From an e-mail from Desiree Crossman, with John Hopkins:

Hello everyone,

Well, we are here in Japan at the Motegi circuit. We’ve been told it was out in the sticks, and to tell you the truth…it is. Some members of the teams stay here at the track and the rest stay in Mito, which is another 45 minutes away. Not to mention they drive extremely slow here.

Mito is a big city, pretty busy place. That’s where John and I were dropped off from the bus we took from the airport. 2 hour ride, then when we got dropped off–we had no idea how we were going to get to the track or where it was, for that matter. But luckily, John found Gaz (Garry McCoy) wandering around waiting for us. He was our pick-up, thank God!!

The track here is nice, though. If you ever seen the movie DRIVEN, there is a part in there that shows the CART cars testing at night around a ring. It’s called Twin Ring, that’s where we are at. So from our room you can see the track and that exact scene from our window. Pretty neat.

The Telefonica team arrived late, too. Their flight was cancelled as well so they didn’t show up until the same time we did. There was a typhoon here I guess, not as big as they thought but still big enough. For those of you who didn’t know, our flight was delayed on Monday for lack of crew. Then, it was delayed so long that they cancelled the flight ’cause by the time we got in Japan, there would be a typhoon so we stayed in San Jose for a night in this really nice hotel! REALLY NICE. The next day we were out so it wasn’t too bad. As I write this it’s 4:20 PST but 8:20 in the morning, the next day my time. Crazy how it works, huh?

Right-o, we are getting ready to go to the track in the yellow bus that transports you from the jail cell(the hotel) to the paddock. That’s what it really looks like, kinda resembles a mental facility, and the yellow bus doesn’t help the image either. LOL

Talk to you later.

Des and John