Touring the Glen

Yay, another road trip! This time we went to Watkins Glen in New York for a so called Driver's Ed event. This is what the Porsche Club here calls track days although, to be honest, there is definitely a lot of education going on. While the track days were on Monday and Tuesday we went up on Saturday to have a look around the area and enjoy the wine festival that was being held at the track on Saturday and Sunday. Because of this festival most hotels were already booked for Saturday and we had to settle for an Econolodge. If you think that sounds cheap you're right. However, they had overbooked 14 of their 22 rooms and redirected us to the Relax Inn around the corner. The name might sound a little better, the rooms definitely weren't. I woke up several times to look outside if the car was still there. Another immersion into American culture for me I guess.

The good news is that the days after that we stayed at a winery inn which was overlooking lake Seneca. Very nice indeed. The day you arrive you get a bottle of wine, a glass of champagne and a glass of port. Not really necessary after the wine festival but nice gestures nonetheless. The wine festival was a bit of a disappointment. In the Finger Lakes region in New York there are a lot of wineries, but we really did not find anything that we considered worth buying. It was relatively easy to leave the festival sober, which was a good thing considering they had police officers posted at the exit with breathalyzers. Amazingly enough I appeared sober enough (a miracle after sleeping at the Relax Inn) to be let through without a test.

Next day, track time! Compared to what we're used to at Zandvoort and Spa this was organized in a very relaxed way. Most people knew each other and everyone was friendly. There were lots of instructors and classes for the people who were interested. The other facilities were a bit minimal, but considering there were less then 100 people I guess it did not make sense for lots of catering stands and shops to show up. So we did what we usually do:


We were promised the use of garages, but the people from the wine festival did not put any effort into clearing out their stands. At the end of two days they were still not done. Apart from the rain at the end of the first day everything worked out fine. Maria went about with the new camera shooting over 800 pictures and I went about trying to keep the Porsche in one piece. It's a pretty cool track but you do need to know how to drive it. There are guardrails close to track almost everywhere which doesn't leave much room for errors. Oh, almost forgot, the Porsche rocks! :-)

The ancient art of losing

And there I was thinking that America only celebrates winners. Last weekend the Phillies (the Philadelphia baseball team) lost their 10,000th game. No, it's not a typo, ten thousand! Amazing as this is to Americans it's even harder to comprehend for non Americans. Major League Baseball teams in the US play over 160 games a year. That means they play pretty much every other day. Still, if you played 160 games a year and lost them all you would be playing for 62 years. Fortunately for the Phillies they've been around since 1883 (Phillies) so they actually had enough time win a couple of games every year too. Mind you, the average is not great. So far they've won only 8,810 games versus that magical 10,000.

And here comes the weird part. The fans have been loving it. Everybody wanted to be there at the historic game so the last couple of games have been completely sold out. We went last Friday for the first of 3 home games against the St Louis cardinals. They won that one 13-4 and managed to win on Saturday as well. Sunday, however, was the historic day that everyone had been waiting for. Here's some of the signs that fans were holding up.


Finally a little update about the feline situation. Friday has take several deep breaths and calmed down a little since Denny came in. They haven't really had a chance to introduce them selves since Denny is now in quarantine. After sneezing for 3 days we decided a trip to the vet was in order to make sure it was nothing but a cold. It turns out it's an infection and we have to keep the two apart for a little bit. Not a big problem as far as Friday is concerned but Denny definitely wants to go exploring by now.

A new family member

I know it's been a while since I posted and there have been many things that would have made good posts. Maybe I'll get to those later, but for now I feel obliged to introduce the newest member of our family, Denny. As a co-worker called her posting of pictures of a cute little puppy puppy-porn I guess what follows now should be called kitty-porn.


Being a kitten Denny can't help being cute and adorable. Friday, our other cat, is not fooled however. This is an intruder and she's been betrayed. Never mind that she's bigger and older, since we brought Denny home she's gone underground. Our latest reports have her behind the couch but below is a spyshot from last night. Her protest also includes a hunger strike and lots of hissing and growling. I'm hoping that she'll pick up a guitar tomorrow and start singing protest songs. Just in case she wants to do a picket line I'll leave out a marker, a board and a stick tonight too. Let's see how creative she gets.