To celebrate the happy occasion, we did the logical thing: we went for an advanced driver training course. For those among you who find this slightly less obvious than I do: the course was a present for hubbie's birthday 1.5 years ago, but we never actually got around to taking the course, and the soonest available date happened to coincide with my birthday.
So instead of a nice lie-in, we were up with the chickens and on our way to the test course. Once we got there, it turned out that there were 3 groups taking three different courses. Oddly, these appeared to be age-related. There was the 'refresher course' (really old people), the 'how to annoy other people slightly less whilst maneuvering with a caravan course' (old people) and the 'I wanna drive fast but I wanna do it safely course' (us).
The day started with a theoretical framework about speed, brakes, car physics and other undoubtedly important but not very interesting stuff. Once we got that out of the way, we were off to the test track:
The track consisted of various tracks, which contained slippery bits and lots of sprinklers for added fun. To the left you can just make out the outer circle of the roundabout where we practiced understeer and oversteer. After that we were off to the far right (cropped out of the picture) where we got a taste of what an 'emergency brake' actually means. And to make it even more interesting, we got to do emergency brakes while trying to swerve around obstacles. You'd be amazed at how well steering goes even when you have 2 feet on the brakes!
Far in the distance you can see a slippery slope, which ends in a slippery curve. Here we got a taste of how much a descent influences the length of your breaking path and had we not been on the safe course but on an actual hairpin bend in midwinter, we'd have all ended up at the bottom of the ravine. Lesson learned: you pretty much cannot go slow enough!
Last but certainly not least, we went to the 'shake me up' track, which you see in the right of the picture. You simply accelerate and drive onto the slippery track. The fun bit is that when you cross onto the slippery part, your car is nudged by an invisible thingymajig in the road and randomly gets thrown to the left or the right, with greater or lesser force. And then it's a matter of counter-steering and safely decelerating. Although I will happily confess that the runs where I forgot to decelerate were the most exciting ones; they were one big happy whiiiiiiiiieh! Hubbie managed to do a 180. Twice. I guess that makes me the designated driver for the foreseeable future. And beyond.
The course was only half a day, so we paid a visit to the Aviodrome, a large aviation museum, which happened to be right next to the test course. Hubbie and I are both aviation nutters, so we'd already been there several times, but we always manage to find some bits and parts we'd never seen before.
Today we visited the replica of 1920's Schiphol airport, which was an absolute gem, both inside and outside:
The people lucky enough to work there appeared to have a lovely sense of humour:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.
Today is the stewardess' birthday, so in celebration we'll be doing 20 loopings!
Of course the planes are the focal point: the museum has over 100 planes on display. Most of them are inside a huge hangaar:
However, the Boeing 747 and some other planes wouldn't fit, so they are displayed and fully accessible outside:
As a gnome I'm intrigued by everything that flies (see my treatise on chickens and my celebratory piece on our national airline) and I would have loved to become a pilot. I'm telling you: we're made for that kind of stuff. Look at all the shiny gauges and buttons!
The Aviodrome is not just about planes, it also tells the history of aviation in The Netherlands, all the way from Anthony Fokker who flew his home-built air-plane 'Spider' over his home town of Haarlem in 1911...
... to the current space age. It would appear that NASA was slightly reluctant to donate some original spacecraft to the museum, meaning the mock-ups looked slightly less convincing than the real deal.
Hmmmm. That antenna looks slightly familiar. Let's have a closer look:
I could have sworn I'd seen it somewhere before. Oh wait, I remember!
I kid you not, they actually used an IKEA bowl in the mock-up. But hey, I won't tell anyone if you won't!
The reason Aviodrome is one of my favorite museums, is not just the planes, but also how they make learning stuff about aviation very immersive, insightful and imaginative. To explain the effects of gravity for example, they have a scale you can stand on, and by pressing the various buttons, you could see how much you'd weigh on the moon, on Mars or on Jupiter. Apparently Jupiter is a no-go, but Mars is very inspiration for someone trying to lose weight!!
It was starting to become a rather long day for me, so we went home and got some rest before we went for the last stint; our traditional birthday diner with the family. Can you guess which plate was mine?
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