Bumps along the road

This road less travelled business is hard. The bumps are massive and they hurt, not physically, but definitely my pride is feeling rather sore at the moment. Went out to Palisadoes today to practice handbraking in a sidewalk-free environment. It started to rain, but undaunted I headed out there to meet two of my friends. We switched my rear tyres over to a set of dirt tyres (which I still need to swap actually), so that I wouldn't chew up my wheels. Turns out it's not the rear I needed to be worried about, as now my steering is as stiff as hell even though the power steering fluid is at the maximum. Definite trip to the front-end people down the road from work tomorrow morning, I guess I'll ask them to swap the tyres there.

My pride now was wounded by seeing a rookie sail the back of her Toyota Starlet around the tyres without a care in the world. FWD is definitely easier. I didn't doubt it, but it definitely irks the soul when you know you're out there pulling your handbrake almost into your chest and your car is not rotating around the tyre in such a fashion. Lots of explanations given by my friends: a Starlet has a shorter wheelbase so the back will come around easie - true; it's FWD, less to worry and about easier to handbrake - true; my handbrake obviously needs adjusting because it should lock by at 2 clicks not chest high - definitely true; I wasn't attacking the back of the tyres - true... but good Christ Almighty I don't care about any of that, I JUST WANT TO HANDBRAKE MY DAMN CAR! Yes, that's the spoilt brat inside of me but seriously, have you ever set your mind to something, but it only comes in spurts? Don't think that today was a total bust, because it wasn't. Thank God for my drift knob (pictured) because then I could just pull the handbrake without worrying about depressing the button. So I had the car full sideways coming out of a sweet handbrake at one point and I did three 360s around one tyre... I just couldn't do all that consistently though.

But I will. One day I will.

• Mood: quite frankly, really don't want to be at work
• Music: Eric Prydz - Call On Me