I was running out of things to do while in Montreal, but as it turned out the aviation museum, fairly outside the city, was open when I was going back to the airport, so I had a quick look. It's not very big, but it has a few exhibits and is worth an hour:
a fair amount of restoration happening in the museum
It had been 2 years since my last time with Porsche Ice Experience Driving Course at Circuit Mecaglisse since it got cancelled due to covid the previous year.
This year was a bit special because covid rules made the event unusual and much better:
only one driver per car, which at the higher levels meant more driving time, less time lost switching
one day was rained out, so we had a double long day on day #2 as day #3 was cancelled due to rain and high temps. That was definitely a fair amount of extra driving and learning :)
day #4, we didn't quite get to drive the tracks we were supposed to on the 4th day due to rain water damage from the previous day, but at the end of the day, we got to drive the longest track they had ever designed (7km) including going through the forest.
This event was definitely one of a kind, we're so thankful that Porsche made it happen despite covid related lower attendance.
Thankfully, the rules still allowed us to have dinner, which was not a given. They sure got us fed in the next 4 days :)
With the new covid rules, and given that we were all advanced level anyway, we skipped the classes and got directly to business, i.e. driving :)
welcome back!
Johnathan gave us a quick briefing, and off we went
Time to get to work, cars were waiting for us :)
green group #1 :)
glad to have our trusty Emily to gt us on track and help us with excess snow on the cars :)
I had to re-learn how to stup the cars: sport plus, and disable PSM and PDCC with 2 buttons (PSM sport allows some sliding, but it felt fairly aggressive, I definitely preferred when it was off):
Kees, our chief instructor, had one job, repeating: turn, induce drift with brakes and then gas:
I did so much better this year. Last times, I really felt this was over my head, but this year I really started getting it. I'm far from being an expert, but 3rd time was a charm. I still lost the car a few times, probably had the least amount of spins amongst people in my group, but still ended up needing one cayenne:
ooops, I came into the turn with too much speed and it wasn't salvageable, I drifted in full control into the snowbank and got beached :)
so thankful that I didn't damage any cars, I only scooped up some snow :)
thanks to Emilie for cleaning the snow I scooped up :)
When drifting, it's pretty easy to end up in the inside snowbank, it's actually counter intuitive, but if you add more gas to drift away from it. If you panic and brake, it's how you end up in that snow bank. Takes time to learn that, it's not intuitive. This wasn't me, but that's what it looks like:
thanks to the cayennes for getting us out
This year really so much fun, I was able to induce and control some pretty massive powerslides, while controlling them and doing them in places that were pretty tight. I wasn't perfect, I made mistakes, but being able to get it fairly right most of the time, was pretty joyous for sure.
This downhill drift was challenging because if you went too fast and drifted too far, you'd end up in the snow wall with nothing you could do to stop. I am happy to report that in the 4 day program, I didn't do that mistake once (as opposed to the previous year). Here is an example of pretty mega slide:
Generally, it was super rewarding to be able to go through a track like this one on day #2 and mostly do ok. Still, you have to stay on your toes and it takes very little until a small mistake sends you in a snowbank (12:05 in that video):
Now, I still had brain fades here in there, like this example where I almost took out poor Kees again:
And sure, I hit a couple snow banks, like this one I hit because I didn't put enough gas to drift away from it:
And our reward at the end was the super long 7km track they built for us. It wasn't super fast due to all the forest roads, but it was definitely interesting and challenging:
Beautiful pictures from our professional photographer, he got a few of me in action:
nice shot of a big drift
who needs snow plows when you can use drifting?
Again, thanks to all the instructors and to Porsche for letting us drive their cars and make mistakes, so that we could learn in ways hat would not be possible otherwise. This was fun, we should do this again :)
In the past, I've spent an extra day in Montreal to visit, but this year, many things were shutdown, and the nice restaurants that were open, had limited hours that didn't match mine. So, between the damn cold weather, and many things shut down, it was not my best time in Montreal :)
Oh and getting to canada kind of sucked, outside of the typical vaccinate + PCR test requirement, they had a separate and completely useless arrivecan app that asked you a 2nd time, in a completely different system, the same info you had already given the same government, to board the plane. Of course, the app and the website both failed for me, so I went through a bunch of extra crap to enter the country. Could have been worse though, the lucky that got selected for yet another covid test on entry, ended up in a 2H line before they could enter the country:
honestly all this feels utterly pointless by now
But eh, there was snow, so there is that:
cool thing I spotted from the plane, people built an ice racetrack on the frozen river
I braved the cold to go see the beautiful cathedral again, and it was closed, sigh
Bonsecour market opened late (11:00) and not much was open inside
there was a boat spa that was open
Nico met me for a nice lunch
and we went to play with his train :)
After I was done with the ice experience, we had a reasonable snow dump, made driving back a bit more fun :)
you can drag your kid in the streets
I met my friends again for lunch befoe heading back to the airport:
It had been a little while, no new snow, but a good excuse to go for one day
I arrived with 18% left and kirkwood sadly got rid of their 10 chargers, replacing them with only 4, now using chargepoint (some tesla chargers had up to 10A, or 8A, and those are only 6A), which now charge money, but that's fine.
Kirkwood was nice and sunny, but everything non groomed was kind of unpleasant, so groomers it was:
While going to kirkwood and leaving a bit late (noon-ish), it was a good excuse to go back to Indian Grinding Rock State Park for a short walk while waiting for the next tour at Black Chasm Cavern, always fun to visit:
quick stop in Jackson to recharge
Then it was time for the last tour of the day at Black Chasm Cavern. It's not huge, but it's fun to visit:
Just after PvD, we had a second night of fun. a very special 6H Cosmic Gate OTC at Midway. This was the first big midway show of this season, with a special extension to 6H announced the day of :)
got there bright and early ;)
got backstage woohoo
went to see my friends in the control center :)
By midnight, the opening set was over, and we lifted off for the main set:
dope visuals
and by 03:00 the beautiful nigth was over, well done Cosmic Gate!
This was my first time at 1015 since covid, and it was great to see how it had been renovated. The new bigger room took one separate stage away, but made sense. Newer updated decors were nice too:
Chri5Py opened the night:
Afik kept the stream working, thanks
Blurr and Taj took over for the next hour:
Glad to see friends and people having fun again, it was great to meet everyone:
And by midnight, it was PvD for a lovely 3 hour set:
