Zack's international travels

So I'm finally posting a blog about what i got to do this year. Last november my brother Jake told me that he had a good friend that lived in Montreal Canada. Jake knew that there was a Formula 1 race in Montreal and that i was a huge fan, so he asked his friend if we could come and stay with him for a race weekend. He said sure no problem, so Jake and I started looking for cheap tickets to fly there.

For those of you unfamiliar with Formula 1, it is the world championship of motor racing. Auto manufacturers from around the world compete in a global series where races are held in different countries each time. The drivers are the worlds best and the cars are on the leading edge of technology. Mercedes, BMW, Honda, Toyota, and Ferrari all currently race and Ferrari is the only one to compete all through the modern F1 era, and has more Championships than any other by far.

Anyway, this years Canadian F1 race was the only one on the North American continent. Jake and I found tickets for the race in june and booked them in December along with our flight and we were set.

When we got there we were met by Jake's friend Poresh and his friends Sonny and Kunal and they said they had a suprise for us. We had brought our sleeping bags so we could sleep at Poresh's place but they had gotten us a hotel room downtown on Grand Prix weekend and simply refused to allow us to pay for any of it. Then they took us out for some of the best Chinese food I've ever had. We sat on a balcony above the street and were able to watch all the people and cars out for GP weekend which is about like the 24th of july in Manassa but with about 3 million more people. I'd really never seen anything like it.

The race is held on public roads in a huge park on a man made island in the St Lawrence River that was constructed for the 1968 World's Fair. The park is very beautiful with tons of huge trees and waterways and a giant rowing basin that was made for the 1972 Olympic Games. We took the subway to the track and then crossed a bridge and as we were crossing we could hear the cars as they rocketed down the back straight at 215 mph. We were still a half mile from the track! We found our seats and we were only 5 rows up from the track with the cars braking from 200+ down to 45 for the hairpin right in front of us. 4 and half negative G's for the drivers. Anyway we spent 3 great days in Montreal with the track during the day and Jake's friends taking us all over town at night. You can see that I got very sunburned, I didn't care. Thanks to my brother Jake for making this one of the best trips for me ever.