Dex30 #4

The Jamaica Millenium Motoring Club (JMMC) Dexterity #4 was today out at Vernam Field in Clarendon. Honestly, last night when I got in at 3am I did not want to run at all... don't get me wrong, I wanted to go. I definitely wanted Basil to leave me drive Thunder (his killer Nissan s12 240sx!) down to Vernam and even back to Kingston, but the Lord knows I didn't want to actually take part in the dex30.

Why? Well my first JMMC dex30 was when I got the news about J's stepfather and proceeded to do one run and have the slowest time of the day. I was mortified. I mean I'm a Leo, we never place last! *strangled sob* So when Max started spitting power steering fluid all over the engine bay at the Palisadoes practice and then when the driver's seat broke later that night I said, "Yes Lord! I can kick back, leave J be Basil's second driver in Thunder and just chill!"

Right. Neither J nor Basil were having that and this morning found us in Liguanea at a garagde getting the drivers seat welded back together. Power steering fluid was bought and J said he's drive Max because he was strong enough to handle the lapses were the power steering chipped out. So I was going to be Basil's second driver. Now I love driving Thunder, that car is amazing, so don't get me wrong.... it's the thought of all the people, the track, the tyres and the cones that were making my stomach clench. To top it off we get there once the dex30 had already started so there was no chance of walking the course. It was similar to the previous one but so I figured I could get it but J had never done a dex30 here much less even been to Vernam Field, which is why he DNFed his first run... it's hard to see what the whole long course looks at from the officials tent.

So I proceed to embarass myself in fantastic fashion :-S I pull up to the line (it's a box with 4 cones at the corners and then the starter places a stick with a green flag attached to position you at the top of the box). All I remember is the flag being moved and hearing someone yell, "LAUNCH!" and the next thing I was barelling around the first tyre... however, like my MSN nickname says, apparenty you need a countdown and not just the flag out of the way and somebody yelling "launch!" :D

They called me back and Larry, whose on the JMMC board, explained to me that I'm only supposed to listen to the starter, not people in the crowd--turns out it was Basil shouting--and then asks the starter to come to my side of the car (LHD versus the RHD we normally have in Jamaica) and that I'm not to start unless the starter says so. Once again I'm glad that I'm brown-skinned because if I was white you would've been able to see me blushing from a mile away!

I managed to get the starting bit right and it went really well. I was by no means anywhere near the championship 10 but I improved my time on every run, didn't DNF and I didn't hit any cones... got some applause from the crowd when I managed to successfully handbrake the car around a turn and yeah, I got to drive Thunder back to Kingston :-D

I'm DEFINITELY running in the next one!