Chesterfield

he isnt... Please pick one or compress both into the space of one. Before anyone comments, mine at present is slightly larger than the 500x100 but its that size in order to be clear, for obvious reasons. Although I fear I may change mine back again soon Ta, Chris.

Everyones in the garage tweaking and polishing ready for JAE.

Just read the same - I think the point to take from it all, and sadly its a little late for that unfortunate soul... Never let a dealer wash your car. I certainly dont, and although Im probably not the best at washing my own car, if I scratch it or damage it in any way, I find it a lot easier to live with and a whole lot less stressful than if someone else did it.

Hi Stephen, great to see you again - sure you are more than welcome to join the stand again. Look forward to your hosting of the Show N Shine again (are you doing it again?).

Myself and Tracy will be aiming for the same arival time too. All depends on how quickly I can leave the office on Friday.

We shall be there early/mid evening too..

Can we keep it to Signature requests and discussion rather than following the crude direction of threads? Ta, Chris.

Sorry guys - locked before this thread has the chance to become messy. We all like the odd bit of banter, but continuing threads that have the potential to become full blown arguments, and damaging to the community as a whole will be locked. Yes - Im a killjoy, Ill get over it.

My Z is yellow and Im sophisticated! Honest. I do like the Masserati, but theres something just not quite right about the back end in my opinion. Perhaps the whole thing is too much like the Aston V8, which just does that shape a whole lot better. Clearly they are nice cars in their own right, but theres just something not quite right.

Myself and Tracy will be there on the Friday night too - meal and beers sounds good to me

Im in

Ticket for 33 in a 30 is a complete and utter joke. As Kev says, you couldnt ask for more clear evidence that its not about cutting speed and saving lines, and more about hitting targets and generating revenue. Utterly pathetic. How exactly are people to have faith in or respect for the policing in this country if this is the sort of action we have to endure. Next they'll be telling us that cameras are sited in locations where they need to cut accidents - and not in locations where they are likely to catch out more people

Can I order a medium black for Mrs Chesterfield please

Dont worry - more air travel is on the cards and the replacement for the z in time to come will almost certainly have a larger engine

Working in the energy sector, I can quite honestly say the industries such as OFGEM and Energywatch are for the most part useless. Some years ago, our company was present at a meeting of intermediaries, suppliers and regulators where it was all but clear that the sector was closer to a cartel than any regulated industry. The view from the inside is laughable sometimes. The major suppliers in the sector or bending customers over a barrell and have been doing so for some time, with no action what so ever to alter it. Ive seen litterally dozens of examples in our commercial office alone of little old dears on energy deals being presented with renewal documents that are (for the elderly) hard to read, impossible to understand, and when we have unravelled the documents for them, discovered that the supplier is attempting to shaft the little old dear for up to £1000 per year! We are talking in some circumstances these OAP's deciding between food and paying the gas bill. When I know the real prices of energy available, that sticks in my throat a bit. Every example was reported, and nothing done. The response as always, that they are unable to interfere with the profitability of a private company. We only had a couple of dozen, but we are a commercial intermediary, and dont normally deal with any domestic enquiries anyway. There will be tens of thousands of OAPs out there right now, being shafted and having their quality of life lowered by suppliers charging them many hundreds of pounds more than the going rate for energy. Sorry to go on, but it annoys the hell out of me seeing the actions that are undertaken by some of these companies. On the lightbulbs, we have some, but I just find they are generally a little "yellow" for the first few minutes of use, which can be annoying when you want the light "now!". In bedside lamps, toilets and areas where the lights will be on quite a lot of the time, they are great.

The best way to cut your energy bills is to make sure you keep an eye on any automatic renewal notices for supply contracts. Dont just simply assume you are getting a good deal as your supplier has always done right by you in the past. Specifically with business energy contracts, automatic renewal notices from major companies are often well over 33% higher than standard prices. In some cases Ive seen renewal notices at double the going rate. The companies do this as they know (and Ive had this stated by them) that over 50% of people simply accept what they are told and continue with what the company puts in front of them. As energy prices are one of the key factors affecting inflation, you would have thought that the government may have done something about companies trying to pull the wool over consumers eyes to such an extent, but they are powerless to interfere with the profit level of a private company (even if it is affecting national inflation levels).

With the weather continuing to be on the damp side Ive just booked into the hotel too (same as mike posted earlier) for the Friday and Saturday. Although the camping can be extremely funny listening to all the drunken conversations taking place in tents around the place, Im guessing the ground could be a little squidgy if this weather does not change, so Ive chickened out this year and will be indoors. Sorry

I think the entire logo uses about 65 layers or so, damned arkward some of those shapes. How people create designs like the one on the following link, I have no idea! http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/8212 ... 04crz0.jpg

Finally finished the forum logo. Heres mine, along with a spot of sideways round Silverstone and some desperate braking into breidscheid on the ring Click to enlarge: Anyone wanting the forum logo for their cars in Forza is more than welcome to send me a friends request and we can sort out gifting of unlocked cars so you can get the logo off and saved for use on whatever you like. Gamertag is C3ALL Ive saved the outline, text, and Z all seperately so those items can be used individually if you like (see the Z in the rear nuber plate).

I have to dissagree with the "tiring on long journeys" point. Having covered just over 2500 miles in two weeks on the Euro trip, including two single day journeys of over 400 miles, and one of 380, I feel I can speak with some experience on the matter. After each of those journeys I can conclude that I got out of the car feeling a whole lot less tired than had I done the journey in my Golf, or even the Altea which is a little larger. It may well have been the French motorways, as I also feel they are a lot less tressful to drive on than our own. The 350 eats up the miles, perhaps not as easily as some executive saloon or boat on wheels, but I do not feel the 350 is any worse than a typical family hatchback for taking its toll on long journeys, and in my opinion better than some. The wind noise I do not think is high either, however Im comparing this to my previous Golf (aerodynamic as a brick), our Mazda MX5 (v high wind noise), and my previous cars (typical 90s brick like design). It is probably higher wind noise than the altea, but there have been specific design elements put on the altea to reduce wind noise (windscreen wipers hiding in the A pillars for example). Average MPG of 19.8 I can beleive if they did quite a lot of urban driving. We averaged well above that in Europe, but that was majority extra urban. If you care that much about MPG, you dont buy a car with a 3.5l engine in the first place.

Yup - google, yahoo etc. They can be a pain as they screw up the most ever users online stat, but now that they are blocked from the bandwidth heavy areas, they dont cause as much trouble as they used to!

Dont forget also, the area was hit by a hurricane around 24 months or so ago, which means a lot of the seafront bars and complexes with beach bars etc will have been newly renovated. The beach bar complex we had in Cozumel was all brand new, most of the resorts took the opportunity during the rebuilding of beachfront complexes to refurbish most of the resort at the same time.

hey took the dollar for just about everything - to be honest we put most of the trips on credit card, I cant remember how much we spent in total, but trips and cash for tips etc probably came to about £500 for the both of us. If you are planning on swimming with dolphins, add a few more pennies and if you do swim with them, go for the full package that normally includes a good hours swim with them, rather than sitting in a petting pool etc. We did it some years ago on the other side of Mexico in Puerto Vallarta, so didnt do it again in Cozumel (island 30 mins from Cancun). For taxi rides into the town in Cozumel and in the shops they took the dollar. They are geared up for the cruise ships which dock almost every day. If its similar to our experience, local markets and souvenier shops have two prices - one for days when a cruise ship is in and the rich americans are wandering round, and one for when there isn't a ship in. Your aiming point for any haggling should be at least half the price on the ticket regardless of the day. The people are generally very friendly, though if they sense you are buying (a carrier bag with purchaes in), be prepared to be heckeled from every other shop in an effort for you to buy from them also. My advise would be if you are wanting to buy stuff, spend a day wandering round and deciding what you want, then go to the specific items you want on another day to conclude a deal. If you wander round with purchases from one shop, the heckling from all the others trying to get you will wind you up so much you'll want to smack someone. The generaly are polite though and will take no as an answer. Ive been to other destinations (on in particular was jamaica) where they will actually try and take you by the hand and drag you into their shop. In Cancun and surrounding areas they know that tourism is the main revenue generator for the area and have learnt not to bite the hand that feeds. So expect pleasent and friendly heckling! The tour of Chichen Itza is great. Its worth going on an organised tour instead of making your own way there as the local knowledge of the site is invaluable and the guides will explain the various buildings and their purposes. All very interesting. There is a ferry over to Cozumel from Playa Carmen, that is the island we stopped on, its about a 40 minute trip. Not a massive ammount to see on the island, but if you go over there and hire a car for the day $50 ish, you can drive round the entire island in 40 minutes, get to the other side of the island and you can have acres of beach to yourselves if you want to get away from it all. We had a great time in Mexico, both several years ago in Puerto Vallarta and more recently in Cozumel. I would have no hesitation or doubts about going back to that country again in the future, hopefully we will again one day, but there is a lot more of the planet to see - with any luck it will be as pleasant as both of our trips to Mexico.

Have a look how far Xel-Ha is away from your resort. Its an eco park south of cancun. It is without a doubt one of the best snorkeling days I have ever had - its normally bundled with a trip to Tulum (mayan ruins) but id give Tulum a miss and sped the whole day at Xel-Ha, especially if you plan on going to Chichen Itza (spectacular ruin of mayan city). You can do underwater walking, with weighted helmets (sadly I cant do anything like that due to part of an eardrum missing), snorkeling, swim into caves etc etc. Its a great day out. If you have an underwater camera, take it. If not you can buy disposable underwater cameras, you need to get pretty close to the fish, but trust me that wont be a problem. I swear I almost soiled myself when swimming amongst small rainbow fish, I turned a corner and some 3ft purple coloured snapper thing with a gob the size of my fist was staring me in the face. Luckily it was a veggie, and just wanted to have some of the fish food I had in my mitten which you can grab for free from the various feeding stations dotted around the place.

Still working on mine