,’ says Lou of him when I describe such behaviour. I think he just needs a bit more time. He’s got the bones of a decent man. The sarcastic streak seems to be mostly directed at me alone – the unwanted old man he had to share with in Saudi. Lucky me – although: “The job of a bouncer is to instinctively spot the troublemaker in a group and put them down,” Lou said at one point regarding him getting pushed over.

I still like him though. He’s a solid man and a good worker, and he knows his to smile when he lets himself. He’s just a little wrapped up trying to look cool cos he hasn’t realised that it’s more fun to be an idiot.

We have a late start tomorrow, although I might start earlier. I’ll be asleep soon. Just popped a codeine on top of my chicken and bread. Antibiotics. Magic. Phew. Thank you medic.

Ten past seven in the paddock and as the sun drops low in the sky, the pit lane is BUSY. All the teams are working hard in their tents. Drilling, sawing, hammering. Soundtracks compete as I walk down past the flags. “Oh what a night” next to “Gold” next to drum and bass. Bits of chassis lie out in the rocks and sand, urgently stripped. Quick businesslike talk around the cars in many different languages. All the teams, working so incredibly hard. Security guards sitting around chatting in Italian. The creaking of the flagpoles in the wind. The ringing of my phone…

…

The ringing was Liv. She was ready to be collected. I had rebounded to site in the evening light knowing that she might get stuck there, and I was enjoying the atmosphere of the teams as they prepared for race day tomorrow. I hauled Liv back to the hotel, very aware that the sun was dying for the night. Parking was tricky, so then it was a very swift walk down the boardwalk to the beach. The boardwalk crosses a wide point of the lagoon, and it is long enough that the sealife below you as you walk seems fearless. Huge fish breach the surface, smaller fish jump. Weird things flubber. Weirder things just sit there. I crossed as the sun fell, clutching my towel and trunks.

Everybody was already out and playing frisbee as I got to the easy entrance patch of beach next to Aldo’s bar. I know it and know there are no rocks, so I was able to run into the sea. The last of the sun saw me thrashing about like a drowning giraffe, laughing uproariously. Then back onto the beach to pretend – for a moment as the last of the sun died down – that we were all on holiday. Fuck yes. What a delight. Liv and I shared a Quattro Stagione Pizza and found a moment of shared mischief as we both disarranged all the ingredients. I found myself thinking again how lucky I am to be attached to this rare ethical motor racing thing. It’s a true joy.

I carried someone from the legal team today. “You know I write a daily blog,” I told them. She is relaxed, and understands that I’m here because I’m trusted. It’s a huge thing, that trust. It’s the trust that makes you want to live up to it. There’s nothing quite like trust to spur loyalty.

Race day tomorrow. It’s really really interesting the way it works here in terms of the drivers and how they compete – where you can have a 21 year old Norwegian woman fighting for racing line against a 60 year old Spanish dynastic racing father – el matador. I’m looking forward to another strong race tomorrow. And this time I’m sure I won’t have to follow a helicopter.

We are supposed to wear white polo shirts on race days. The crew I plug into when I’m not driving around in my air conditioned car are called “Global Crew”. I’ve got a baseball cap and T-shirts and all the swag in all sorts of colours. But on race days, it’s white. There’s a lot of securing things that might blow away or fall over. Even closing windblown tent flaps is hugely helped if somebody throws themselves bodily against the dusty inflatable entry rib. Emma gave me two. Both looked like I had been rolling in gravy by noon.

This evening I managed to get to the launderette after my late pick-up. I hurled a load of clothes in, including my shorts and my two brown Polo shirts. It’s all hanging outside my room now and I’m hoping that the morning sun will burn enough moisture early enough that I won’t start the day with a damp bum. No matter if I do though, as I’m barely driving tomorrow unless something goes tits up, so I’ll likely be under the sun the sun the sun the pounding constant sun.

I picked up Joe the journalist and took him back to the airport. We like the same things. He’s the only person I could have a much needed cricket conversation with on the day I picked him up, and his wife is an actor. Joe has been on a press junket while I’ve been filling up sandbags. He’s had a lovely time, and so have I. I’d be curious to see his side of things, but at the same time I’m enjoying my side enough to not be looking over the fence. I wonder what he writes and where he writes it. On the airport run from the lagoon where he’d been filming, we happened to go past another lagoon where the local flamingos stand in huge numbers. It’s right by some salt mining, and they are all bleached white – unless they open their wings to fly. Then the furled section shows an underside of bright pink. They dip their prehistoric heads into the brine right next to the road, digging for whatever they dig for, besides a mountain of salt. “They must be bad eating, like seagulls,” I observe, happy to finally see a flock of them so close up. “Otherwise they’d all have gone for Christmas decades ago.”

Shuttling interesting people and buying random crap. That’s been the day. That’s been the shape of it. I’ve been trying to persuade them to design me a dedicated electric SUV with solar panels and a wind fan in the grill that can carry its own hydrogen battery for emergency night time desert recharge. I am happy to be a pioneer of such a thing. We seem to be frequently in hot countries. So far they just all think I’m joking. Or perhaps the next season will all be in Svalbard or somesuch…

Tomorrow I’ll have more stillness, and an early start warrants an early bed so I’ll get both.

That was a longer day than I anticipated… Big old race day. All the teams going it at hard. Fun and games in harsh conditions. The dust on the track has been treated with a by-product of the Australian paper industry – some kind of thing that binds evergreens together. Resin? I think it’s probably closer to the sticky stuff that sweats through the thick bark of redwood trees. It sticks together molecules of dust and makes them heavier so there’s less crap flying in the face of the drivers. There’s always gonna be plenty in this tank range, but it’s not much of a viewing experience if all the camera can take in is a cloud.

All the teams were on point this morning, raring to go. Everything to race for today, then a day off, then again.

These incredible machines are a thing to behold. One driver in the cockpit and those vast tires and then the suspension! All of the drivers will be exhausted now. Taking those bumps and corners at that speed… They are titans. And they have to do it all again, from scratch, the day after tomorrow. Anybody who has ever been go-karting knows how fit racing drivers must be just with sheer gravity and these tracks? They are unkind. They’re extreme.

Conditions were not friendly today. For the semis it was reasonably calm but incredibly hot. I had forgotten my flask and was trying to make do with cups of water but failing. At half ten, after 4 hours of heat, I started to headrush when I stood up, so I immediately went to Doctor John and got a sachet of electrolytes, drove back to the hotel and drank them in a cold shower. Then I put new clothes on, got my flask and picked up Jess. “It’s hot. It’s really hot,” I told her. Jess is a redhead. She too ended up in medical with an asthma attack from the heat and the dust.

I stayed on site from then, pouring water into my face and out of my skin. I tidied areas and filled sandbags and moved water and refilled things and attempted to help with or learn all the odd jobs needed on site. The day passed in a blur of racing and thinking and waiting and stinking. I can’t stream the final race as it goes out on terrestrial, but while the track is hot I’m positioned next to my car for emergency driving. Inevitably the call came. “Al Barclay to the back of medical.” One of the drivers had a wee bang. Likely nothing serious but you can’t just shrug it off and see like you and I do with injuries. Not when you’re competing at this level with another race coming up. He was airlifted, and two of us were sent to be Extreme-E representatives at the hospital far too far away. Just as well I had plotted my emergency route. I’m told a Fiat people carrier with large boot capacity and worn out tyres can happily sustain 160kph but much faster and it’s too much for the wind resistance so you start to feel lifty. I would never behave so rashly of course. But if I did I would have made remarkable time.

We got there in time to see the copter landing from the road. Unexpected hitch: while we’ve all been making a race in a tank range, Italy has gone into some sort of COVID related meltdown. Loads of people were standing outside the hospital looking worried. They all had people in there and not even partners and parents were allowed through the door. Just patients. We had to wait for nurses to come give info about the driver and all we wanted was info. This, oh constant reader, is a long way from The Crown Prince’s Personal Suite in Tabuk…

Eventually we got the info we wanted (everything totally fine), and we swept back through the hills with the last of the light – a journey that might have been a touch more pleasant if I hadn’t realised that the diesel light was on and the range was showing “—” with over 30km to travel through reception free hills in the gloaming. With a combination of good luck, coasting, racing lines, high gears and the fact these instruments lie in order to make sure you refill in time, we made it over the hills to the station. I got my passenger back in time for his tender. We weren’t forced to camp in the mountains. Then I went for that decompression meeting down at Aldo’s beach bar with the rest of the team. Good mens and good womens. I’m happy to be here with them. I’m happy to be here full stop, even if it’s harsh in the heat.

The vehicle is called an Odyssey 21. It’s an electric SUV and at capacity the battery can put out 470kw. That’s at least 630 horses all replaced by one battery. You’d struggle to yoke all those geegees to an Odyssey so it’s just as well they sorted that out really. If it was a chariot race, the poo would be a big obstacle… They’ve made these incredible batteries instead.

They are universal across all teams. Developed and designed by Williams Advanced Engineering. The parts are standardised by Spark Racing Technology. The tyres are hard to ignore. Huge incredible rolling wonders and my goodness they take a pounding. Continental have performance-optimised these tyres so one tyre can carry these remarkable machines through all terrains – from freezing tundra to soft red desert sand to our current conditions right here in the south of this hard island: compacted dust and scrub. The course even has a water feature. In keeping with the ethos here, these tyres are made with thought for their impact. Recycled materials. Natural materials. Care.

If you’re going to add a new fixture to the racing calendar, do it for a reason. Much as I love that these little wonders can shoot from 0 to 62mph in 4.5 seconds, I love more that the whole ethos behind this event is care for the world we are racing through. And gender equality in racing. One woman and one man race on each team. They swap halfway through. The changeover is part of the skill of it. And these thoughtfully made and environmentally balanced cars are trying to drive a change in how we even think about racing and events in general. I’ve never been a big one for Formula 1 – it always smells brashly of oil and money – but this race interests me. With this team we hear phrases like “race for the planet” all the time and it reminds us that we are under time pressure to make change. All of us here on site are actively encouraged to consider our actions and our impact on the world. Even small everyday things. We all bring our own bowls and cutlery and cups and flasks to site. If we don’t have them we can’t get food or drink. No paper, no plastic. We wash them up, and we are all careful about water usage doing so. It’s a little thing, but change has to start with little things. Maybe we will all go home and carry that habit back with us. Change… And all these workshops I’ve been running when I’m not acting or doing this – they all align. The universe is speaking to me in my life and the opportunities that come. Getting young adults to think actually how much power they consume when they leave the telly on overnight, or stand in the shower for an hour – it makes me think about it too. And then these wonderful races – it’s all the same world really. We are driving change through changing ourselves and changing each other.

Yes I’m having to use my car a great deal, but even so I’m aware of every mile, as how could I not be with so many income streams revolving around sustainability? Hell, I’m even selecting gears with fuel usage in mind, and it’s rare that I go in any direction empty of either passengers or items or both. Trips are multi-purpose as often as they can be. It would be so awesome to be able to do my role in a dedicated electric vehicle, and perhaps in years to come that will be possible – I could carry my own hydrogen battery for recharge in remote areas. There aren’t any roadside charging points in Sardinia.

So many thoughts and behaviours shifting through my odd alignment of lovely jobs. These are just my changes in thought from this connection I have forged somewhere at the bottom of the pecking order for a very special and right-headed event.

It streams on the internet live, tomorrow and then again on Saturday and Sunday. The bigger an audience it reaches the bigger a change it can make. All these incredible humans, sharpened to a point, making something they care about for others to watch, with an eye on the bigger picture. The legacy. They want to leave every place they visit in a better way than when they arrived.

Dad raced many things in his day, and this work connects me to his speedfreak memory, just as it connects me to many lovely international people, all working hard in stifling heat. This work makes me more thoughtful about my impact on everything. This work makes me adjust my behaviours. And it’s nothing if not varied.

I feel terrific pride to have been asked to be part of this passionate team. Somewhere the ghost of my father is simultaneously baffled and supportive, I hope. And maybe proud…

I woke up at 7.30. A late start after a late finish, and knowing what was to come.

I left my room at 8.10, with my last pair of socks on and yesterday’s pants inside out. 8.15 key into ignition, banana in hand. 8.30 I was at accreditation having squeezed a yogurt into my mouth. 8.35 on site and parked. I Found Todd’s pick-up truck. “Mate, the diesel light has been flashing for ages.”

I found George. 8.45 and somehow I was back at the accreditation aircraft hangar. I had the truck and George but not enough fuel to get to fuel station. Into the hangar and out with a canister of diesel. “Hold the funnel.” “Oh I didn’t know it was blue!” *grunt*

Glug glug glug. “That’ll do.” “How much did you put in?” “Enough.” George is like 22? He’s about six foot three and could throw me over a house.

Lorenza comes and hands over a Coutts business card. I already know the password.

Into the truck and out onto familiar roads to Tamoil. Filling the diesel properly and I’ve got George with me. “Can you go in and order me an espresso?” Fuel cap back on. Down the espresso. Nice to have a van mate. “That stuff will kill you.” Or is it? Pay. Off to Tecnomat. An hour passes. Arrival. Rushing in. Photographs.

None of them will do. Off across town. Another shop. Photographs of different air con units. A WhatsApp ping: “That one.” My phone rings. Can I pick up a broadcaster? Not really. I explain my timings. They agree.

I load up four units and negotiate a discount. They are bigger units than the ones we’ve been using. I take them to the counter and I’m about to pay. Ping. “3 of these will do plz” I haven’t paid so I take one off. Better for the environment and the power situation, I think. Must be cos they’re bigger units. The rest get paid for. George earns his crust hoiking them into the van. Back to site. George falls asleep. I put on the cricket. England win again while I’m listening. Ping. “Can you get some hand sanitiser and baby wipes for command centre?” I stop at the Chinese place. They have it all.

Unload. Another hour and a half. Lunch while finding out what I’m doing tomorrow. Move some fans around. Grab the diesel cans, chuck them in the car, spin up to Tamoil, refill, go to hotel, get laundry, go to launderette, start cycle, back to site. Unload cans. Go down, get 5 ped and two stands, bring them up to the hangar in a pick-up. Swap to the fiat and back to Cagliari post haste. Before I’m there the phone rings. Marek landed early and cleared security immediately. Fuck. I spin into the short stay and find him by tooting my horn. We go back carefully over the hills. I’d normally take him the smoother slower way but fuck it, the hills are pretty at this time of the evening. I just drive him slowly. I drop him off. *Ping* 16mm hole washers. 150 of them. Straight out to Carbonia. None of the hardware stores have them. Tecnomat closes in an hour and it’s 46 minutes away. I floor it, flying down the straight roads from Carbonia. Definitely the emergency route, this one, if needed.

Tecnomat have 17mm hole washers. They’ll have to do. The same person who confirmed the air con confirms this. Box of 300. I rush to the airport to find the flight I’m meeting is delayed. I stop for a moment. I shake out rocks that have been in my boots for hours without me having had time to shake them out. I breathe out. Vodafone guy clears security.

He and I go through the southern hills as I’m told I have to drop him off in Teulada. Then when I’m halfway there I’m told to take him to the hotel instead so drive straight through Teulada and another twenty minutes just so somebody else can take him back twenty minutes. I go to the launderette. Thankfully my wet clothes are still there. I go and hang them up ignoring the lads drinking. By now it’s about eleven at night.

I sit with some of the lads to end the day. “I think we might have accidentally bought some Italians at auction,” says one of them, about some sort of incomprehensible Italian bingo game that’s going on next to us. “What are you gonna do with them?” I say, offering to join the banter “I dunno, maybe get them to buy the right number of air con units,” says Joe. This sounds pointed.

Nice little Joe who I said I was surprised got punched the other night. I don’t really know what to do with this so I say nothing. Joe repeats it, literally soliciting for laughs from those around him. I didn’t socially integrate well in Saudi. He wants it to stay that way it seems. I’m too tired to play. Todd takes any sting out. “Yeah, apparently you were supposed to buy four and you bought three?” I literally can’t be bothered with his shit. I show Todd the WhatsApp telling me to get 3 of the more powerful units. I don’t even bother showing it to Joe. “This is just one hand not talking to the other,” I say to Todd. He’s a good heart. Kindness is important.

I didn’t take any photos, so here’s the text I can’t be bothered to show Joe.

We were all young once.

It’s just lads lads lads being lads lads lads. This is the first time I’ve felt squeezed out on this job, frankly. And I’m probably just tired.

Today was all about my passengers. I was a yo-yo. First up I had a scientist. I fished for my brother’s name but she didn’t bite. She’s a marine biologist. “Most of my body is seawater,” she tells me. I tell her of my amateur discoveries in the lagoon, and she reminds me hard of Max by responding familiarly to my description of the odd creature I describe with the Latin name, as if she was saying “uncle Charlie”.

I am utterly familiar with the taxonomy of the creatures we knew as children. I learnt the Latin through Max. It was inevitable. It was part of how the world worked. I understood very early how Linnaeus had given us such a clear way of delineating the differences between all the many many types of life. I thought everyone had such a grounding.

I remember being angry and outnumbered at school: “Everybody, quick! Come see! It’s a Tatagonia Viridissima! Look!” Everybody including teacher insisted I was talking nonsense and it was a Great Green Grasshopper and I was wrong. I remember thinking I could have just not let them see the wonder. It’s funny how indignant rage is one of the memories that carries throughthe years.

Lucy talks to me about evolution in seahorses. There’s a living salt lagoon where some Bahamian seahorses have been cut off from the flow. Their life cycle is long – maybe 7 years – so it’s going to be generational to see the evolutionary changes. But they’ll become apparent – just not at the speed that your average university lab technician weirdo breeds their fruit flies with big heads.

We talk about plastic in the sea. We all have understood that plastic in sea is bad. I ask her about it, as she’s evidently a marine biologist. I’m an amateur scientist so I ask a deliberately hard question: “Surely there must be large amounts of sunken stable plastic that has provided a habitat? How can marine plastic be removed with an eye to only taking out the ones that are shedding microplastics? She is, of course, brilliant and well versed and passionate. She agrees that the situation is misrepresented, and that the bulk of the work has to be before point of entry. She’s been changing the law at the UN. She’s been part of a team making a treaty.

It’s always about usage. Care. We have to take care.

Then I had Lorenza, who lives near here. “Mussolini made my town – Carbonia. It is named for the coal mines he made.” This low down utilitarian town used to be a mining town. The skeletons of his derricks still frame the sky. His mine is a museum.

Finally, Craig. We are talking about islands. Sardinia. Jersey. The Isle of Man. I bring up São Miguel. “There’s a rally over there, as well as the Isle of Man,” I inform my passenger. “Yes, I know. It’s a good rally. In fact I’ve won it. … … twice.”

Dad would be glad I’ve ended up with a touch in his happy world. I’m not racing, but I’m plugged in. I tried to get him to plug me in to his world when I was a teenager, but he couldn’t see past my perceived academic failings. I’ve found my own way to reconcile that shit. And I’m having a lovely time while I’m at it…

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

Sometimes I forget to make sense. It’s easy in this work. I am writing these blogs at the end of days that I’ve been working hard through in heat. Often by the time I get into bed, most basic functions have already gone into shutdown.

The dust is not so red here. Yellow Mediterranean sand, and we have flattened and built a tent city in the scrubland. Tomorrow the teams will mostly arrive and it will all start to buzz. Already today the military range where we are working is starting to fill up with people. The mornings are getting earlier and the evenings finish later.

I just got in after my last drop-off. I’m lying in the air conditioning in my little white room. I tried to join a conversation circle clutching a beer but was so tired that it seemed too much. I sat in silence and consumed my single non-filtrata before making my excuses. The beer was to help me sleep. Having just driven through the darkening hills, I was tired.

I’m looking forward to plugging in now and watching as the event we have all been building to begins to start in earnest. Sea grass and wildfires are the two local environmental issues that we are trying to highlight. We are calling attention to the loss of the poseidona habitat through warming seas – and much as it is a delight, the water really is warm to swim in. And wildfires have been a problem round here for a long time. We haven’t much grass or foliage near the site, but I’ve seen trucks by the side of the roads a few times attending to something that’s just starting. They are quick to respond here it seems, and prepared, but it is very dry so they need to be.

My eyes are tired from the sun and my right wrist is inexplicably hurting – I reckon I might have pulled something while carrying a heavy item. I’m hoping a sleep will put me back together. A reasonably early one, with just one beer and plenty of water. Not really a crazy Saturday night in Sardinia… But we’ve all got shit to do…

A hot long day and then this:

I’m sure that Todd had no intention of double parking his 4×4. But that’s what it looked like by the time I got home. I could go nowhere but directly in front of the entrance to the hotel. So I parked egregiously, and went to find him. It was the perfect storm for him. I had been using the vehicle all morning, driving to Carbonia to load it up with just enough air conditioning units. I recognised it, having sat in it for ages. I knew it was him. He probably didn’t park like a tit. People around him moved.

Regarding buying air con units, having run races in remote and hot places for quite some time without them the company had to be very careful about the kind of unit purchased when they finally made that call. There’s no point pioneering a new form of racing without taking some personal sacrifices in terms of comfort. But… one thing at a time. There are some tents that would literally become ovens. Others less so. It’ll all have to be offset, and it will, so it’s worth being strict and careful. Nobody is working this event on core team because they want an easy life. The whole thrust is to make the world a better place and have fun at the same time, and that’s why I’m in in in.

Everybody is boiling. But the boat is not huge. We have to remember that all the assets need to fit on the boat…

The St. Helena. It will be crossing the Atlantic and then going through the Panama Canal, heading north to South America. I saw it for the first time this evening, in the bay, beautifully branded.

I’m off to bed. Gonna sleep with the air con on and a blanket. Despite my love of heat, after shoveling all those sandbags, I’m pretty much through.

I got to move my car. This might not be very coherent. Basically I spent the morning driving and the afternoon shoveling and I’m tired. Night night.