Standing On Boxes

Just hanging out today. Watching a bit of tv. Reading fic.

• UT beat Georgia by some overly large amount.
• The Best of Top Gear (Not sure if it was a single Top Gear episode or segments from different episodes)

Trying to kill a Toyota truck – it was run against a tree; drowned in high tide; a camper was dropped on it; a wrecking ball hit it. They had to set it on fire to break it completely (I assume. They don’t show it running after the fire).

A race between a speed skater (whomever was fastest in the world when that segment was filmed) and a new Jaguar. On a speed skating oval. We all know who won, right? Wonder how much it cost them to run a car on it.

Something about a Lamborghini and the running of the bulls in Pamplona(?)

A challenge with vans (3 different sizes – one per host. Not US mini-vans. These are vans used to move/carry things. Used by tradespersons – plumbers, electricians, locksmiths, etc.)

Some kind of car hockey (Mini-sized cars on snow) (Norway somewhere?) and a large “puck”

Blowing up a 23 story apartment building from the 60′s London — (And 240 feet up at the top of this edifice — is that Toyota truck, somehow rescued from the fire. Not sure it was still running though. They took it off a flatbed. Oops — they bought a mechanic and once they pried it loose from the rubble — he got it started.  It wouldn’t pass an inspection (the frame is cracked in half – only the bodywork holding it together) but it actually was still mobile enough to drive into the studio at the end of the show.

• And now a “Top Gear” Special Guests episode – which I’m not going to comment on as much. Not familiar with the celebrities.
  • Jeremy Clarkson (the tall guy.) raced a couple mountain climbers to the top of a 1200 foot mountain. He had an Audi RS4. His route to the top was 60 miles of twisty roads around a lake. One of the climbers was the celebrity (some kind of famous “speed” climber). The climbers got to the top approx. 10 minutes before he did. And they beat him back to the bottom — they jumped (yes, parachutes).
  • Some history of a famous Ford (British of course) van. And then — some famous race car driver/celebrity ( Sabine Schmitz had bet Jeremy she could drive a van around the Nürburgring faster than he did in a brand new Jaguar. So they took her up on it. She got close. (See the wiki entry on her for details of her Top Gear appearances.)