I bought my first Audi when I was 24.

When I was still working from my home office in Gardens, I used to ogle my neighbour’s Audi A3 and dream of the day when I would own one.

Not long after, Parri and I started car shopping and researched everything from Ford Fiestas to C3’s. On a whim (yeah right), my car fanatic husband-to-be took me to the Audi dealership “to have a look”. Needless to say I fell hopelessly in love with the Audi A3 Sportback and promptly traded in my 1989 1.8 Citi Golf.

It’s now four years on and my hopelessly extravagant, yet never ending pleasure generating bullet is still lovingly caressed each time I slide behind the steering wheel. (I do the same with my Mac. Each time I open it, it gets a little pat of affection thanking it for being perfect, beautiful and for delivering 5+ hours of battery life.)

So when Joe suggested an Audi MVP day, I willingly volunteered my time and even offered to hang on to the back tyre if space was limited.

Some of you may remember by Tweet asking Audi drivers to put their hands up. I sent this list to the newly formed organising committee (Joe and the fabulous Chris Rawlinson) and sat back. As always, the boys delivered. Before I knew it they had Audi Centre Cape Town on board and a full out-ride had been planned.

My highlights:

• Driving the Q5, A5, TT Roadster and the new A4.
• Driving them responsibly. (*ahem splutter splutter*)
• Finally going to The Toad at Noordhoek Village.
• The boot closing button on the Q5.
• The clear, sunny, winter’s day – perfect for driving a TT.
• Having Joe as my driving partner. With him in the car I could sing as loudly as I liked.
• Dicing Gaby down Beach Road with her behind the wheel of an R8 and Joe driving the TT. My life, she did flash before my eyes.
• Getting slightly tipsy on Haute Cabrierre Chardonnay Pinot Noir on a Friday afternoon.
• My neighbour’s sms when he spotted me in a black top down number.

The verdict, I think a Q5 for weekends and a TT for the day-to-day commute should do just fine.

A big thanks to Wernich and his team at Audi Centre Cape Town for an unforgettable day.

• Tomorrow I turn 28. What a nondescript age. I feel old. I feel young. 28 feels like vanilla milkshake.
• Last week I started yoga. This week I started drinking tequila. I’m hoping the two cancel each other out.
• I found a new pottery studio that does wheel work and sculpting. I was amazed to find that working with clay is like riding a bike – once you have the fundamentals down you never quite forget how to do it.
• Nothing beats crisp winter days in Cape Town.
• My shared birthday party with Joe at Kink was a blast. I’m always blown away when people I least expect to come, show up.
• I hereby declare November as official baby-making month. The number of birthdays in July is overwhelming. Note to self: be extra careful.
• I’m learning to be selfish with my time. It’s taking time.
• Soon my blog will have a new theme so watch this space.

X

It was my dad’s birthday yesterday and during dinner last night at Bardelli’s (if you haven’t been and you are into pizza, GO!) the inevitable discussion about time and how it seems to be passing at a more rapid rate each year, came up.

I’m one of those lucky people who has a dad that knows everything – and if he doesn’t know, he’ll find out. He reads everything from National Geographic to Scientific American, knows about supernovas and why, even though the earth is spinning at almost 100kmp/h through space, there is no resultant wind on the earth’s surface. Ask Joe, he now knows why too

According to my dad, one of the theories on why time seems to be moving faster (apart from the one that says time is like a toilet roll: the closer you get to the end the faster it goes), is because of dark energy.

Wikipedia describes dark energy as:

“In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the rate of expansion of the universe. Dark energy is the most popular way to explain recent observations that the universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate. In the standard model of cosmology, dark energy currently accounts for 74% of the total mass-energy of the universe.”

Imagine that, 74% of the universe is potentially made of a hypothetical (i.e. as yet unproven) form of energy that we can neither see nor feel yet we experience it daily when we realise that 9am turned into 4pm and Monday merged into Friday before you could say: “What’s the time?”.

I’m getting that planet feeling again…