Marc's Public Blog

a fair amount of restoration happening in the museum

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 :)

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:

Nico met me for a nice lunch

and they dragged the kid back home :)

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:

trees were blooming already, and had no idea that winter wasn't over

new google campus is ready

the bird center was closed unfortunately

been a while since I flew out of PAO

nice shot with 3 arriving planes

shoreline lake was beautiful

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:

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!

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:

Video summary:

We all had a great time, thanks to all.