Recent blats

Went for a drive on the 23rd at dawn to check out the Gradil road. My GPS took me down a mud road guarded by a german shepherd dog :-O Had to reverse and then found the Gradil road. Pretty fun, but the pavement is very up and down. Won't reapeat it, methinks.

I broke my license plate when getting back to the garage (there was a frigging truck parked out front). I went to a store which was already closed and I was able to beg a new license plate out of them. I installed it myself yesterday and went for a drive last night. I was planning to do the LA road a few times but towards the end I saw a bunch of mean looking people around a large bonfire and decided to call it a night. Incidentally, I came across a large gap on the road because of construction, just at the beginning of LA. The car bottomed out and then developped a huge rattle. I started to belive that I had broken the glass that looks into the engine bay, I kid you not. Fortunately, everything was well and the rattle disappeared.

On the way home, I stopped for gas and a bunch of kids totalled freaked out when they saw the Lotus. Fun!

Took a couple of pics yesterday in the parking lot of a friend's appartment building. Enjoy!

Blat this morning

Woke up at 5.30 as usual. I went to LA. The road is still hurt from the recent rains. Tons of mud on some sections. I went up and down onece and then took the coastal road to Azoia. Very nice drive. I really improved on looking towards where I am going (the Azoia road has great visibility, so that helps) and doing much less mistakes on braking too late. I am braking a bit early and a bit soft right now. Have to work on that. The alternative death roundabout ended up in zilch. I am going to check a new road and another candidate to a roundabout of death tomorrow morning.

On a side note, really fun dream. I dreamt that I woke up at 8 and missed my drive and then I really woke up and it was 5.30 am... thank God!

It was confusing for a bit :-P

The sun!!!

The sun is out!!!!

After a whole friggin' week of Lotuslessness, I can finally hit the streets at dawn tomorrow! Hurrayy!

BTW, last week I went for 8 laps of LA (the final half): It was great. I got progressively more comfortable with the car and made fewer mistakes. On saturday at dawn I went to check out the Roundabout of Death. Too much traffic, alas... I did find a suitable parkinglot for training oversteer, but there's a circus there now. Let's see if I can find something interesting tomorrow.

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Two blats in a row

Thursday night and today at dawn, I went for a couple of blats in Sintra. It turns out that my experimental blat path through Sintra sucks.

My original road has a really uneven ground on the second segment and then it gets worse. It is also a really narrow road, and in the last downhill sprint to Sintra it has high walls on both sides. Not fun if you loose traction. No fun at all.

The first blat was, in retrospect not too bad. Once I left the LA road, I got into a section with uneven ground but not too bad. Should be great in the spring. Now it's figgin covered with leaves and has some really heavy fog patches. There was a point where I got a surprise steep downwards incline covered with leaves and the car skated down through with with the ABS working double time! It was so dark and foggy that I got seriously spooked. Fortunately, I took a wrong turn and ended up in Azoia and had a very pleasant trip back to Cascais. So this now is my favorite circuit in Lisbon.

In the second blat, I drove through the right road except for a turn where I ended up litterally skidding with no brakes down a muddy path that forced me to reverse and do a u-turn. The car has mud all over. No fun at all. Another part that was not fun at all was having the car understeer on me (went into a corner too hot) and havign a car coming in the opposite direction. I was always in control, but didn't enjoy the experience :-P

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