Sunday, October 31, 2021

Today's post is brought to you by the letter U

U is for update. (Thanks Rich) Though I think it would be more appropriate to be by the letter F for Formula1 or R for racing. There are a couple of updates on stuff around the property. While I'm still working pretty much full time Susan has completed more stuff around the house. Here is a look at the walkway she put in from the driveway to the front porch. It looks great.
Last post I showed you the new chicken tractor we built. The previous one was not in any condition to be moved without a forklift so we left it where it was for a while. Our chickens get almost daily compost from our kitchen. Obviously amongst those scraps were some tomatoes. The volunteers include cherry, roma and dark star.
Last weekend Susan and I volunteered at the Formula1 race in Austin. We started volunteering there in 2017. We've been in "Hospitality" which consists of getting all the track marshalls to their posts in the morning and back in the evening as well as delivering drinks and lunch to them throughout the day. In 2019, due to acceptance of anyone that could fog a mirror, I was able to be a flag marshall for MotoGP. Try as I might I wasn't able to flag for Formula1. Even with my experience at MotoGP they wouldn't take me. Until this year. With COVID travel restrictions and who knows what other reasons,there were a lot of no shows. Thursday morning I was checking in the head flag marshall and mentioned I was hoping to flag. Thirty minutes later I was signed up and accepted. Once again, the ability to fog a mirror played to my advantage. It was a bit of a dream come true. It was a great experience, one I hope to repeat, and I met a bunch of neat people. Being assigned to post 1A gave me a great seat, though there is no sitting during the race, and a fair bit of action. Here are some pictures from last weekend. Susan and a co-volunteer Sharon
Turn 1A Crew including one from Azerbaijan and one from Brazil.
Fuad with his Azerbaijan flag. Tradition is for all to have a flag from their country, next year I'll know.
Here comes the fly by at the end of the National Anthem. As you can see, turn one is quite a bit higher than the front straight.
Sorry there aren't any pictures of the actual race, it was a bit busy out there. Attendance for the entire weekend was 400,000, an all time record in the history of F1. The Netflix series "Drive to Survive" undoubtedly played a factor in the attendance. Last but not least, tonight's dinner out of our pond.
Notice Susan's shirt. Go Braves! (I was threatened if I didn't say that) Brian