Off to Brentwood

We were both really tired from not sleeping on the plane, and jet lag. Tracy was in bed early, like 8:30. I stayed up until almost 10:00. I slept pretty good, but woke up around midnight:30 when Tracy got up to go to the toilet. She complained she wasn't tired anymore, and she didn't really sleep the rest of the night. I did manage to get back to sleep after about an hour, and only woke up when I heard a power saw outside....it was 8:55am!

Tracy was super grumpy, and neither of us were particularly hungry, so we skipped breakfast, checked out and got on the Underground for Liverpool Station and got on a train for Brentwood.

The people of London are crazy. There are pedestrian crosswalks everywhere, but half the population don't even follow the crosswalk lights, and cross all the time, in front of cars all the time. And cars don't even seem to care, they slow down, honk their horns, and keep going.

We got to Brentwood about 10:30am, walked to the Premiere Inn (2 minutes from the train station) but check-in doesn't start until 2:00pm, so they stored our bags while we went walking around downtown Brentwood. We went for breakfast at the Slug and Lettuce restaurant, then wandered around downtown, Tracy bought a dress, I bought some socks and then got a haircut. Back to the hotel and checked-in.

For the weekend, we are renting a car with three others that go to Cor.Fit with us (Mandy, Jon and Mike). Tracy and I had tickets for the opening dinner tonight at 6:00, so there was no point in us going to the event earlier to pick up our registration packages. So they drove up there for noon to pick up their packages, then came back, and we took the car. Unfortunately they were unable to add me as an additional driver without me being there, so I had to drive back to Romford in rush hour traffic without being on the rental car contract, driving a standard transmission on the left side of the road, a 30 minute drive. It was kind of stressful, but I made it without incident. Once I was on the rental car contract, I felt comfortable.

After doing that, we headed up to the event village, at the Nuclear Races Event Village, north of Brentwood (got there about 6:30) and registered, got our packages and had some pig roast pork on a bun. I paid 35 pounds for both of Tracy, and I found out that others paid 25 pounds, and at the event, they weren't even checking to see if you had paid, they were giving pork to everyone. We were also told we could eat as much as we want, but they were almost out when we were there, so it was a single serving. Disappointed in that.

While we were waiting in line for our race packages, we ran into another guy that goes to Cor.Fit (Jamie). He was going to take a cab back from the event village to where he was staying (with some of his family, south of Brentwood), so instead we took him back to Brentwood, then he cabbed it back from there. Since Tracy didn't eat much at the pig roast, we went out to a restaurant near the hotel, then back to the room.


Also staying at the same hotel as us and Mandy, Jon and Mike, are Lucas and Graham. They are trainers at Cor.Fit, and still teenagers, and are here with their famiies, which is pretty cool. There's a ton of Cor.Fit people at the OCR WC!