A waste of bits and bandwidth

A caesar at the Billy Miner Neighbourhood Pub in Maple Ridge.

Mihwa and I found ourselves in Maple Ridge on Sunday. We stumbled across the Billy Miner pub as we were driving around soaking up suburbia. It looked like a quaint little place and being hungry, we decided to go in and grab a bite to eat. The yocals stopped and looked at us like we had ‘city folk’ written across our foreheads.

They actually stopped drinking, turned and looked at us. Deciding that we were harmless, they returned to their Buds. The food was actually pretty good but we had to change tables to get away from the party.

I won’t get into some of the conversations we overhead but it was like being in 1977… Overall, it was a cool way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Be forewarned; this crap post has been sitting in the Drafts folder since before the season started. In the meantime, USF1 imploded comically, Campos Meta 1, was saved and renamed HRT and Stephan GP were told to apply for 2011 like everyone else. After all the hype, the Bahrain GP was painful to watch.

For 2010, the FIA selected four new teams to to be included from an application list of over a dozen. Ok, good idea; three works teams have bailed, so let’s get some privateers in here. The last time new teams were solicited, more than a few fly by night operations turned up and subsequently dropped out of, Formula One.

So it’s been with great anticipation that I’ve watched the new teams make their way into F1. Lotus, USF1, Campos Meta 1 and Virgin (nee Manor). Lotus and Virgin have both launched their car and taken part in pre-season testing while Campos Meta and USF1 have both failed to get a car together.

I can’t really understand how the FIA has allowed this to happen. Was there no due diligence done on these teams? It’s not like there weren’t other options; existing and successful race teams wanting to make the jump to F1. If David Richard’s bid was accepted, Prodrive/Aston Martin would have gotten a proper car together.

So, two weeks until Bahrain and USF1 definitely won’t be there, Campos Meta 1 might be there and Stephan GP have shipped their gear but have no entry and therefore, no tires. The Serbians are a bold lot having leased the 2010 Toyota and seemingly signed Kazuki Nakajima and our very own Jacques Villeneuve. Campos Meta 1 will be using the Bahrain grand prix weekend to do their first testing and the remaining folks at USF1 will be doing whatever people do in Charlotte. Watching NASCAR no doubt…

It’s interesting how the smallest of things can lead you quickly down a path which leaves you wondering how this new found realization can possible be true. Like waking up late and trying to comprehend what the clock is telling you. For a short while, it just doesn’t add up.

What started out as a search to find out when I bought my iPod leads me to all these pictures. Pictures that, as I looked at them, would have wagered were taken in the past 6 to 8 months. They were actually from early 2008.

Maybe I just blocked out 2008. 2008 brought some ugliness which caught me off guard. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late to react. When the sources of the disappointment were considered, it only served to twist the knife. Water under the bridge now but things aren’t the same anymore.

2010 seems to be off to a decent start. Not great mind you but decent. Having wheels is great and we’ve been putting some miles on the car. In the early days, remembering that we actually had a car was the challenge.

We were out with some friends yesterday and they asked what we had done the previous evening. “Oh, we went to Burquitlam for dinner” without any thought that it might be considered odd to drive from the West End to Burquitlam when the West End is teaming with great places to eat.

Be that as it may, we are on the road quite often and discovering tons of new places that ‘we love’, would be ‘good places to think about buying in’ and ‘will be awesome this summer!’.

I read once that life is like a roll of toilet paper; the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes. At the time I thought it was an odd analogy. Now I’m thinking it’s actually more true than I could have imagined the first time that I read it.

And what started out as a rare blog post about how time flies, using the purchase of an iPod as a milestone, turned into a ramble about how some unpleasant things have happened in the past.

I’m sure there is a Haitian somewhere with a different definition…