Day One Update!

Hey Gang,
We're still here! It's Monday night in sunny Gander Newfoundland, (or it was sunny a while ago). We had a solid 12 hours in the car today, starting at 7:40am and ending at 7:30ish when we pulled into the Gander Arena.

The day went well for us. The M3 ran flawlessly and we didn't have any problems. The official scoring isn't out yet, and due to a few discrepancies in the official timing we're not absolutely sure of our placing, but by our calculations we managed to clean the day's stages. Nick and Greg are off to the arena at this very moment to check on the morning's starting order and to see how the placings look.

Unfortunately, some of our competitors didn't have such good days. The third place overall car from last year went off in a big way on the second stage of the morning. The little original Mini driven by Dyrk Bolger and Terry Milnes apparently went end over end into the ditch, and one of the pair was injured, but we're still waiting for some more official news. We hope they're well.

Also, the rented CRX of Mark Kile and Kevin Paradise shot off into the trees in the penultimate stage of the day, but they are okay by all accounts. The car didn't seem to fare too well though. Trees are in actuality much stronger than cars, whatever your perception may be.

One of our class competitors, a 1990 Toyota Celica AWD Turbo car has been having big mechanical problems since yesterday, but they seem to have it sorted out, so we're looking forward to a battle with Lance and Giulio if their car will hold together.

So, at this point we're feeling pretty good and the car is working well. We're hoping for more sunny weather and a healthy car again tomorrow.

Nick is pretty happy because he's been running into actual Greeks left and right, much to his delight. They even speak Greek, so he's getting to exercise his home language. We've even met Murray Smith, a Scottish driver who seems to have raced a great many things, but in this event he's navigating a cool 63 Corvette in between stints of speaking Greek to Nick. Pretty good stuff.
I guess the Greek flag on the side of the car is drawing the right amount of attention after all.

We wrapped it up tonight and went for a pizza. We did the same thing last year the first night in Gander, and I have to say that this isn't the place for a walk in pizza. Last year we got hoodwinked into ordering a Donair, which is a regional pizza-like concoction dominated by sliced beef, mayonnaise, and onions. Other Canadians call it "an Eastern thing." Feel free to look it up for yourself.

Other than that, it's pretty much bedtime. We're off in the land of no cell coverage, although wireless internet seems to be far more ubiquitous than last year, so that's pretty good. Last year in Gander I had to type up the blog, copy it to my thumb drive, and carry it to the hotel lobby computer to upload it. This year is much better, but I still have to go find a payphone to call home.

Nick just got back from the arena, and the starting order isn't posted yet, which is a bit unusual, but our scores are up and we should indeed be clean for the day, which means we'll be tied with 9 other cars for first I believe. Hopefully we can hang on a bit longer!

Thanks for reading! Stay away from hurricanes and stay in school! Remember, don't speed!