17th February 2015 birthday boy

Our marshalling duties were snatched out of our hands today so a purely sweep duty was the order of the day, leaving the Shangri la hotel to head north after half of the cars was our task this morning, we dressed in our newly laundered work clothes and headed once again to the sweaty hotel underbelly where our truck was waiting to carry out its task for this day.  We had a pretty uneventful morning until we arrived at the regularity this afternoon, a car had dropped the equivalent of Saudi Arabia's oil reserve up the steep hill making us wonder what car had slicked it's way up the heat soaked road towards the hotel waiting at the end, it revealed itself as a volvo PV with a snapped rear axle nearly making it to the end, it's currently all being welded up at one of the million garages that seem to fill the town we pass through so fingers crossed it will all be well tomorrow morning.

Earlier in the day we had received a call that one of the invading German crews had holed their suspension air bag causing a major collapse in the third reich or the back end in this case, neither Owen nor I had ever replaced one of these so it came to us as a great relief to find it in a garage being replaced however, when I got under the car to see what's going on one of the Thai mechanics leant towards me and said 'help please' and not wanting to look like an incompetent mechanic I set about helping them replace it, we managed to fit the new one and get it all working in what seemed to be no time at all so big cheers, strong Bavarian pats on the back were delivered all round, a good job done by all!  

We finished the day on the famous thousand bend road down to the hotel, a tight twisty main road full of hairpins up and down with great views at the summits, definitely will be needing new brakes after all that, some bod has actually counted the bends and I think they mentioned that there were over 1500 hairpins in total!

We eventually arrived at the hotel and whilst the brakes were cooling down we replaced two prop shafts, checked out a noise on a mercedes, fixed a leaking radiator on a Bentley and repaired a handbrake on a volvo, all these jobs were finished in plenty of time to then get washed and changed, have some great food and enjoy whiskey at the competitors expense, this was a good day!

Peter and Zoe Lovett are extending their lead every competitive section so with limited competitive days left looks like they've got it in the bag over Gerry and Matt in the Leyland, but this is rallying and anything can happen!

This has been my most favourite day so far, let's hope tomorrow is even better!

Saw a great sign today, PYs lodger should take heed!