When a Champagnista goes karting

...or goes go-karting???

I never know what the right phrasing is...

Never mind saying why I 'never know', because I am so obsviously into go-karting. It is what I do every week-end when I have an hour off as you can imagine.

On Tuesday my boss took us on a go-karting team bonding experience in North Greenwich... We managed to lose half the team on the way there but it worked out OK, and in the end everybody was there for a prepping talk before hitting the circuit. The prepping talk in question consists in a short cinema experience featuring a middle-aged round enough guy sitting down with a hand on his hip and preparing you to all the aleas of the race, with all the coding of the flags. Yellow flag slow down, black flag stop: you've done something wrong. I have absolutely no idea what the other flags stand for right now... I have taken my driving license four times (never got it if you're wondering) and managed to get black-flagged twice: it sounds about right. By the way, the staff tell you before hand that you will know a flag is for you, but when you're on and there are two other cars at your level, you have no idea who the signal is for exactly. I just decided to ignore them until they would step on the bonnet of my car.

After the prep talk we went on to the changing rooms where we put on our racing suits, long-sleeve-long-leg belted black and red jumpsuits with mandarin collars, and just from the way I am discribing them you will know that I enjoyed them... however fashion-focused I can be. I grew up with two older brothers really close to me in age, so I used to be quite a tom-boy when I was a kid. But in this suit, I felt like one of Charlies' Angels, it was fantastic! And all in all, the jumpsuits were black, straight cut, waisty and slimmimg so nothing traumatic fashion-wise.

Going on to the circuit I was feeling slightly nervous, but hell I had practised on my flatmate's Mario Kart game for the past three days and beat him a couple of times at it, so I was confident I would pull it off.

The first round was scary. I learnt to drive on manual cars and you always have your feet on both paddles to make sure to press the right one at the right time (although I remember a critical moment when I was driving around the Arc de Triomphe, which must be the scariest driving place in Paris, spotted a bike-rider about two meters away, and just froze, letting the car go on until my examiner pressed the break screaming 'Putain qu'est-ce que tu fous???' which probably doesn't need translation and explains why I am still license free... On a kart you have to keep your feet away from the paddles because you should press one or the other, but if you press both at the same time you're most likely to cause an accident (which was the first reason I was black-flagged... bullshit!)

Anyway, at the beginning I wasn't sure if I should accelerate or not, as there were bloody tight corners on this circuit. After seeing the (two) boys of the teams speed off, I decided there was no way I would let them win without a fight, so I shed my driving coyness in my sleeve and put my foot down (the right one). I'll tell you this much, when you're taking 180 degrees corner and your kart goes squeaking and slides to a perpendicular angle it feels... fantastic! Scary, but fantastic... And when you do that and send your boss' car spin in a corner, it gets really amazing.

Now I am just wondering when he is going to take us paint-balling and what kind of Bond girls' suits we're going to be wearing!!!

By Champagnista V