Going To Be An Interesting Day

It's time once again for the yearly Targa Tasmania road race. It's a big noise down here. Millions of dollars worth of cars, lots of drivers, occasional celebrities, and a week of inconvenient road stoppages, plus wall-to-wall news coverage. Bogan much, Tasmania?

Heh. That's a joke, by the way. Actually, I like the Targa. It's cool to watch the cars scream past our place up here on the hill, and we always give the kids the day off school because of the road blockage.

This year, though, they've changed things. Normally the race runs downhill past us, and the road is blocked from about 0730 through to 1300 or so. This time, they've switched directions. They're now going uphill, and the road is blocked from roughly 1200 to 1630 or so.

So: they've switched directions. That will make the course less familiar to frequent participants, which is probably what the race organisers are after. However, I wonder if they have taken into account local conditions.

For some reason, the roads people hereabouts have been resurfacing the highway in the last few days. There's gravel everywhere. It's not as bad as it was three days ago, when driving at more than 60kph was a guaranteed invite to skidding and drifting - but there's still a fair bit of gravel and loose stuff.

On top of that, the centrelines haven't been repainted yet. That should be interesting, no?

Let's add to all that the fact that the weather predictions are for 'drizzle, increasing'. So all up: gravelly, resurfaced road, no linemarking in stretches, light rain to slick everything, and they've reversed the direction of the race for the first time in its twenty year history.

Yep. I figure this one should be interesting.