March 27th-April 3rd
Friday was my friend's Sara's birthday. She is Italian so we went out to an Italian restaurant in St. Kilda. The food was good and it was BYOB which was interesting. Here in Australia you can often bring in your own alcohol into restaurants which makes it a lot cheaper to drink there. After dinner we went to an English-style pub down town in Melbourne Central which was pretty fun. I also discovered that night that there is a night bus which runs at 3 am which is amazing because the trains stop running at 12 or 12:30. Otherwise the only alternative is a cab which can be expensive so the bus is sweet!
On Sunday the 29th we went to the Melbourne Grand Prix. I am normally not into auto racing because back in the states four hour long NASCAR races are pretty much the only option. F1 races are only around an hour and a half long and My friend Will had been talking about this race since before we had left the U.S. so I told him I'd go. There was a wakeboarding trip the same weekend which I was a little upset about missing but decided to go to the F1 race anyways. I watched the qualifying for the race on Saturday and actually found it pretty exciting. As an added bonus "The Who" were slated to play a concert after the race.
Anyways, I woke up on Sunday to great weather mid-20s and sunny! I went with two of my German friends and my roommate Will from Northeastern. We got there around 11 or 11:30 and we walked around, bought some souvenirs and watched some of the other races going before the main event. I decided to root for the Mclaren team of Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen. I always find with sports that if you root for somebody it much more interesting. We watched the start from the second turn of the race which was great because all the cars were still very close together. After a few laps from the second turn we walked around to turn ten or so and watched from there where there were less people. We then started walking around the track up to turn 9 and got our best views there. It was a near 90 degree turn which meant the cars had to come down from 250+ km/h down to about 60 and then accelerate again. F1 cars are amazing technological marvels. They produce over 700 hp and weigh close to 1300 lbs. When they go around corners forces of more than 4 G's are produced laterally. I actually had a great time during the race! Lewis Hamilton ended up finishing third which was pretty cool and "The Who" were great afterwards. They played a bunch of there music adding a half hour to 45 minute encore which was amazing. Its great to see that they still love performing!
Anyways, the rest of the week was spent at a couple footy training sessions getting ready for our first match on the weekend. I also had some uneventful classes and grew less and less enthused about my structural mechanics class. uggh.
No comments:
Post a Comment