Targa Newfoundland Day Two - Gander to Leading Tickles and back

Apologies for a short entry today - I have promised myself, my team and my car that I will get more sleep than I did last year.

And while I type fast, I type very inaccurately - 125 words a minute, but 124 of them are wrong.

So it takes me longer to ‘upload’ than it should.

***

I don’t know if some of the novelty of Targa is wearing off, but it seems we don’t see quite as many people standing on the side of the road cheering us on as we did in the early years.

But there are some, and we wave and honk at them. If we have time, we stop and hand them ‘hero cards’ – pictures of our car.

One group we had to admire for their ingenuity - they had a huge STOP sign, and were waving it at the cars as we drove by their house!

A couple of our colleagues ‘ran’ the stop sign. But well-trained as we are, we had to stop.

They appreciated it.

I’m thinking, though, that the drivers of cars crashing into each other at the now-uncontrolled intersection might not have appreciated it quite so much.

***

Another good day for the new MINI Challenge car, as I am slowly getting used to the power of the AP Racing brakes.

One of everybody’s favourite stages is up to Leading Tickles, an incredibly scenic community on the north coast of the island.

It is long and fast, but very bumpy - worse this year than last, everyone agreed.

We did drive past the spot where we crashed last year on the way up.

But it would be coming back out, taking that curve in the same direction as last year, at speed, which would be my chance for ‘closure’ of some sort.

Sadly, the outgoing stage was downgraded to a transit. ‘Communications problems’, they told us.

So we only drove slowly past ‘the spot’ (most of the trees have been cut down) but we didn’t have time to stop and examine the site.

I think I will stop talking about that crash now.

***

The stage through a subdivision of Gander is always terrific - 90-right, 90-right, 90-left, 90-right, on and on through the subdivision.

Most of the corners aren’t noted in the route book, so Brian goes to the map of the stage and writes down ALL the corners - it’s the only way to do well here.

And I think we did.

Still, just about everyone takes penalty points.

But we both had huge smiles on our faces when we pulled into the Gander Community Centre at the end of the day.

Comments

[Keith Tanner]

I saw a group with a STOP sign last year too - and a local policeman sitting across the street watching the show. I have a feeling that sign got put back shortly after the Targa cars went through, but for the time being it was okay...