Monza, Mozzies and McLaren

G-Money

I was home from the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa just over a week when I was dusting off my rucksack once more and getting ready to head to Monza for the Italian Grand Prix, for the second year in a row. I checked the weather forecast and thankfully, it was better than what had been predicted for Spa. Sun and 25 degree’s sounded good to me and I hoped it meant I wasn’t going to spend race day shivering in a grandstand, despite wearing 5 layers.
My flight was at the much more reasonable hour of 4.15pm on the Wednesday so I spent Tuesday night getting my stuff together and packing. Even though I was going away for 5 nights, I still managed to fill a large rucksack with items I thought I’d need and in the end, I did use most of them, except for the Red Bull rain jacket. It was packed more with a view of “if” it rained at Monza, as opposed to “when” it would rain at Spa.

I had been out on Couch to 5K on Wednesday morning and felt quite good after it. I felt so good in-fact that for a second, I had considered cancelling my trip as I just wanted to stay home and train more. However I managed to talk myself out of that negative way of thinking and continued my packing and headed off to the airport about 1.30pm.

Again I had pre-booked my parking and while the last time I got a space quite near to the car park entrance, this time all I encountered were signs telling me to go to another section of the car park. I kept driving and each section of the car park was met with another sign directing me to the next section. I eventually reached section Y which was nearly 1 mile from the car park entrance and there were quite a few spaces there. I tried a few of the spaces out for size before settling on one in particular. I guess I had the Goldilocks mentality about it – this space is too small, the car sticks out too far in this one, ah this one is just right.

I grabbed my stuff and hopped onto the shuttle and was into the airport within about 10 minutes. As I was flying with Ryanair this time, I had to check-in online and print out my boarding passes before I came to the airport. Failure to do so would result in them charging me more money at the airport I believe so I wanted to avoid that. I dropped off my bag, got through security and headed towards the gate. Again I was in for a long journey, with the signs above my head saying it was a 10 minute walk to the gate! I guess it was the day for long distances wasn’t it?

Got to the gate, waited around and boarded the plane. We took off late but managed to arrive 25 minutes ahead of schedule although I think there was some buffer built in to the schedule to allow that to happen. I don’t think they bolted on a couple of extra Mercedes Benz V8’s for some extra oomph!
I decided to stay in a place called Bergamo this time, as opposed to Milan itself. Bergamo is a small city and is about 45 minutes from Monza by train. The airport is only about 4km from the city centre so the bus trip from the airport to the centre of town only took about 15 minutes and cost €1.70 although it would have been shorter had we not sat for 5 minutes going nowhere for no reason at one stage.

They had a funny system for the airport bus where you have to buy a ticket from a counter and the bus driver does not sell tickets on-board. This was a tad annoying as it meant getting off the bus and going back into the terminal to try and find the ticket desk which I’d looked for after landing but none of them seemed to sell tickets to Bergamo town centre. In the end I just went up to one of the counters and the guy directed me to another counter where I got a ticket, buy by the time I got back out, the bus was gone. It was only then that I realised that I had walked straight past a ticket vending machine at the stop. I kind of wanted to get onto that bus as there were a few other Irish people getting off at the train station so it would have been nice to have cue’s from someone else as to when to hop off.

I thought I had possibly missed my stop but I’d been checking out Google Earth and had a vague idea of what the area looked like and a few minutes after thinking I had missed my stop, the bus arrived at my actual stop. I got off the bus, relieved that I had got there in one piece and relieved that the McDonalds I’d heard about was still there. I wasn’t sure I’d like much of the Italian food so I figured McDonalds would be a good safety net. It wasn’t really.

I went off in search of my hotel but was fairly sure I knew where it was. I turned out to be right enough surprisingly and the hotel was only about a 5 minute walk from the train station. I went in, had my usual slight worry that they had no record of my booking and were sold out but it turned out to be unfounded.

I grabbed the key and went up to my room. Thankfully the hotel and room were much, much nicer than my previous digs at Spa, however I was somewhat surprised to only have a single bed and the room was small. However it was very nice and I wasn’t going to complain after the Spa episode. Also mercifully I had a room with a toilet and shower this time, as opposed to just a shower!

I had enquired about getting room service but the restaurant menu didn’t really do much for me so I decided to head to McDonalds slightly apprehensive at whether I would be understood. Often when I go away, even to English speaking countries, I can have a hard time being understood. So I’m often a bit wary when trying to order food and I often just try to conduct the transaction without speaking at all if I can. But that’s not so easy when you have to verbalise your order!

I went into McDonalds anyway and was sweating quite a bit even though it wasn’t that warm. I guess I was really apprehensive about ordering! It took a while to get served but eventually it was my turn and to my surprise the guy not only understood me perfectly, he replied in English. He got my order and put the drink into one of those egg carton style cup holders and I headed back to my hotel. I wasn’t sure if they’d let me bring food in so I had to put all the stuff into my bag and I was trying not to spill the drink either. I’d say though my pink panther attempts were thwarted by the smell of food so I guess it hardly mattered.

I got to my room, had the food, watched some TV and went to bed.
I got up on Thursday morning and had pretty much decided a few days earlier that I would not go to the pit lane walk and autograph session. I had been to the one at Spa and while I enjoyed getting Lewis Hamilton’s autograph and seeing some the drivers and everything, it really required an awful lot of standing around doing nothing which quickly became very, very tedious and boring. At Spa they didn’t let us into the circuit until about 4pm and until then we were just stuck at the gates waiting to get in. Even once we finally got into the pits, I think I ended up waiting about an hour for the McLaren drivers to appear. I really didn’t fancy a repeat and seeing I had the McLaren tour on the Friday to look forward to, I didn’t see the need to head to the track on Thursday.

So instead I got up, ate some breakfast, showered and then headed out to see some of Bergamo. I hadn’t really went out exploring with my camera like that for a long time. I think it was back in 2002 and 2003 when I was in Australia that I had done that. I guess I was a bit more adventurous over there. I set off with my camera just to take some pics and to waste some time. I knew the cleaners would be coming to clean the room so I wanted to get out of the way.

Bergamo is a lovely town, with an old town set up in the hills and surrounded by walls. As I understand it’s possible to walk up to the old town but I hadn’t really done a whole lot of research about it so after a bit of deliberation with myself, I decided to take the tram up to the old town. The tram goes up what must be one of the steepest inclines I have ever seen. It falls into the category of “This is so steep we’re dead if something breaks”. So I took the tram up and even though the journey only took about 3 minutes, I was still quite edgy about it. I’m normally tense on a plane but I didn’t think that would extend to steep tram rides.

Anyway I made it to the top in one piece and wandered around the old town getting some pictures and wondering should I have worn my McLaren cap to protect my head from the sun, although I was spending quite a bit of time in the shade, it’s always easy to fool yourself into thinking you’re not in the sun long enough to get sunburn.

After taking quite a few pics I sat down on a bench in the shade to relax for a while. By this stage it was coming up to 1pm so I decided to head back towards the hotel. On my way back I passed a supermarket and decided to head in to get some supplies. This turned out to be what seemed like a very cheap supermarket. I bought a pack of four 500ml bottles of Coke Zero, a pack of 6 bottles of water and a box of Pringles for €6.30 which seemed very cheap.

I later found out that I’m not as good at differentiating still water from sparkling as I thought as I ended up with six bottles of sparkling water which I don’t really like. However it was better than nothing.

I went back to my room and scoffed the Pringles and watched TV and used the free WiFi in the hotel. It was a funny setup where they gave you the user ID and password but it would expire after 24 hours and you would have to go get a new one from reception once the 24 hours were up.

About 5pm I decided to head to McDonalds again for the second day in a row even though I wasn’t really keen on going again. I got the same order, attempted the same covert operation to get the food into my room unnoticed and most likely failed.

A few hours later I got some troubling sounds coming from my stomach which lead me to believe the McDonalds from the night before was coming back to haunt me and I was concerned the one I had just ate would strike back as well when I was at the circuit the next day, and most likely at the worst time.
I watched more TV and went to bed in preparation for my first day at the track on Friday.

I got up on Friday morning and all I could think about was the McLaren pit tour I was on at 4.30pm and how I desperately hoped my insides weren’t going to play some cruel malevolence for me consuming McDonalds two days in a row.

I took out my several print outs of train timetables and headed to the track about 11am. I took the train to Monza from Bergamo which took about 45-50 minutes then I had to wait for the free shuttle bus to the track. Thankfully the shuttle arrived quickly but it filled up even quicker. The seats disappeared like snow in thrust into a desert and everyone standing was pretty much armpit to armpit trying to hang-on as the bus went around corners.

I also have to say that the set of traffic lights just as you leave Monza train station stay on red for what must be the longest period of time known to man. It was something that was glaringly obvious last year and hadn’t changed again this year.

The bus made its way through Monza town which was chocker block with cars and eventually I started to see those railings that surrounded the park that I remembered for last year. Then we made that wonderful right turn into the Monza park and were heading for the track.

Like last year, the bus dropped everyone off but we all had at least a 25 minute walk to the nearest circuit entrance. Also like last year, I couldn’t figure out why they couldn’t drop us a bit closer to the track. However they’ve been having Grand Prix at Monza for years so I doubt if they haven’t changed the drop off point by now, they won’t be doing it anytime soon.
I started the long walk to the track but knowing what was ahead of me this time, as opposed to my first visit 12 months earlier where I kept walking and walking and could hear the sound of the cars but didn’t seem to be getting any closer to them.

About 25 minutes later I arrived at the track entrance and the grandstand where I had my ticket for was more or less straight in front of me. I took some pictures in the F1 village and then headed into the grandstand. On the Friday’s at Monza, you can sit pretty much anywhere you want, except for certain reserved grandstands although from what I could see, most were unreserved. I just took the first seat I could see and watched some of the practice.

I ended up having to use ear plugs as the grandstand roof seemed to amplify the sound of the car engines and they were a lot louder than at Spa 2 weeks previous. Once I put the ear plugs in the sound became so much more enjoyable and bearable.

While I was watching the practice, I kept checking my watch waiting for the paddock tour to start. I’d been told it was due to start at 4.30pm but there was no-way I was going to show up at 4.30pm. Instead I was going to make sure I got there early.

After a quick pit-stop of the human variety, I made my way to the meeting point and was about 40 minutes early. I was looking around to see if I could spot anyone else doing the tour but I really had no idea who was going to be on it or not.

I’d been told I would spot the McLaren person easily enough as she’d be wearing team gear and sure enough, just after 4pm, two McLaren people showed up. I was surprised as they were early and I was a little confused when he asked if I was there for the 4pm tour. After a few minutes it turned out that some people were told 4pm and others 4.30pm, myself being one of the latter.

I didn’t catch the name of the McLaren guy who was there, I only know the name of the woman as I’d been given it ahead of time. They decided to take the four of us who were already there on ahead on the tour and the woman would wait to see if others showed up.

So myself and three other McLaren fans headed towards the paddock. We crossed underneath the track and towards the back of the pits. There was a line of security at some barriers but they let us through quite easily as by this stage we’d been given VIP passes to wear by the McLaren marketing guy. We got up to the paddock barriers and I wasn’t quite sure how the passes worked. We had to press them against this little section that stuck out but I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to try and press the section in or something.
I just held the pass up and waited for the little electronic noise and then I tried to walk through the turn-style which actually worked and suddenly Aladdin’s cave had opened and I had just walked inside.

I have to admit it was a great feeling to be freely walking around the F1 paddock. I immediately stopped to get some photo’s, wanting to make sure I soaked in as much of the surroundings as I could. The McLaren guy brought us into the main paddock and then brought us into the McLaren Brand centre. It was great walking in to this thing we’d only ever seen on TV. Once inside we seen Jenson Button’s girlfriend Jessica sitting talking to someone, and Lewis Hamilton’s brother Nic watching TV. I have to admit I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to what our guide was saying at this point and I was just looking around in amazement and joy.

The next stop was the McLaren pit garage and he brought us into the control centre unit at the back of the main garage. As requested we took no photos and here we spent a good while talking to our guide and looking at the mechanics working on the cars. We then went around to the front of the garage and got some pictures which was brilliant.

We then went on a little walk of the Paddock itself to see who we could spot. I think I seen almost all of the drivers, bar a few. We even seen Bernie come out of his motorhome and chat to Christian Horner and Emmerson Fittipaldi.
As we walked around, a couple of our group stopped Steffano Domenicalli of Ferrari who was very friendly and agreed to pose for photographs, even though he was decked out in Ferrari gear and we were in McLaren gear.
We spent another while wandering around the paddock, looking at the motorhomes and spotting drivers and team principles and before I knew it, our tour was over.

We walked back out to the paddock gates, shook hands with our friendly McLaren tour guide and gave him back the VIP passes, but boy did I ever want to hold onto mine!

Personally speaking, it was far and away the highlight of the weekend for me. I’d always dreamed of walking around the F1 paddock and today I got the opportunity to do so. I was looking forward to it all day on Friday and it was a fantastic experience, and one I hope to repeat in the future. It had me wondering how I could get some sort of media job with McLaren which would allow me such access in the future. I’m not quite sure yet how I could do that, but I do know one thing. Lewis achieved one of his dreams by getting to drive Senna’s MP4/4 so hopefully I will get to achieve mine someday.

After having had McDonald’s for two days in a row, I decided I was going to order the steak from the hotel Room service. I placed my order and the girl asked if I wanted a big steak and I said yes, but in my head I was thinking I didn’t want one that was too big. I think they charged something like €6.99 per ¼ lb of steak so I really had no idea how much it was going to cost. I also ordered the crème brulee dessert, although mostly because it came with ice cream. The food arrived after about 40 minutes and the platter they brought to my room was huge. The steak was almost the size of my head and they had gave me several bread sticks and rolls of bread along with the 4 or 5 slices of sautéed potato and dessert.

The steak was nice but somewhat hard to cut and once again I had forgotten to ask for it well done. It was very rare in the middle but actually didn’t taste too bad. I quickly became full though and couldn’t finish everything and I didn’t want to overeat so I had my fill and called them to come pick up the tray as I didn’t want the smell of food filling my room throughout the night. Although I decided then that I wasn’t going to order room service again which left me a bit stumped as to what I was going to do for dinner for the remaining two nights.

I got up on Saturday and got to the track about 10.30am. I was queuing up to buy a train ticket and I heard a guy ahead of me buy a ticket to Monza for both days, therefore removing the need for him to queue up on Sunday morning to buy a ticket. I thought this was a good idea so I tried to pull the same stunt. However the person who served me was not as fluent in English, or at least not as fluent in my English and what I ended up with were two return tickets for the same day. I kind of got the impression he didn’t understand me and was selling me the wrong thing but I was fed up trying to explain myself so I just paid for the tickets and went about getting to the track.

The bus from Monza train station to the circuit didn’t seem as busy this time and I reached my seat about 30 minutes before the final practice session was due to start. Over the course of the weekend I had to start wearing earplugs which was new for me. At Monza last year and also at Spa a few weeks earlier, I didn’t use earplugs. However the noise of the cars I think was amplified by the grandstand and as much as I love the sound of an F1 engine, they were starting to hurt my ears and give me a headache to I had to do something about it. Thankfully my trusty McLaren earplugs did the trick nicely, which were part of my welcome pack when I joined the fan club in 2009.

Qualifying started and it turned into a little bit of an anti-climax when all the fastest times seemed to be set during the first half of Q3. Naturally the tifosi were ecstatic that Alonso and Ferrari were on pole but I was not so happy. However Jenson qualified P2 and Lewis P5 so I thought perhaps they could still turn things around on the Sunday as this year, McLaren’s race pace has generally been better than their qualifying pace.

Once qualifying was over, I immediately left and headed back towards the shuttle bus. This turned out to be a good idea as there wasn’t a huge queue of people and there were a few empty buses waiting, which was an improvement from the day before. I arrived back into Bergamo just after 5pm and went about my plan for feeding myself which involved going to the supermarket and buying some food with which I could make sandwiches. Thankfully the supermarket still was open when I reached it and I was able to buy everything I needed and was content in that I had sorted myself out for dinner for the next two nights.

I generally try not to eat too much when I’m at a Grand Prix and I often skip lunch as I’m at the track during that time and I often don’t want to leave my seat and have to climb out over people in order to get some greasy food.
Saturday night came and went and before I knew it, it was Sunday morning and race day. I set off a bit earlier as I figured there would be more of a queue for train tickets. Surprisingly enough, the queue was smaller and moving a lot faster but most likely because they had 3 customer service people selling tickets so I was able to get my return ticket to Monza without too much trouble.

I thought I felt a bit of a ‘rumble in the jungle’ and decided I would make use of the toilet facilities at the train station to avoid having to use the portapotty’s at the track. I’m not a big fan of using public toilets at the best of times but I figured the toilets at the train station would be better than the one’s at the track, but only just. I went into the men’s section and opened one of the stalls to find no toilet, but instead, a hole in the floor with what looked like some sort of tiles with grips where you would place your feet.
I’ve never encountered this before but I’d heard stories of how these things exist on the continent. I took one look at it and figured I didn’t really feel like squatting and trying to balance myself at the same time and so I made a hasty retreat. The disabled toilet was locked, either because it was occupied or because those in charge just wanted to be awkward and make everyone squat like animals. I decided to get onto the train thinking the portapotty’s at the track suddenly didn’t seem so bad. Although I tried to think of other things as while I didn’t feel much of an urge to go, I figured if I kept thinking about it, it would just become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I got to the track about 10.30am again and took my seat for the race. It was still a couple of hours until race-time but even so there were still quite a few people in their seats already. There were several support races on and things to watch on the track so the time passed quite quickly. One thing people may not realise on TV is that the pit-lane opens half an hour before the race starts so the cars are already fired up and heading out so it’s another thing to watch and listen to.

Before I knew it, it was 2pm and the cars set off on their formation lap. They soon were coming back around and lining up for the race start. The sound of 24 Formula 1 cars sitting on the grid waiting for the lights to come on is a wonderful sound. The engines are idling as such and it’s a gentle roar that is created by a choir of V8’s. Once the first red light comes on though, it soon changes.

The lights went out and they were away. Jenson made a great start and managed to beat Alonso to the first corner and he nabbed the lead outright as they headed towards Curva Grande. Lewis unfortunately had a slip up and suffered front suspension damage much to the delight of the tifosi and the disappointment of me. It was a little off-putting that the fans boo’d Hamilton on the drivers parade when he was being interviewed and cheered when he went off. It was the same last year when he crashed out of 3rd place at the end of the race.

I was tempted to boo Alonso as payback but I was surrounded by Ferrari and Alonso fan’s so I would have got lynched had I even raised an eyebrow. I was very tempted to leave after Lewis went out but being a McLaren fan, I decided I should stay and support the world champion in the other McLaren.
I had a feeling that Alonso was going to win the race and this unfortunately proved to be right once the one and only round of pit-stops came about and he got into the lead.

There was a large TV screen directly in front of me but it was hard to see the positions and the number of laps left. However I ended up using the pit boards of Heikki Kovalainen to keep track of how many laps were left.
The race at Monza seems to pass by very quickly. In fact I think the race was over about 1hr and 15 minutes after the lights went out. Once the result seemed settled, I was very tempted to leave a bit early. However I was seated almost in the middle of a row and it would have been difficult to leave with everyone else still in their seats. I was sitting on the very back row and there was space behind me to walk behind the seats, however some opportunistic fans stood there for most of the race when they clearly had tickets for somewhere else.

Once the race was over, a few people left so I decided to make a move. I was a bit sick with the result so the last thing I wanted to do was watch Alonso receiving the winner’s trophy. I started walking briskly and I was almost half way to the bus when he was spraying the champagne, and the bus was about a 25 minute walk.

I arrived back at the bus pick-up point and there were a lot of buses waiting to collect people and they basically just filled up a bus and sent it on its way. It wasn’t too crowded although I still had to stand but again it was much better than the bus on Friday. I remember on the Friday being on this bus with a load of other hot, sweaty people who just wanted to get off it. I felt a bit bad but then I heard some English guys talking about their journey back to their hotel. They had to walk from the track to the bus (25-30 minutes), then take the bus to Monza train station (10-20 minutes depending on traffic), then take the train to Milan (about 20 minutes), then take a 1 hour coach trip, then get a taxi or a lift from where the coach dropped them off, to their hotel. I think I heard them say the coach went to the airport so it’s my guess they were staying near the further Malpensa airport in Milan.

I got back into Bergamo just after 5pm again and realised that I could easily have made the 10pm Ryanair flight back to Dublin. When I was booking the flights I erred on the side of caution in-case I got held up and missed my flight. However I was back into Bergamo just after 5pm and the airport was only about 10 minutes away on the bus so I could easily have made it to the airport by 6 or 6.30pm at the very latest and still been too early for check-in. The hotel also offered a storage service for luggage so I could have left my rucksack there while I went to the race and collected it once I got back to Bergamo. Anyway I had my sandwiches again for dinner, watched some TV and then went to bed.

I intended to lie in a bit on the Monday but I figured I’d have to be checked out by 11am so I woke about 6.30am, got some breakfast and a shower and packed my stuff.

I checked out of the hotel and the girl asked me if I wanted to store my bags which just highlighted my error in not booking the flight back the night before. I took the bus to the airport and arrived at the airport about 10.30am and faced an almost 10 hour wait until my flight was due to leave, which was at 8.20pm.

I used all sorts of tricks to try and make the time seem shorter than it really was. I’d think back to how I had to wait the same amount of time in Brussels airport on my way home from Spa and how it passed quite quickly. I’d try and make it seem shorter by only really counting the time up until when I could drop my bags off which was about 2-3 hours before the flight was due to leave. But I tried to forget that even if I checked my bags in 2 or 3 hours before the flight left, I still had to wait those 2 or 3 hours until the flight left, plus another 2-3 hours actually on the plane.

I did a few laps of the airport but it wasn’t as big as Brussels airport so there wasn’t as much to see, except for the odd hottie walking around and a surprisingly large amount of flies.

I had a bit of a distraction at one point when it turned out I still had not been paid and my suspicions were confirmed as I had originally thought I was due to be paid on the Friday and it was now Monday and the money was still not in my account. I had a little mini panic in my mind as all I could think about was my credit card bill, how I had to pay my rent and how I didn’t have enough money for either as I hadn’t been paid. I called up about it anyway and it turns out they got one number wrong on my bank account so they put the money through and thankfully it was into my account within the hour.

It finally was time to drop off my rucksack after going too early and being told to come back 2-3 hours before departure. I went through security and moved into a much nicer section of the airport. I had a wander around duty free and bought some chocolates to bring home for my work colleagues but mostly for my folks. I was getting pretty hungry at this stage as it was about 6pm and I hadn’t ate since about 7am but I was hesitant to eat anything substantial. I’d heard a bit of a horror story from someone I know who was on a flight into Belfast last Easter and apparently it was very windy and there was a lot of turbulence and people were getting sick on the plane. Remembering how Ryanair had no seat pockets on their plane and no obvious sick bags either, I decided to skip the tasty bread and meat rolls and ended up having two Bounty bars.

As much as I was fed up waiting around, I felt somewhat relieved that I wasn’t on one of the other flights that were leaving the airport which were massively delayed. One particular flight I think was due to leave just after 6pm and which had been delayed until 11.30pm. Another flight was also delayed from about 8am that morning until about 6.30pm that evening. Both were with an airline I’d never heard of, flying to somewhere I’d never heard of so I guess it could have been worse for me.

The flight from Dublin landed and with how much Ryanair like to promote how they are on time or ahead of schedule, I figured they wouldn’t be hanging around getting the plane back to Dublin. I was also somewhat relieved to see what looked like 2 extra pilots on the plane sitting with the passengers flying back to Dublin.

The flight was scheduled to be 2 ½ hours and it seemed like a long time. I’m not a good flyer and I don’t really enjoy it so I’m usually tense for the entire duration of the flight. There were a group of guys sitting behind me who’d been to the race and who were good fun to listen to. However one of them made me feel a bit more tense as he didn’t seem to be enjoying the flight either and any little thing I seemed to think in my head “What’s that noise? “ “that doesn’t sound right” “What’s happening?”, he would verbalise which would only make me feel worse.

I was doing my usual trick of trying to make the flight seem shorter by thinking about while it might be 2 ½ hours, by the time we’ve an hour left we will probably be over England and that’s not far. I also knew we’d probably be starting our descent into Dublin about 30 minutes before landing so that helped to make the journey seem a little shorter.

It was very cloudy as we came into Dublin and it was approaching 10pm so it was dark and I don’t really like not being able to see the ground as we’re coming into land. It wasn’t too bad and once we had got down quite a bit we could finally see the lights of the city centre and such. It wasn’t as bad as one other flight I was on to Malmo in Sweden once where the fog and everything was so bad, I could barely see anything until just before we landed on the runway.

It was a bit windy as we were coming in and just before the plane touched down it seemed to bank a little bit too much to the left. We touched down anyway and seemed to lift up again slightly but the plane settled down again and once we had slowed down a bit, I could breathe a sigh of relief.
It’s kind of a funny sensation for me when I’m flying as my favourite part is once we’ve landed and the plane is making its way to the terminal. Although sometimes it takes a few minutes to sink in that we’ve landed. And I always have to think about it and ask myself are we really landed and can I relax now or am I going to wake up and realise we’re still at 35,000 feet.

It was kind of the same when I thought back to how long I was waiting around the airport for in Bergamo. I felt like if I relaxed, I’d wake up and realise I was still there and had about 8 hours left to wait.

The trip to Monza was good. Undoubtedly for me the highlight was the paddock tour on Friday. It has made me want to have one of those passes for every race I go to. Or to have some sort of job where I’m employed by a team or FOM or the FIA and it requires I have a paddock pass. However as I was flying home I felt like my dislike of flying would get in the way of me traveling to all the races even if I did have some sort of job like that. As I was flying back I was thinking that it would be impossible for me to fly to one of those long haul destinations when I was sitting there tense as could be for just a 2 ½ hour flight.

The strange thing is that I have flown to America and Australia before so I know I can do the long flights but I seem to have become a bit more tense of anxiety ridden these days. I was almost wishing I was just on the flight back from Belgium after the Spa race as it was just 1hr and 15 minutes to Dublin and seemed like a breeze.

I was also thinking that any races I go to again as a spectator would be in Europe and would be a short flight at most from Ireland. So naturally I started to think about Silverstone next year.

Having said that, I would like to go to Suzuka, and possibly Bahrain or Abu Dhabi or even the Ausin GP in 2012 and none of those destinations would be a short flight so I will need to get my act together and stop being so tense and counting down the seconds and minutes until we land, or until we get to a point where we’re half way to a country that’s nearby or something.

I’m not sure if I will go back to Monza in 2011. If I did, it would be my third year in a row. It’s a great track but I’m not sure if I want to head back there. Strangely enough, the trip to Monza was better than the trip to Spa, but I feel more inclined to buy tickets to Spa for 2011. Perhaps it’s because they’re again talking about holding the Belgian Grand Prix every two years from 2012 which would mean I don’t have as much choice as to when I could go.

If I were to go back to Monza next year and if the Ryanair flights were scheduled at the same time, I would fly over on Thursday evening and back on Sunday night. I wouldn’t need to sightsee in Bergamo again, although it’s a nice city. And I was kicking myself for wasting an entire day on Monday waiting around for a flight home, when I could have been back here relaxing. I think I’d even rather fly indirect through London or something rather than wait around for 8 hours for a direct flight to Dublin.

One other thing I would do. I would buy some mosquito or insect repellent. During the weekend I looked at my arm and noticed a large lump and a red itchy area around it which immediately triggered my “What the f*** is that?” response. Suddenly I remembered back to the flight home from the Italian Grand Prix last year and finding an almost identical lump and redness on my arm in almost the exact same location. I suddenly remembered that last year I must have got some sort of insect or mosquito bite and sure enough, this year I ended up getting a few more for good luck.

I ended up with three bites on my arm, one on my left hand, three on my right hand and one on my right wrist. I’m not sure if they were mosquito bites but there would be a lump or swelling and it would be incredibly itchy. I did some research online and apparently it’s only female mosquito’s that bite and they apparently go after men, who are overweight, who have blood type O and who’s sweat is appealing to them. I don’t know my blood type but I currently fit the weight and gender choices of these mosquitos and I guess my eau de toilette spray is attractive even to insects. The funny thing is that I don’t even remember seeing insects or being bit. I just started to notice a red itchy patch on my hands or arm Thankfully now though a few days later they are almost completely gone.

So if you are going to Monza next year, bring some insect repellent. I must remember to tell myself that too!

Attached are some photo's.

Ghost Train

longest post I've read for a while but not a bad read

(I should have quoted it for the lols)

rua1972

Thanks for the good post. I went to Monza myself in 2006, still have fond memories. Your story makes me want to go again someday.