Saturday - Registration

Well we flew into a rainy, dark St. John's last night at about 9:30pm local time.  The first welcome was our taxi driver and it to only took 2 or 3 tries before we could understand what he was saying.  Ahh, Newfoundland!  Made our way to the Holiday Inn where our beloved E30 M3 was waiting in the parking lot.  Unfortunately, there was a half inch of water in both foot wells...  hmmm. Saturday we drove the car to the Remax centre for registration.  It was nice to see old acquaintances from our last Targa outing in 2008.

 After registering we set to work on the car. We still had to install our O2 sensors and MAF as well as reinstall and adjust my seat as it was too high.  The "fun" part was applying all our decals.  I say "fun" because anyone who has ever put large decals on something knows how frustrating it is to try and get it on smoothly.  We met our crew chief and slowly started to organize for the week.  We are sharing crew with 7 other teams including Roy Hopkins/Adrienne Hughes, the three time Targa winner.  Special thanks to Roy as I have been emailing him regularly over the last month to pick his brain about building our car.  Finally after hours of finishing many last minute adjustments and details, we set out to calibrate our rally computer and see if our in car ChaseCam recording system actually works.  Thankfully,  both were good.  Desmond completed his first aid course and Telmo did an amazing job as always, taking care of all our mechanical gremlins.  Jim Kenzie stopped by to say hi.  Desmond and Jim are old family friends and go back many years.
After a long day, we had a quick dinner and visit to George Street.  It was still early (10:30pm) so the real partying hadn't yet begun.  Back to the motel so that Des could peruse the course books and write his pacenotes.  Of course, I had to write this blog.
        Tomorrow is the Prologue, a non-scored leg and also the ceremonial send off at the Keg Restaurant at the harbour front.  We also have an opportunity to take fans for rides in our car to raise money for charity.  The weather is calling for rain.  Hopefully it won't put too much of a dent on the festivities.  Gotta get some rest, it's been a tiring day.