Russ' Party

On Saturday 11th March, I set off to Cheltenham via Uxbridge where I picked up John. I had several cars to choose from; the 22B, Laura's Fiesta, Dad's Merc, Numerous brand new cars from work or the Elise. In all my wisdom I decided to renounce from any sort of comfort or luxury and take the Elise. Longest journey yet and the car ate up the miles! John commented on the obvious lack of padding on the seats, oh and the noise! As I described it as an incouragable roar, John just cringed.

We found Cheltenham and began with a brief tour of the town which John described repeatedly as "unbelievably posh". I did seem a really nice place to be, however the reason for John's enthusiasm soon became clear - he was using Shepherd's Bush as a 'yard stick' for comparison. Subsequently we struggled to think of places that John would disapprove of - Russ came up with Iraq and Baghdad!

^ John meeting the locals ^

Russ was kind enough to let me tuck the Elise round the back of his house, and thinking about it I was parked in the garden. Before we started drinking it was time to test out some Data Logging equipment on the Elise. After much pursuasion Russ agreed to accompany me on the test run. The device measured G force under breaking and acceleration, lateral G force while cornering, speed and the geographical movements of the car - all of which was downloadable on to a PC and extremely accurate as it was being tracked by 5 satellites and as such all the data collected was GPS verified. Long story short the Elise managed to pull 0.89G around a round about, just under 0.5 G under acceleration and just over 0.5 under braking - not bad on cold roads with old tyres (and without frightening Russ too much).

Finally, the party; we met loads of Russ' mates who all seemed friendly and even up for a bit of hand crouch experimentation. I made the mistake of demonstrating it to Russ' flat mate who by chance was a Yoga teacher - and showed me how it should be done:

http://media.putfile.com/Yoga-demo

See http://js0754.blogspot.com/2006/03/russells-house-party-cheltenham.html for our own hand crouches - I think we still kick ass!

^ G'day mate ^

The karaoke was very popular - with John. Russ made us all feel very welcome by dressing like a terrorist?? It was a damn good night and almost worth enduring the drive there and back. John barely said two words the whole way back - less than impressed with the Elise's level of luxury. He was so hungover he struggled to opperate the Stereo - and randomly jabbed at the head unit until it made noise. Thanks Russ. And thanks to Butch who cooked me lunch when I got back - I must have been great company (sorry).