The Wall

It may seem strange to all of you out there who have struggled to repair cars in garages that are hopelessly small and wished for more space but I am building a wall, to make my workshop/garage smaller.

There is method in my madness. Where I live, the temperature does not rise above freezing for more than a few days from early December to late March. I have had ice stuck to my garage floor for weeks, not ideal working conditions. However, with the dark evenings, I see winter as an ideal time to be out in the garage. During the summer there is grass to cut, vegetables to plant, bar-b-q's to build and use and so on. When there is a meter of snow on everything and it's dark, it's either mope around inside or get out in the garage.

As you can see from my pictures, the bottom level of my barn, which makes up my garages is internally completely open and hence, impossible to heat. By separating off the left hand side (where the Landrover is in the pictures) with an insulated wall, I should be able to have a garage which sits at outside temperature and a Garage/Workshop which is insulated and possible to heat. The other big advantage is that I will be able to use my welder and angle grinder without worrying about damaging the car parked in the other half of the garage.

Progress was good on Sunday morning/ afternoon. We fetched the required wood for the framework down from the top barn using the tractor and trailer. We cut the main pieces to length, making the required joints and test fitted the frames before lunch, things were progressing swimmingly. Unfortunately, after lunch it proved a lot more difficult to reverse the tractor and trailer through the deep snow than it was to drive out of the top of the barn forward. So, instead of finishing off the framework the afternoon was spent getting the trailer wedged at all sorts of funny angles, digging the front of the tractor out of the deep snow etc, etc, etc. I intend to get my warm gear on again this evening and continue the good work, without using the tractor this time....

Updates of progress should follow in a timely fashion.

Operation Autograph, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.....

Thursday afternoon, a couple of weeks back, Ryan air delivered the Nikster and Sideways to Torp Airport, near our place in Southern Norway as planned.

Thursday evening progressed with a bit of off roading in the snow, a nice home produced roast, a bottle of wine (or two), some aquavit (Norwegian spirit), and a few tax free beers. Very pleasant it was indeed.

All this combined with the fact that I hadn't actually packed meant that our "Early Start" on Friday morning was not all that early. The journey into and half way across Sweden seemed to take forever. The plan had been to get there in time for the last forest stage. When it became apparent that we were not going to make it we decided on the sprint. When we didn't make that either our only option was the Final service of the day after the sprint. You have to remortgage your house to fund a weekend at rally GB and a trip into service costs at least £20 a head. In Sweden, incomparisonm, a weekend pass is 350 SEK (Approx £30) and this includes access to everything except parking, which is pretty cheap all the same. So, in Sweden at least, I can highly recommend a trip to service as part of the rally weekend.

In service, you can get quite close to the top teams working on their cars and see the drivers out of the cars and helmets. You will be very lucky indeed, however, to blag autographs from the top drivers here. On the other hand, the lesser teams, such as Suzuki (Guy Wilks) and Stig Blomquist, are shoved down the far end where hardly anybody bothers to visit and here it is possible to get much closer to the teams, drivers and cars. We took this opportunity to get my photos of the drivers signinautographshs signed. Sadly Petter Solberg proved to belusiveve and on we didn't come close all weekend......

More on our weekend, with some great photos in the snow, to follow.....

Autographs (The Lads are going to Sweden)...

The packing list has been updated since last years trip to the Sweedish Rally, plane tickets have been purchased and Nikster and Sideways are all ready to make the trip over here to Scandanavia.

Some of the additions to last years packing list are a large indelible black pen and these 3 photos of drivers signing Autographs, printed out in a suitable large and framable format.

The photos of myself and Stig and Myself and Guy are from last years Sweedish Rally. The photo of Guy Wilks was taken just before I asked for his Co-drivers (Phil Pugh) autograph, to which the reply came "What, do you want his too, but he can't write!!!!". The photo of Myself and Petter is from the 2002 British Rally (the first WRC round that he won). I remember it well, it was the Saturday evening, before the final run of the Cardiff super special. I had a little chat with Phil Mills whilst the car was being washed. I said "Tell Petter to keep it on the road tommorrow and you've won this rally". Phil Mills replied "Don't worry I've been telling him that all day!". It's great that these guys show that they are just human and if you are lucky enough to get them in the right situation they make time for you and have a good sense of humour.

Anyway, the plan, if you havn't guessed already, is to get the Photos of myself recieving autographs signed by the respective drivers and co-drivers. To have a signed photo of a driver (especially if we suceed with Petter Solberg) signing an autograph for you must be pretty unique... Of course we also plan to get a photo of this event so then we'll have a photo of a driver siging his autograph on a photo of the driver signing his autograph, which you can be assured, if we suceed, will be published on this blog........

No doubt, if we find time there will be many photos and storys to publish from this weekends events. It's been a full year since the lads last gathered for a full blown Motor Sport weekend, so we're sure to make it a good one.....

Added After Posting
Opps, Forgot to give credit to Nikster of Petrol Art for the fine photos. See many great motoring shots including our visit to Sweden 2005 (under events) here.