Monday, July 18, 2016

Restaurant review: Orleans

Orleans hits you with atmosphere the moment you come in through the door.  Jazz wails discretely from the speakers as you look in and then up at the size of the place.  It's two stories, and our maitre d' led us up the funky stairs to our upright table.  It's a nice place to sit and look around, lots of moody pictures on the walls and moody lighting hung throughout.

The menu is pretty straight forward, with a section for sharing and a section for more normal sized dishes.  I got the Chicken and Waffles, with curly fries, and coleslaw, and while I'm reliably informed the Caesar salad as very nice, if perhaps missing the cornbready-ness promised from the menu, I can confirm the fried Chicken and Waffles was absolutely amazing.  A terrific combination, one that makes you slap your forehead and wonder why you hadn't thought of that yourself.



The monmousseau brut etoile loire was bubbly and delicious, and very french. For desert we decided to try the pecan pie, with cinnamon ice cream, which, unsurprisingly, was also delicious.  All in all, a really nice joint.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Season 30: Specials. Round 3: Road Atlanta 34 laps (71 Can Am cars)

Rd 3 at Rd Atlanta.  Of the available cars I picked the Shadow, it's pretty fast despite being a little difficult to drive sometimes.  I don't have a huge amount of experience at this track, it's nice though.  It twists and turns around a hill, with a technical section and a twisty straight leading into a difficult braking area for the last corner.  Qualifying went fairly ok, it took me a few runs to get the car down to a proper laptime in Qual setup. I the final stages of qualifying Greg took pole position by a fraction of a second from me, so he lined up on the grid on the right hand side.

I got a pretty good start, and so did Greg, as we drove into the first turn, and up hill right hander, I made sure to stay wide.  unfortunately Greg lost control and spun his car across the track.  For a moment I thought he would spin across in front of me and onto the grass but he seems to stop just in front of my car.  I tried to slow and move to the right, but it was no use and I gently collided with him.  Unfortunately some network lag made the hit worse than it was and I ended up upside down.  By the time I got going again I was dead last, and since I'd used my one reset I had to come into the pits at the end of the lap to serve a stop go penalty.  That really put me last.

It took a while, but I eventually calmed down and started to put in some solid lap times, I passed a couple of cars that had spun, and started to think I could salvage something from the race.  But then as I got past Jani I came down the start finish straight, and just as I started to brake for turn one the engine blew up.  That was that, no more resets were allowed so my race was over.  Tragically just one lap before half distance so I scored no points at all.  Greg chased Carlos in the mighty M8F all the way home to the finish without quite catching him.

I guess my main mistake was not checking the rev counter during practice to see if I was overrevving the car under braking (my wheel obscures the small dial in the shadow).  That was a foolish thing to do, and I paid the price.  I guess I could have anticipated better Greg spinning in turn 1 as well, I knew that corner is tricky on the inside line.  Now we have to wait a month before we go to Le Mans.  I like Le Mans a lot. I've driven there many times, and won a lot at that track.  So we'll see what happens, because if the season doesn't turn around soon it's going to get very depressing for me.  At least you can have two mulligans in a season, so that's one I guess.


Mixed Mod - Drivers Championship (scoring)
Scoring Scheme
Must complete 50% of largest number of laps (rounded up) complete to score
Best 8 scores count
Points: 50, 43, 37, 32, 28, 25, 23, 21, 19, 17, 15, 13, 11, 9, 7, 5, 3, 2, 1
Rank Drivers PP Total Vehicle Targa Florio
June 10, 2016, 10:41:32 PM +0100
Italy Indianapolis (Oval)
June 24, 2016, 10:35:33 PM +0100
United States Road Atlanta (1970-98)
July 08, 2016, 10:52:38 PM +0100
United States Le Mans (Sarthe (1932-67))
August 26, 2016, 12:34:55 AM +0100 (to be confirmed)
France Isle of Man (Mountain Course)
September 09, 2016, 12:35:01 AM +0100 (to be confirmed)
United Kingdom Spa (1947-78)
September 23, 2016, 12:35:09 AM +0100 (to be confirmed)
Belgium Brno (1965-74)
October 07, 2016, 12:35:20 AM +0100 (to be confirmed)
Czech Republic Zeltweg (Österreichring)
October 21, 2016, 12:35:27 AM +0100 (to be confirmed)
Austria Watkins Glen (Boot)
November 04, 2016, 12:35:34 AM +0000 (to be confirmed)
United States Nuerburgring (Nordschleife)
November 18, 2016, 12:35:49 AM +0000 (to be confirmed)
Germany
1 GregT (FT) 143.0 *Mixture* 50.0 50.0 43.0
2 Cookie (FT) 97.0 *Mixture* 37.0 28.0 32.0
3 Mark Jones (FT) 86.0 *Mixture* 43.0 43.0
4 Carlos Cendejas (FT) 75.0 *Mixture* 25.0 50.0
5 Doni Yourth (FT) 65.0 *Mixture* 28.0 37.0
6 Jani Posta (FT) 48.0 *Mixture* 23.0 25.0
7 Tom van Ostade (R1) 37.0 Lola T222 37.0
8 AnGex (R1) 32.0 Matra MS80 (DF… 32.0
= 8 Walter Conn (R1) 32.0 Porsche 910 32.0
10 DLogan (FT) 28.0 Shadow MKll 28.0
bagrupp (R1)

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Testing at Road Atlanta

Picked the mighty Shadow Can Am car.  Was a handful to start with, very unstable under braking but added a big front roll bar change and diff changes really transformed the car and made it much more stable and driveable.  It's a pretty great race track, not really fast but with a nice flow to it.  The Shadow really feels aggressively quick round here, but you've got to be constantly careful with throttle and brake to not upset the balance.  It's still an animal, but it's an animal I can work with.

Monday, July 4, 2016

Restaurant - Lone Star

Keeping with an American tone we checked out the central Lone Star restaurant.  You can't specifically book a table but they took our name and expected time of dining.  So when we showed up a few minutes early they were very polite and suggested we hang out in the packed bar for fifteen minutes before we got a table.  Place was very busy, but very nice with lots of wood everywhere and things on the walls.  Our waiter was Max, and a fine job he did - suggesting a brilliant peanutty dip with nacho chips to start.  I had the chicken with a creamy white wine sauce with garlic, herbs and delicious buffalo chips - essentially mini roasted potatoes.



I was reliably informed the Salmon on mashed potato was delicious as well.  Max suggested desert but it was impossible, literally no more could be fit in.  Really nice place.