It's Go Time

It's finally almost time to really go racing.

We went through the Prologue stages this afternoon, which are quick practice stages to help the teams get into the swing of things. The car was perfect, and we even seemed to know what we were doing for the most part.

The biggest problem we had was some of the AWD teams thought it was a good time to cut all the corners and strew gravel all over the road. By the time we came through the third prologue stage, there was one corner that was literally a sea of gravel, no road in sight. That's fine if you're doing a gravel rally, but this particular rally happens to be a tarmac rally, meaning that we're meant to be racing on pavement, not the leavings of our predecessors on the road.

Despite the recklessness of a few, the rest made it through without incident and no cars crashed that I know of.

In sadder news, some competitors have already hit mechanical problems. A 1991 BMW M5 in the Touring class broke it's radiator neck, and a cool little Opel GT had to be flat towed in. We also noticed that a class 7 Celica had pinched an oil return line to its turbo and was spewing oil all over the place. The Prologue is no place to crash, since it doesn't count for anything, but it's equally a shame to see people having mechanical issues before the event gets well and truly started. Hopefully they'll all be back on the road in the morning.

After we did all that, as well as the ceremonial start down at the Keg, we returned to the Keg for the opening dinner, which was delicious. The waitress was even kind enough to bring me extra bacon for my baked potato. If you don't know me very well, let it be known that I'm a guy who likes his bacon. Anyone who brings me extra bacon is automatically in my good graces. So, that went well.

Now we've finished going through some route books and it's off to bed as soon as we square away some details. Roy Hopkins and Adrienne Hughes, who you'll remember as last year's winners overall, have kindly offered to allow us the use of their single car trailer so that we can tow our spare car around the island without using the big two car trailer. This will make it much easier for our support crew to follow us along.

So, now it's time for me to say adieu until tomorrow. Hopefully it will be a good one for us.

Wish us luck!