June 10, 2007 - This is a very sad announcement to have to make.
We are postponing our Targa effort until 2008.
The culprit? My marriage. I'm a Canadian citizen, and Janel is American. This will result in a green card for me, but until that is granted I am not able to leave the country as my existing visa is now void. The turnaround time for a green card is 2-3 months and I have to gather some other paperwork from Canada that will take a couple of weeks. If you look at a calendar, you'll see that it's very likely that I won't have a green card in time and there's no way to speed the process.
I can get permission to leave the country - but this also takes 2-3 months to obtain. In the meantime, Eric and I were scheduled for a Targa driving school at Mosport next weekend and there was a good chance I wouldn't be able to get back into the country. Meanwhile, there's the added complication of a ridiculously slow Canadian passport office, who have been sitting on my paperwork for about three months now. I did consider trying to bluff my way through, but the long-term consequences of getting discovered are too great.
This was a surprise to say the least. Had I known about this, I would have scheduled the wedding (at least the legal part) differently. Janel's the sort of girl who was willing to forgo an immediate honeymoon so I could run the Targa, so she would have been fine with that.
There is a bit of a silver lining. This will give me more time to test and prepare the car. Eric's job was interfering with his preparations pretty badly and now he has an extra 12 months to get ready.
I'm torn up inside. I've known about this for about four days. It's not the reason I've been working so hard on the car over the weekend, but it does make the postponement seem like less of a defeat. I'm used to overcoming obstacles with race cars and races - the ability to knuckle down and get things done is one of the skills that separates the lightweights from the serious competitor. But the combination of the Canadian and US governments has defeated me temporarily.
While we will not be competing in Targa 2007, we will be in Newfoundland in 2008. We've already registered.
tags: announcements |
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