The day the Ferrari's came!

Phil's recent car news really threw down the gauntlet & SALT has responded accordingly...

Breakfast yesterday was interrupted by a low, roaring buzz that sounded like an angry swarm of somethings approaching the plateau.

Fortunately, it was only the arrival of the new fleet of SAAO & SALT cars!

Thanks to the money saved with the budget farewell we put on for our Director, we could finally afford to upgrade the site's motley collection of vehicles.

We anticipate a dramatic improvement in our response times for call-outs (along with the consequent reduction in the amount of "time off in lieu" claimed by staff on standby) & look forward to an overall increase in efficiency thanks to elevated morale stemming from our new corporate identity.

All the peasant cars were moved over to the northern end of the parking area to make space for the new ones.

Looking like a bloom of red spring flowers, they packed the SALT parking lot.

Alas - this was in fact a visit from the Ferrari Club!  A total of 45 cars & about 80 members, most from Gauteng, made the "arduous" trek out here & toured the Observatory.

The visitors were divided into two groups which took turns exploring the visitors centre & the top of the hill. 

Up top they proceeded to the small telescopes on foot, leaving the little people to gawk around the parking area without having to sacrifice tooo much dignity.

Here's the second group making their way up...

This ought to have been a video clip with sound...  Siiigh :)

Spot the plucky little Nissan bakkie jockeying to lead the rest of the fleet!

Other than the spectacular array of mutilated bugs on the front ends, most of the cars were still remarkably clean & shiny by this stage - how do they do that?!

An interesting way to think about all this is to consider that much of a second SALT could be built for the cost of this impressive collection of wheels.  Not that SALT handles as well, nor sounds as good, when going flat out ;)

They actually weren't All red.

Let's hope that our sleepy little Karoo town had enough petrol to equip everyone to make their way back to the real world - or at least to Laingsburg or Touws River!  Perhaps by now the Sutherland/Matjiesfontein road's littered with dried out red cars?

After any good binge, the hangover's almost inevitable & in this case the contrast's particularly stark: the weather's tanked, the swish cars are gone & it's just us chickens again...

But for a few of us, driving between the Observatory & town will never be the same again ;)