Today I was fortunate enough to get a whole day to spend doing my hobby - Geneaology. As many readers of my blog will know I am passionate about family history. So off to Olympia to see the “who do you think you are” exhibition. However I am also fustrated that the technology is quite slow to provide people with access to data to complete someone’s family research. We can all do dates and places back through our ancestors, but there is so much more than that. How did your family move around as the generations unfolded. Did the circumstances of the time force young families to migrate to the towns and cities or even further afield on one of the cheap migration tickets to Australia or America.

Now I have found a website that is really useful. Lots of sites offer research services, some offer CDs of data and records, others offer sofwtare, books, folders and storage boxes, but Ancestral Atlas offers keen genealogists not only the opportunity to earn a little money back from all their hard work, but also the ability to load up a gedcom file and see the map of all your families locations accross the ages.  A nice site, simple to use and well… the icing on the cake it can earn you money! At the moment a year’s subscription is only £20 - an absolute steel! get in their quick folks and find people who were born at the same time as your ancestros, maybe died in a tragic event or accident or perhaps a shared relative. www.ancestralatlas.com.

Well the loss of a glow plug and two ariel sleeves apparantly, once again, “don’t count” however the steering break that was rectified I grant could be overlooked.

But we still maintain no session escapes without a loss. By the way if “truggy boy” ever discovers this site by accident, be warned, you are not well liked:- corner cutting, side swiping and general disregard for the protocol and ettiquet of the world of nitro. watch your back.

So updating the eager readers on the running total of losses attached to the nitro buggy world. This Friday both Kenn and Phil did the good grace to walk in, and before being asked “how was it?” We had, “We broke something”. This turned out to be a Servo. Now we are told a Servo is small beans, it is still a loss. However the most ingeneous of solutions was presented to us to this problem: aparantly this kind of part would be best made available if Kenn bought a complete replacement car, obviously not new but perhaps one he had seen off Ebay. By my calculaton that would be No 4 in 2 years!

Now when we turned our concentration to Phil he splutters and blustered through his loss with calls of “Wear and Tear” and not really “breaking” anything. His loss was a glow plug. Now our challenge was not value related or whether something dies as wear and tear, just the count of losses and replacements excluding Oil and Petrol only. So I reckon it is Girls 3 and Boys 1.

Sunday was a dismal day, in such contrast to Saturday when I picked up my new glasses and did some gardening, the kids played outside and it was sunny. But Sunday the drains struggled with the deluge and the kids became far to aquainted with our library of DVDs, ahh well We can’t be perfect parents every day!

So out came the buggies. not just for pure race tuning, tinkering and a need to spead oil onto every surface, but a Respray! Phil chose an elegant metalic Blue that contrasted the lurid green spoiler and antena. Kenn was forever Kenn and chose flurescent Yellow and Orange which contrasted the luridicity of eachother! But forever believeing I do have some duties as a wife I agreed to embellish his efforts with some hand crafted flame decals and blacked out windows. So I am now well and truely tainted in to “Club Nitro”.

So today was the first day after the challenge has been set to see how many breakages and losses are actually experienced, oh and did they do me proud? Yes!

The location: TRCC Burlescombe, Nr Tiverton.

The going: Good to Firm -astroturf.

The conditions: Fair and clear.

In just one day Kenn lost a rear spoiler, then lost a complete backend, the damage of being rearended by another racer included sheered bolts, twisted rear wing support and bent rear shock tower plate and possibly a knackared diff casing. The total exchange of the back end had to be performed pit syle between the last of the heats and the finals. So joining the race final late he then completes the hatric with the front right CNC brand new knuckle, less than a week old, purchesed from ebay and installed just 3 days ago, yup destroyed. Kenn is suitably gaulled about this, (he says!) “You might aswell put on the cheap stuff, I put on expensive kit and it just gets destroyed!” - so now I get admission not only the kits gets damaged but there is expensive kit in this equation aswell.

Now Phil: Viciously side swiped by a fellow apponent! so he claims. He busted a knuckle. Kenn came to the rescue and gave him a new knuckle and dog bone. So to keep with the general theme of the day, he broke that too! And then there was the wheel - shattered!

So the score is somewhat in favour of the girls assertion that each and every race there is some damage experienced.

Ok bets are off! Kenn and Phil are into Nitro Buggy Racing. Every Friday evening the pack up their tool boxes and their starter boxes, rummage around for slicks and knuckles, doll the less fashionable items from their wardrobes and head off to spend an evening in a drafty barn with a load of other men who have no lives to speak of and swear and scoff at eachothers driving ineptness.

The problem is we, that is the nitro widdows Vicky and myself have dutifully babysay the collective brood whilst they sleep, russle up a tasty concotion, kickback for an evening of tv channel hopping and ebay cruising. Upon the boy’s return either before or after a sneeky pint to report to our best intended wishes of support along the lines of “how did it go boys”: we get “fine, so so, came first in one race and second in another, some idiot got the wrong transponder, my wheel fell off, I broke a servo, I broker two!

So this week we asked the suitable return of race question “how did it go boys” the reply was just “Great”, so I asked “did you break anything?” to which they reply “no”, I show suitable expression of surprise at this unusual situation and both Vicky and I try to remind the boys that every week they normally report something has broken, did not work, got trashed you name it there is a necessity to troop off down to Dorchester on Saturday morning to Ray’s RC to stock up on new “bits”! Obviously they then strenuously deny this is the Stautus Quo of Late Friday evenings. So we are about to document the trials and tribulations of the various mechanican, Hydraulic and elctronic bits of two nitro cars in Dorset.

I concede this week - no injuries, but watch this space. by the way this includes all sneeky spins in the park and Sunday race days, not just Fridays!! yes we begin to have to remind ourselves we have husbands during the spring and summer months, oh an autumn come to think of it as well!