Yesterday, Dickie, Shell, Fish, Ben, and I went go-karting in Stourbridge.
Rather bizarrely Ben turned up first; apparently army training in punctuality does work! I arrived second, mysteriously managing to not be asleep or otherwise in bed, even into the early evening (a feat I haven’t repeated today) and then everyone else turned up after.
We handed over our entry, watched the now-annoyingly-familiar safety video, donned our overalls, several-sizes-too-big gloves, and helmets, and waited for the people ahead of us to finish their race.
The basic layout of the event was thus: a 10-lap qualifying session, followed by a 45-lap race. In the qualifying, Dickie posted the fastest time, then Ben, me, Shell (who should have done better, with those go-faster points on her license) and Fish.
Alas, I can’t give you a blow-by-blow of the race that followed, but it was marked by Fish and Shell being really, really slow and getting lapped a lot; Fish completed only 40 laps, a whole 5 adrift of the race leaders. He also had an annoying tendency to spin his kart out right in front of you on a full-throttle corner. In the top 3, me, Dickie and Ben continually jostled for position, with some defensive driving (by me) and general violence and general bad sportsmanship (by Ben) marring Dickie’s attempts to overtake.
In the end, the result was:
- Me
- Dickie
- Ben
- Shell
- Fish
Which I can’t say I entirely deserved, as Dickie really is the faster driver, and I was lucky to capitalise on the few mistakes he made (which included me overtaking both him and Ben when they couldn’t agree on who was getting flagged).
Then there was curry and wine, then some more wine at a pub, and it was all good.