I have been getting ready carefully in Japan, working towards the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge. Tuning the challenge car, stopped for two years by Covid, has now begun again in a rush.
Do it, rather than think it over
The point of this trip was to test-drive repeatedly to tune the car and get its condition ready for the real thing. The other was to make an impression on the organisers? (laughs), and to enter a rally and learn the competition.
This was my first time in an event organised in England, Peking to Paris included, so I thought it mattered a great deal to build experience on a small rally like this one. Seeing it once beats hearing about it a hundred times — I always work on the principle of simply trying it, learning with the body rather than overthinking with the head.
New paperwork, a new kind of competition, and translating everything from English — it took an enormous amount of time just to grasp the whole picture. There were plenty of excuses available, but there was nothing for it but to do it.
With no language ability at all, even decoding the route map was hard work.
This is a map used during the event, and it is nothing but text.
I have driven all sorts of events abroad, but Italy, France and England each have a completely different kind of competition. Not one experience carries over as it is — every one becomes a fresh challenge, stacked on top of the last.
What you can only see beyond a great deal of failure
Meeting classic car rallying turned my life around a hundred and eighty degrees.
I hope I can pass on this: it is not only the beautiful, visible things — once you can enjoy the failure, the difficulty and what goes on behind the scenes of an experience, the world keeps opening up.
Failure comes with any challenge. But without this failure there is no way through to the next step, and each individual failure makes me stronger.
My first day on an English rally had not one thing go smoothly — one failure after another. But every failure brings a new realisation, which leads to the next.
That takes resourcefulness, courage, and refusing to give up — turning what you do not have into what you do.
So day one of this warm-up rally ended with us in last place, but we finished it safely, and on day two I will not carry today’s failures forward, and drive again.
No words needed
My communication is mostly body language (laughs). And a smile, above all.
I have no language ability at all, and somehow it works out.
Smile, and everyone around you smiles back, and before you know it you are surrounded by smiles.
So — what will day two bring? More to come.