"Somedays you are the pigeon..."

My second week in the United Kingdom has been a roller coaster. Although very productive in the form of administrative efforts - banks, cell phone, and interenet access, these things are all boring and the bantering about them will stop at this moment!

After last week’s meeting with Sam Roach of the British Formula Ford Championship I was provided with an incredible list of contacts of teams and manufactures who are involved with the series. At the very top of that list to pay a visit to is Van Diemen a race car manufacture who has been involved with British Formula Ford for many years. Furthermore I have a personal history with the marquee as I have driven two cars which they manufactured in the Formula Continental class in the SCCA. Additionally when I tried out for O’Brien Racing I drove one of their incredibly fast Pro Formula Mazda cars. For the opportunity to meet the director of the company, as you must imagine, I was certainly very excited.

Friday morning I woke up bright and early to start the three and a half hour rail journey to Norwich, the home of Van Diemen. Norwich is located in the eastern part of the United Kingdom. Overall their headquarters is about 140 miles away from High Wycombe, additionally it is separated by four transfers when traveling by rail.

The first trial of this journey was swallowing the ticket price which faced me at the rail station. Up to this point I understood rail travel to be a cost effective mode of transportation. Clearly this is not the case when traveling to Norwich! £35 British pounds later ($70 bucks!) I was the proud owner of a one way pass (known as a single) to see this new and lovely part of the country.

After boarding a standing room only train to London, where I would then transfer two ‘tube’ lines, and board a train to Cambridge my cell phone received a call from the director of Van Diemen. Unfortunately, a major client from Indian was in town and had unexpectedly added a day to their visit and would force our meeting to be postponed. Sure enough I missed the call and by the time I received the message I was almost to Norwich.

Once I received the news the damage had already been done and I would be forced to purchase the return segment to my trip back to High Wycombe. Next week I will most likely be making the same trip, good thing, because I now know how to buy a cheaper ticket!

Once I arrived in Norwich, the station was in a town called Thetford. In order to make the best of my day I spent a few hours exploring the town to see what it would have to offer in case it turns out to be my future residence. Thetford is an remarkable, little village. By foot there are many things to explore such as an old priory build by monks in the 1100’s, a riverwalk which runs through the town and a number of other hidden treasures. From first impressions it is a quaint, but romantic little village and I imagine I would get on just fine there.

PHOTOS FROM AROUND THETFORD

St. Peter's Church built in 1300's rebuilt in 1789
A statue of Thomas Paine

A riverwalk through town with wildlife that is not shy to walk up and try to talk you out of some bread!

Although it was an unfortunate turn of events, I was happy to have some time to explore my potential future residence. The meeting will be rescheduled for next week, so hopefully I will have good news to report soon. Furthermore, on Monday I will be traveling to the Beford Autodrome to do an instructor tryout at their racing school. The school looks awesome with lots of great cars.

I hope you are all doing very well and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Cheers

Michael