Natalie and I made the trek to Amsterdam today. We’re now hanging out at the hotel, Natalie is actually sleeping, I’m trying to avoid it, but I imagine a nap will be coming soon.

The flights went fine, I didn’t sleep on them, I fought off sleeping on the first flight to try to save it for the second, long, flight, but once on was unable to sleep. Delta had some great movie options, I managed to watch Forgetting Sarah Marshal, and Get Smart. Both great comedies, I am glad I watched them finally!

The ride from the airport was interesting, because I am headed to Dubai next week I ended up with two large suitcases and Natalie had one. Mark picked us up in a Mini Cooper! We did manage to squeeze everything in there for the trip, a big thank you to Mark for the ride to the hotel. He even wore his Red Sox (leading 2-0 in the ALDS) sweatshirt, good man. The hotel didn’t have a room ready (we got here around 9am, so I can’t blame them) so we dropped off our bags and walked around a bit.

Amsterdam is an amazing city, and I have only seen a few blocks. It is ridiculous the number of bikes EVERYWHERE, it’s cool to see. I also can’t believe all the “coffee” shops, I’ve never been one for drug use (never tried any actually) so it is weird seeing it everywhere here. Definitely a different world than I’ve ever been exposed to.

We’ll head off here from the hotel here soon, maybe not too soon, but sometime later today I want to go on a Canal tour. I’ve also started taking pictures with the SLR, I’ll see if I can’t get some decent HDR photos together.

Alright, so we aren’t out just yet, but we’re getting ready! Natalie and I fly to Amsterdam tomorrow. I’m excited about my first trip to Europe, more on that when we get there! I will probably blog again in the morning, but we’ll.

So the final days are now ticking down. I have two, maybe three days of driving the Corvette left before we leave for Amsterdam. Natalie will be flying back from Amsterdam and meeting John (the new owner) at the airport next Friday so he can take posession of the car.

I was getting the mail tonight and saw the car sitting half in the garage and half out, where I had parked it, in the light, it looked beautiful. It really is an amazing car, I will miss it, I already do.

You might ask, why are you selling the Z06? One main reason. Natalie and I plan to move to Colorado (even though we are rumored in the horse world to be moving to Germany) next summer, and while I love the car, the car payment and insurance could be used for more grown up things than racing, like buying our first house, and planning for the move. I don't imagine I will go long without a fun race car though.

So what will come next? That is undecided at this point. I will most likely buy a $2-3k ride/beater for the winter so I don't have to drive the long ass F350 all winter, and hopefully spend some time working on the 240Z to get it up and running soon. I need something fun to drive, that is for sure, but even if the 240 runs, it would take a lot of work and money to make it anywhere near as fun as the Corvette.

I don't know what I will race next year, perhaps I'll try to find a nicely prep'd codrive, perhaps I'll take it easy for the year. This year in the Corvette has been fun. I think I've put something in the range of 150 autocross runs on the car not including test and tune runs, on a whole the car has seen well over 300, maybe near 400 runs this year.

Hopefully John and Clyde can put that many runs on her next year.

Carol and I went to the first game of the double header today at Fenway Park in Boston. We had standing room only tickets but with the weather managed to get ourselves seats in the grandstand after the second inning.

Another loss for the Red Sox, at least they won the 2nd game of the double header this evening.

I'm flying back to St. Louis in the morning, with a 2.5 hour stop in NY. I'm going to try to get to bed now, more tomorrow as Natalie and I prepare for Amsterdam.