Good lord, what an 18 hours.
Was watching F1 Qualifying in Hungary early this morning. I've heard many things about the track. That it produces many boring races, but some sort of drama always happens. And were those pronuncements ever right. Onboard laps of the Hungary track are unbelievably boring, and when looking at the circuit's map, there's over a dozen corners crammed into a 2 3/4 mile track, but there only seems to be two or three different corners being repeated. With so many repeated corners, none of them have any distinctive characteristics. Even trying to figure out where they are on track is a bit of nightmare, because of that. I know I'm not alone, because even the commentators had real trouble identifying what corner the cars are going through when something happens.
And of course something did happen. The short of it is that one driver's car had a spring break off and bounced along the track for something like 500 meters and down a completely different area of the track, striking another driver on his helmet. As a result of the shock, he carried head-on into a tire wall at full speed with both throttle and brakes full-on. Was quite a tense and disconcerting time, since at the time of the crash people thought the car had it's throttle jammed open and he was trying to stop it. Then word came out that a piece of another car broke off and may have contributed to it in some way. So qualifying was stopped for what seemed like an hour while the investigation carried on. Eventually, race management released onboard footage of the incident. (Not for the easily disturbed). Believe me seeing that at full speed on the big TV was really scary at just how much of a freak accident this was.
The next session carried on, even though the atmosphere of the whole qualifying was one of unease. At the very end of the session though all the Timing Displays failed completely. So for a while, nobody knew who had what times, as all the drivers were finishing up their final laps, and the whole system went down about minute from the end. Was amazingly hilarious to see everyone have no idea where they were at the end of it all, and all the drivers asking eachother what times they got so they could figure out what the order was. Apparently even though times were being recorded, none were being transmitted in the system. I went to bed at around 7:00-7:30am when I started feeling there was nothing more to see. I have a feeling the guy will recover from this accident, but I think his career is over, which is a damn shame and also disturbing, because I bet his compatriot feels like utter shit right now that the spring came from his car.
After my sleep I was preparing to watch the penultimate stage of the Tour de France today, because it was promising to be an absolute beast of a day. I'll let the official video of the stage profile do the talking on what this stage was about. What the video can't show you is what this mountain looks like, and I don't think there's a mountain like this anywhere else on earth, it is truly amazing. Basically the top of the mountain was completely deforested centuries ago, and all the soil has been washed away, leaving it completely barren as a moonscape. A Weather station was then built at the summit, but it's now a communications tower, which was where the stage was finishing. Not only is it such a steep climb to the top, but because there's no vegetation of any kind up there, there's nothing to protect the riders from the fierce winds that blow around up there. Once they pass come out of the tree-line they're completely at the mercy of the elements for the next 6.5 kilometers to the top.
As the routemap I traced shows, they first have to circle round to the south of the mountain, before they start actually climbing it. The mountain completely dominates the landscape, so it was in full view of the riders long long before they were anywhere near it. It's really such an amazingly sinister route to devise, especially on the eve of the Tour's end in Paris which has never been done before. I liken this stage in how the penultimate battle in a game is extremely difficult, while the final one, is just merely a formality. Which the run-in to Paris is always an arrival event, and not really a race.
The race up the mountain did not disappoint, the coverage was on for something like three and a half hours, with the final ascent taking just over an hour to do and Versus was extremely kind to have no commercial breaks for that ascent. That climb was what an ednruance event was all about. So much strategy involved in trying to break the competing riders mind and body with bursts of acceleration up the mountain, all the while trying to hang on to their overall placement in the race, every one of them defending against eachother by being both teams and as individuals at the same time. Being left behind was not an option for these, guys, they had to stay with their marks and charges for a whole hour up this massive mountain. I haven't watched the Tour in it's entirety before, but I'm so glad I have this year. It's been an amazingly awesome endurance event, with so many awesome guys doing amazing things over an entire month.
Tonight I watched the final episode of Kings. I will definitely snap up the DVD box for thsi series once it comes out. That final episode was a bit weak and loosely directed, bit the show on the whole was incredibly awesome. It's like one giant mini-series really. Easily the best Drama I've ever seen come out of the US. It was such a shame that it only got one season, but on the other hand I'm kinda glad it didn't get played out too much. Some of the best shows ever made, also have incredibly short runs. All I can say is that Modern Fantasy / Shakespeare / Story of David, is such a winning combination that it defies belief just how awesome this show has been. Watch this show, it is awesome, and I doubt anything like this will ever be seen again.
My day was not done yet, as mother nature provided a stunning tour de force with a hugely spectacular electrical storm. It started at around 8:30pm and wen on for well over two and a half hours. There had to have been a lightning strike every 1-5 seconds. This was going on non-stop. I had to unplug all my electronics as the lighting started to move directly overhead. I was proved right when a power surge from the lightning knocked everything out for a while. I have never seen such a severe electrical storm such as this in my life. We do get the odd electrical storm once every few years or so, but never with this sort of intensity. It seemed never ending. Needless to say I just simply watched the whole storm do its thing, not bothering to do anything else as it passed over.
UPDATE: Apparently Mother Nature isn't done. The storm is coming around again! Wow, I can actually see the two cloudbanks inn the darkness smashing into eachother that's creating this spectacle right outside the window.
Unforgettable day this has been, that's for sure.