Out of my Comfort Zone at Diggerland

This is not my usual writerly blog post but I think it's nice sometimes to break away and talk about something else... in this case dumper truck racing!

We bought this as a Christmas present for the (adult) children and it took place at Diggerland in Kent and we had to drive one of these beasties.

There were about thirty of us with four people in each heat. Alongside me in my heat was my step-daughter and two boy racers! Here's us lining up for the start.

What I can tell you, is it was NOT easy! The controls were really sensitive and the dumper truck seemed to go every way except the way I wanted to go. Also, my helmet was so big it kept falling over my eyes (maybe I can use that as an excuse for going the wrong way).

We had three heats with a variety of tasks (most of which involved weaving through tires or reversing). I did both these things but not necessarily in the right places... as the video shows!

This is the moment I crashed into my opponent. As you can see, it was quite obviously not my fault ;)

I was relieved when we finished - and so were my opponents (they considered themselves lucky to still be in one piece after racing against me).

Of course, it is the taking part that counts. I even got a medal... for coming last with minus 18 points (how is that possible?)

I was going to make this a post about how being out of your comfort zone can be good for your creativity (or something along those lines) but, you know what, I'm just going to leave this as it is, in the hope that you'll enjoy seeing another side to the author me. I'm now off to write a short story about it.