Toy Run and New Years Day Meet

Well I've been back from my Overland to Oz trip for a couple of months now. Pedro arrived back shortly after me and is currently back in the Dreamshack having his engine rebuilt; it seems I may have cracked the crank case during that incident fording a river in Pakistan!

I've still been finding time for a bit of driving though; as well as regular meets at the Ace cafe with Petrolhead Nirvana we've also managed a few days out. Even at full fitness Pedro wouldn't stand a chance of keeping up with these guys so my Sebring is out of storage and back on the road. I realise most people store convertibles through the winter and use them in the summer but things have worked out a little differently this year.



On 30th december I met up with members of Petrolhead Nirvana, Fueltopia and Pistonheads at the Ace Cafe in London for our last drive together in 2009. Getting into the festive spirit we loaded our cars up with toys and headed across London to the Shooting Star Hospice in Hampton.

The Shooting Star Children's Hospice provides care, support and advice for children and young people with life-limiting conditions and their families. These care services are offered free of charge to families, 365 days a year across the western half of London and north Surrey. The care services are based around the needs of the whole family, so as well as caring for the children and young people, there are activities for siblings and support groups for parents and grandparents. This makes a real difference to families who find themselves in unimaginable circumstances helping them live life to the full by providing opportunities for fun and laughter, as well as helping them through the tougher times.

Shooting Star House provides expert care throughout the course of a child's illness and in the final stages of their life, supporting the family at all times.

Despite the Bad weather we had a good turn out of cars and received a warm welcome from the staff and children at Shooting Star who all wanted to take turns sitting in the cars, beeping the horns and hearing the engines rev. I think the smiles say it all.

We all loved meeting the children, families and staff and they certainly loved seeing the cars. It was really wonderful to see so many happy, smiling faces, hopefully we can return in the summer with even more interesting cars for them to play in.

Well we didn't get far into 2010 before the Petrolhead itch struck. Somebody suggested a New Years day drive and before you knew it we were tucking into hangover breakfasts at the Ace Cafe and set out to start the New years in style.

A new addition to the club joined us for the run down to the Phoenix Green "Weird and Unusual" car show, Mike and his white Audi R8. Also in the convoy were the usual suspects, F360, Viper SRT-10, BMW 130i, Mazda MX5's, Toyota Supra, Cosworth, Hawk Stratos and of course my Sebring SX.

Phoenix Green certainly lived up to the "weird and unusal" tag with a huge variety of fun, interesting, classic and, in some cases, quite frankly just odd vehicles which made everyone smile.

Someone mentioned Brooklands museum had a New Year car meet on too and we hit the road for a quick blast up to Brooklands. When we got there however we all decided we were too tight to pay a £9 entrance fee when we'd just had a great car show for nothing so spent the money on a pub lunch instead. It was a sunny but very cold day and I had the roof off so suggested one of my locals which I knew had a roaring open fire. Despite being in sunny surrey the Kingfisher aren't used to this kind of line up in their car park!