A View to Die For

Well, the Targa Adelaide Rally has come and gone and, while my co-driver and I didn't win, we never really expected to, we didn't come last. We had a great time and the car performed as well as we expected given the atrocious conditions over the first couple of competition days.

For those of you who have criticized my 'flow on sentences' in the past, you'll have a hernia with paragraph 4. This is a description of a couple of minutes of totally focussed, adrenalin pumping, high speed action, and I feel that this will suffer if I break it up for the sake of grammatical correctness.

This is a fictional account of the rally and beyond, although the actual stage descriptions are pretty much what happened. It was a steep learning curve for us but fun nonetheless. CM

*

Tiffany sat in the driver's seat of my Subaru SVX, her hands resting on the steering wheel. I was pleased to see that she wasn't gripping it hard, we had been over what was about to happen and she was as relaxed as I had come to expect her of her.

It had taken a lot of kilometres over winding roads for her to gain the confidence that would allow her to relax. That was the easy bit, getting permission for me to be her co-driver took some time and an actual demonstration of my agility to get in and out of the car with one and a half legs before CAMS would allow me to participate. The car passed through scrutineering without any drama, it was as ready as it could be, and it was now up to us.

This was the night prologue, a new innovation in the Targa championships and we were ready for the start of two laps of a tight and twisting circuit around the Adelaide Showgrounds. It didn't suit our car but as there were no competition points involved, we were going to give it our best shot and try not to make a fool of ourselves by crashing in front of a crowd some twenty four thousand, four times more than expected.

The row of blue lights lit up on the top the start board and she shifted the gears into first. The first row of red lights came on. "Five,' I started the countdown, "four, three, two, one, go." The car shot forward and quickly gathered speed as we headed for the first corner some fifty metres away. Still in first gear and pulling sixty kilometres an hour she backed off a little for this first tight right hander before accelerating towards the next corner, changing into second as soon as she straightened up and third about a third of the way before straight-lining the kink half way down this two hundred metre stretch. Moving over the spoon drain on the left to give herself a wider line, she downshifted to second into the next right hander and along the short straight to the first of two tight left hand corners. Another short straight into a right hand corner followed immediately by another and through the Supaloc gate and over a spoon drain across the track and into a left hand corner and a right hand sweeping bend in front of the packed tiered seating, this was followed by a left hand kink and a right hand sweeper before a sharp left leading onto a short straight and a right hand hairpin followed by a short left hand sweeper and a hundred metre straight and then a sharp right hand bend onto the start/finish straight and our second lap.

As we passed the start line to begin our second lap a Porsche Boxter had just started on its first lap and was about thirty metres in front of us. I looked at Tiffany and she had a smile on her face as she swept around that first right hand bend. We lost ground to its lighter weight and more power on the straight but caught up to it on the bends, our all-wheel drive and better balance meant that we could out-corner the Porsche, so we followed it closely until it pulled away a little on the two straights leading to the finish line. We weren't the fastest car on the track but that didn't matter, Tiffany had handled the car better than I had expected. "Well done." I reached across and patted her shoulder. She smiled at me and her left hand rested on my thigh.

We drove back around to the pavilion to be confronted by hundreds of people going around looking at the cars. A few of them were surprised to see Tiffany climb out of the car and walk over to where she had left my chair before wheeling it back to me. The motoring writer from one of the newspapers came over. "I saw your name on the entrants' list but not as the driver, so I thought that I'd come over and see what's going on. I remember your crash last year and was sure that we wouldn't see you back behind the wheel but this comes as a surprise." He was looking at Tiffany while he talked. "So who's your driver?"

"Brad, this is Tiffany and she and I make up a pretty good team."

"How long have you been driving?" He asked her.

"This is our first crack as a team at anything like this and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Matt and his patience and encouragement, plus the fact that it's his car. He's a good co-driver in that he's taught me how to read the road and conditions and, let me tell you I needed him today. This prologue is a long way from driving to work."

"And Matt, you're enjoying being back in the saddle so to speak?"

"I feel that I'm back where I belong and that I'm of some use to Tiffany, I find that I'm of some use even with one leg, after all this is a rally, not an arse kicking competition."

"Is that all there is between you two?" He was fishing here, but it was obvious just looking at us that there was more to this than just the rally.

Over the next hour the SVX got its fair share of interested people asking about it and Tiffany and I were kept busy, although I think that she attracted more attention because of her looks. We'd been there for half an hour when I heard a voice behind me. "Dad." It was Jason and Bethany and, trailing behind them, my parents. "You were great Tiffany", Jason went on, "I don't think even Dad could have driven better than that."

"Hi Matt." My father shook my hand and looked at Tiffany. "So this is the Tiffany we've heard so much about? I must say Jason's description hasn't done you justice." He held his hand out to her but she ignored it and gave him a hug.

"Tiffany, these are my parents, Jim and Julie, and this obviously is Tiffany."

Mum smiled and gave her a hug. "We've had glowing accounts of you, and Jim's right, they don't do you justice, I must say you look great in the race suit and I was a little worried when the kids told us that you were going to be driving but I can see that we didn't need to worry."

"Thank you, both of you. I wouldn't be in this position if it wasn't for Matt, he has really been very patient and allowing me to make the odd mistake without swearing at me has built up my confidence immensely."

"I think you'll make a great team in more ways than one and I do believe he looks happier than he has for a long time."

"Yeah, I try to keep him happy." She gave me a hug and, standing on tiptoe, she kissed me.

The kids wandered off to look over the other cars while my parents and Tiffany got to know each other. "Matt will have to bring you out for dinner one night." Mum said as they made moves to leave. The kids had found their way back and it was almost time for them to go home.

"Hey kids, would you like to have your picture taken in the car?" Tiffany asked them.

"Wow, you bet!" Jason said.

"Here put these on." She handed them our helmets and while mine nearly fitted Jason, Tiffany's was way too big for Bethany. They climbed into the car and Jason grabbed the steering wheel and, making engine noises, pretending to be driving in a rally. Meanwhile Bethany was pretending to be the navigator, calling pace notes to her brother. What happened next really shook me.

"Straight on over crest, a hundred and fifty metres to left 3, fucking hell what's that idiot doing, move you fool!" Then she saw the look on my face and stopped.

She must have overheard the nightmares that I was having after my crash. She climbed out of the car in tears. "Sorry Daddy, I didn't mean to do that. I remember that you used to wake me up at night yelling that out. We've seen the replay of your accident and it wasn't your fault."

"That's okay Honey, that's all behind me." I hugged her to me and let her cope with the emotions. Tiffany came over and knelt beside her and kissed her, whispering to her that everything was alright and that nothing like that was going to happen again, ever.

"We'd better get these kids home. Don't forget, we'll expect you for dinner, soon." Mum said.

"I'd like that." Tiffany told them. "As soon as I get a night off we'll organise something." She saw the puzzled look on Mum's face. "I work at the casino and that means I work most nights. I took a week off for this, so it might be a while before I can arrange more nights off."

"We'll look forward to it, whenever you can make it and Matt, you'd better make sure that she stays on the black stuff, she's a keeper."

We had to leave our car in the security car park so it was almost ten o'clock by the time we'd walked to the public car park and retrieved her car for the trip home, driven back to my place and could relax. We'd changed out of our race suits and were wearing just our underwear. She sat on the floor in front of me as I massaged her shoulders, surprised to find that there were no tension knots to be found. She sighed and leaned back against my leg. "That feels so good, you realise that I'll expect this every night, don't you?"

"And I suppose you'll expect this as well." I moved my hands from her shoulder to her breasts and began to massage them.

"Of course, and you'll expect this." She turned and slid her hand up my leg and began caressing my cock for a few minutes before taking it in her mouth and sucking it. The peace was shattered by the sound of my mobile phone receiving a text message from Targa advising us that we were expected at the showground at 8:30 the next morning. "I guess that we'd better get to bed hadn't we?"

Bed yes, sleep no. We talked for a while, she was whispering over and over to me, her voice soft and gentle. "It wasn't your fault, you're are a brilliant driver and when the time comes I'll be happy to sit beside you as your navigator, I have every faith in you because I love you so very much and know that we make the best team , we are the best and if anyone says different I'll give him such a hiding. I'm here for you my Darling, I'll always be here for you." Making love with Tiffany was never boring and this was no exception but it was a gentle process, a sort of coming down from an adrenalin rush and lifting my spirits kind of lovemaking, and after thirty minutes of it we were ready for sleep.

Next morning and the Goyder Pavilion was abuzz with activity, teams running last minute checks of their cars before the order to line up and move out for the transport stage to the first Targa competition stage. We were in the second group to leave after the Tour group had left. The traffic was heavy as we headed north towards the outer northern suburb of Blakeview and the Medlow Stage, a 3 kilometre uphill drag with a couple of bends thrown in to test our cars and skills. The weather was a heavy overcast with showers threatening, conditions that would favour us if anything, we had high performance road tyres with the differential between wet and dry performance being marginal. Some of the cars were running semi-slicks and would struggle for grip if it started to rain.

We had a short wait before the sweep car, a mean looking black Jaguar XKR RS took off to ensure the road ahead was clear. Then it was our turn, we were fifth in a queue of some eighteen cars in the Regularity classification, several Porsches and Mitsubishi Evo's along with a couple of Rex's, a Mini Cooper, a couple of Holdens, an FPV GT (Ford Falcon) a Toyota Supra and a new Toyota 86.

Tiffany took off without the same wheel spin that marked the Porsches struggle for grip on cold tyres, try as we did we could never get the SVX to spin its wheels, the traction control took care of that. She changed into second gear and left it there for the initial climb, it could run out to a hundred and twenty in second gear and we didn't need to go any faster. We were close to our time of two minutes for this stage but washing off speed at the end took longer than I'd anticipated and we finished four seconds ahead of time. "Good work," I told her as she eased back to the speed limit for the transport stage to our next competition stage, "It was my fault, I should have told you to ease back sooner."

"I was at fault as well, I got a little carried away." I knew that she smiled at me although her lips were hidden behind the chin bar of her helmet, her eyes smiled and I was amazed at how beautiful just that little bit of her visible face looked.

The next stage, Upper Hermitage, was a much longer stage with a couple of tight corners but most of it was easy with flowing curves that could be straight-lined. We were eight seconds behind our target time because I told her to take it easy in the early part of the stage and we found it difficult to make up the time at the end. While we waited for the start of the next stage, Anstey Hill, the weather turned from bad to bloody awful, strong winds and rain lashed us as we started up the hill. All of the competitors had trouble making the target time so we didn't feel too bad about our slow time. Tiffany did the right thing when she backed off a little, we hadn't had a lot of wet weather practise and she didn't feel comfortable pushing hard.

It was pretty much like that for the rest of the day and when we reached the start of the final stage, Castambul, we were well off the pace and it wasn't going to get any better. The board at the start set the conditions as 'WET' and warned of water over the road at several places. Tiffany pushed as hard as she could down Gorge Road but we were slow reaching the turn off to the notorious Corkscrew Road that culminated with a series of sharp hairpin bends as it scrambled up the steep hill to Montacute Road. "Someone's coming up fast behind us." She said.

"When you can, pull over, and give him room and signal for him to pass." The other car, a Porsche, swept pass on the short straight to the first hairpin, and that's where it got interesting. The driver was struggling for grip as he rounded the hairpins and we were able to catch him, but he was getting away from us on the short straights because of a little thing in the transmission of the SVX that I have since called the 'dickhead over-ride'. Let me explain; the transmission is essentially automatic but with the push of a button it becomes a manual transmission and changes gears when the driver chooses to, not the computer. However, if the driver is pushing a little too hard in a particular gear, in this case first, the little man in the transmission computer says 'you go too fast I change up for you.' And this just happened to be a nano-second before Tiffany backed off for the next bend resulting in the transmission changing into second gear and then realising that she was no longer revving hard, changing back into first. Normally this would cost us valuable time but we still managed to catch the Porsche by the exit so I guess the time loss was no big deal.

We didn't spend a lot of time in going over the day's stages, the weather was the deciding factor and our times were down. This meant we were accumulating a lot of penalty points and were effectively out of touch with the leaders. "You are doing really well, you've got a feel for knowing when to push and when to back off. I wouldn't be surprised if we lose a couple of cars from the main game today. We are in this to have a good time and to learn as much as we can about the Regularity classification. Just push as hard as you can and you feel comfortable with, and we'll see how we go for the rest of the rally."

"I know, and thank you for not swearing at me when the car slipped sideways on the Chain of Ponds stage."

"Did you really expect me to swear at you? What happened was that as we came to the bottom of the hill on that left hand sweeper the suspension bottomed out and as it recoiled it unloaded and this, combined with the wet road meant that we lost grip for half a second. As soon as the suspension loaded up again we were back under control. You held it brilliantly, you didn't panic and hit the brakes, so why would I be upset?" I had been massaging her shoulders that were a little stiff and sore from the long and hard day at the office. I leaned over and kissed her just to reassure her and this led to us making love for at least an hour before fatigue took over and we drifted off to sleep.

Friday and Day 2 of competition, and the weather was a little improved from Day 1. The first stage, Montacute was over 15 kilometres of winding road with few places where we could open up and make up time. We were off the pace but that didn't bother us because Tiffany was gaining confidence very quickly and, by the last day of competition I figured that she would be on the pace.

The next four stages were in the Adelaide Hills before we moved south to Chapel Hill that took us briefly into the wine region of McLaren Vale. We had to watch our speed on this section because the temptation was to open it up on the flowing bends and a couple of times the Rally Safe computer warned us that we were creeping up to our 130 kph maximum speed. We completed that stage a few seconds ahead of time but I didn't mind because Tiffany had shown just how capable she was on the more open and flowing roads, hitting the apex just right and powering through the corners.

The last stage of the day, Stirling, was always going to be tough, an almost 8 kilometre stage of winding road, with the first two thirds downhill and the final third up a very steep, narrow and winding road with the finish line on the exit of a corner. What made it even more difficult was the warning of water on the road. At the bottom of the hill, just as we turned onto Pole Road for the steep climb, there was a spectacular water splash with at least 150 millimetres (6 inches) of water running over the road. We tried but as we expected, were off the pace. We didn't care because we had finished the day in one piece.

The cars were required to be at what had been called the 'Targafest' on the main street of the inner eastern suburb of Norwood and all cars had to line up so that people could wander up and down the street looking at the cars. It was a cold and miserable and we felt sorry for the scantily clad girls that danced their way up the street to the beat of Latin drums. I guess the exercise kept them warm.

I saw Jason and Bethany walking towards us but my parents weren't with them, instead they were with Elizabeth, my ex. This had the potential for disaster written all over it. "Hi Dad, hi Tiffany." Jason said, forgetting to introduce his mother, leaving that to me.

"Tiffany, this is Elizabeth." I didn't see the need to qualify her status as my ex, Tiffany already knew that. Elizabeth stood there looking as if this was the last place that she wanted to be but Tiffany moved over to her and hugged her. If anything that made Elizabeth's mood worse.

"Hey kids, what say we have a look at the other cars?" She held out her hands and Jason and Bethany grabbed one each as they headed up the road.

"She's a nice girl Matt, I can see why you like her." It would have sounded like she was okay with that except for the strong emphasis on 'girl'.

"She is, I like her a lot, and she's only a year or two younger than you." As soon as I said that I realised that it was the wrong thing to say, but what happened next surprised even me.

She burst into tears and grabbed me in a huge embrace. "Oh Matt, I'm so sorry for what I've done to you, leaving you when you needed my support the most, and taking the kids with me. It was unforgivable of me. The kids miss you so much, I can see it when I drop them off to you and they can't wait to get out of the car and when you drop them back when it seems to take forever for them to walk from your car to the front door. They keep telling me how nice she is and how good a driver she is, and I realise that I should have made more of an effort to save our marriage."