Saturday, Day Two

Now, my aim for today was to try and keep and even head and not get stressed about anything. This worked to a certain extent. Ah! Do you have any idea how hard it is to write about your day when there has been so much going on!

The volunteers article came out in our local paper today, I thought it was quite good, until I realised that I might get a bit of stick for one of my comments. But I think it will be mostly alright! I will scan this in at a later date I think.

Caught up with quite a few people in the morning, inc. the parentals.

Not too many problems with the morning service quotes. I did much of the field, from the PWRC all the way through to the first half a dozen or so of the Possum Bourne Memorial Rally field. It was quite funny because I found out that the time control that I was standing at for the first field, was not the one that the Possums would be going through at the appropriate time, found myself with four minutes to get to the Possum service park and time control and came up to Glen Smith and Brad Ayling panting from sprinting.

Before this, as part of my plan to stay un-stressed, I stood inside the time control shed where Daniel Vincent's (from Hamilton Car Club) timing crew were stationed, and just watched the madness of the WRC media unfold. It was nice.

So with all my fourty-something quotes to transcribe, it took something like two and a half hours from the first car into media interviewing area time control to when it was all done and ready to pass on to be uploaded etc.

In the afternoon I met Jette, who is from Norway and looks after the Auxiliary Media side of things for Rally Norway, a similar job to what Kim Raggett does with being in charge of our media room here. I mentioned to her that I'd been told I should go to Rally Norway next year and now I have another reason to go! She's given me some contacts and told me to tell them that I spoke to her while she was in NZ. I told Ole about her later on and then we found her and they had a chat in Norwegian while I stood there oblivious.... They told me that they were talking about things that the organisers could do for Rally Norway next year, like making it more of a show like New Zealand - With our historical car display and all the other interesting things inside the pavilion.

Hmm, I caught up with a whole lot of people I know, sort-of in passing during the day. The evening saw me down for some of the PWRC again before service for quotes. I gave up because it got dark and they all had surplus touring time coming into that time control and so they were all there at once, mixing around and it became hard for me to reckognise who went with which car. I got the main kiwi drivers that are competing in the PWRC, but missed Richard Mason (currently first kiwi) now that I think about it.

I then transcribed my driver's quotes and straight after was handed the end of day press conference to transcribe as well. I forgot how draining it is to do so much transcription. Even writing this is a mission because my brain is so fried.

In the actual competition things, the top of the field were playing silly buggers again with team tactics. Loeb spent the day catching Mikko with steadily huge chunks taken out of his advantage. he'd got in front of him before deciding during the last stage to slow right down and get a good road position for tomorrow. Mikko found it difficult clearing the road, but was trying to limit the amount of time Loeb could take out of him. Latvala and Sordo were not far behind during the day and the last stage saw Latvala being told to go for it. The start order for tomorrow is now Latvala, Hirvonen, Loeb and then Sordo, with something like 15 seconds separating the top four. So it will be an all out fight for victory tomorrow, with repeated stages meaning no road sweeping duties on the second pass. We may very well see the kind of finish that we saw here last year with Marcus and Seb.

That's it for me. Sleeep... zzzzzz


EDIT: I don't know if I mentioned yesterday, but I did about 4,000 words transcription on Friday... And today I believe it would have been closer to 6,000. How's that for word count?! Makes 1000 word essays look like a walk in the park.