This week is the F1 Grand Prix in Japan and Fujii-san is a fixer for the Renault team. One of his extracurricular responsibilities was to host the related journalists for a day of interviews and meeting some of Japan’s Alpine owners.
So he organised a daytime event at Monaca with lunch at Hangar eight yesterday, and recruited all of his Francophone friends to help keep up the conversation. I got invited, too, as an English speaker. I figured I’d be filling in background facts about Japan and generally conversing with the writers about whatever we might have in common. Generally helping to make them feel welcomed at Monaca.
I texted Mamiko after yoga class to tell her I’d be walking up to save space for all the cars I expected would be arriving. But that wasn’t the plan. They were coming by bus. I needed to use the Cow to transfer them from the parking lot at Oyama Senmaida, over to Monaca and then later to Hangar eight. What…?!
I didn’t exactly panic, but the fear of failure was upon me. Shuttling motorsports journalists who spend a lot of time writing about (and driving) fast cars was intimidating. I am not an excellent driver. Backing up and parking are stress-filled tasks for me. But I couldn’t say no, so I cleaned the tools and construction materials out of the backseat and got ready for passengers.
Turns out that they were all jetlagged and caffeine-deprived. They didn’t even notice my driving except where I called it out myself. I didn’t make any major blunders and everything was nominal. Maybe Dad was looking out for me; he was an excellent driver and loved fast cars, even racing stock cars as a young man. He would have enjoyed trading stories with these guys.
I should use this positive experience to rewrite my “I am a bad driver and I don’t enjoy driving” internal story, but I probably won’t. At least not until I can back the Cow around confidently without running her into things.
