Pre-Ringmeet Roadtrip 2013 - Always check your nuts. (That's what she said)

[MWF]

I thought that was a neighbour rather than the daughter. She was hawt regardless.

 

[lip]

Thursday, 8th August 2013 - (Day 9 of 12)
This was the transition day from the Roadtrip to the Ringmeet. Not as exiting in driving terms anymore as some days before, but hey that's how it is. Anyway:

Good morning... to a new use of a wurfzelt that surely wasn't pictured in the brochure
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Breakfast with MWF telling us how cool the car museum was they went to whilst driving Sarah to Basel the day before. After I had a look at MWF's pics/cards, I will visit that Museum soon, for sure. Cool stuff. 3x Bugatti Royale!
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Of course, the usual round of "lame frisbee" happend, a very special FG game. It's about at old-people-home league. - And in the background a Frankiess making some instant new german barking friend. - Yep, you just know it by looking at these pictures: these morning hours, very exiting.
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Wohehey, much better: Some driving!
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Of course, beeing now in a populated region without any major hills anymore the twisties went mostly only on for a few minutes, before the next town always stopped the fun too soon. Some sort of interval-roadtripping. With this it was only a matter of time until we finally said goodbye to curves and changed to the real straight roads. - Target: Ringmeet, Victoria Station, Altenahr.

Last fuel stop, shortly after this we took lunch in Mulhouse (one car got lost and had to find us again, and I actually slept trough lunch in my drivers seat. Tsk Tsk.) and then we hit the Bahn. Still in France, tough.
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Got ya
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MWF seen here suffering listening to Jokers, ahem, superb in-car music. I only heard a sound-bite of it for about one second over the radio, but that was still enough for me to leave freak grip marks on my steering wheel. :lol:
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Short stop after crossing the german border. From here on it was Bleifuss time. And here I also noticed to my own surprise, with the BMW's now gone, I actually had the fastest car in this little group.
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Of course regardless of that fact I was very restrained and polite. I never flashed repeatedly at some slovenian Audi to shove him out of the way. Never happend.

Going for top-speed: According to the internet it should have been 235km/h for my V6 PSA motor. - Got 233km/h on the GPS (240 on the speedo).

Slowing down afterwards, and letting the others catch up:
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Off the Autobahn now, coming closer to the target. - This reminded me a bit of the VW test track in Ehra-Lessien.
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40 minutes to Altenahr. First time I've been in this region of Germany.
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Provision stop at Adenau
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A new trend coming in from Finland: Colour-coded shopping. :lol:
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Guess who had to transport this to the Ringmeet...
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Made it! Adieu Ringtrip, hello Ringmeet!
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Seems to be a tradition by now, flooding the local D?ner with Finalgearians...
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..and their cameras...
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... with predictable results.
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Coming from Switzerland and beeing used to high costs of living I was perplexed as usual at the cheapness of the food in Germany. It terms of money, not in terms of quality (that plate of Spaghetti I had for example was very good). About half the price as in my homeland. And I also was a bit perplexed about that certain hobby of my Finnish table neighbour: Collecting pictures of elbows... Ah, ok, ahem, the winters in Finland are probably very long, I guess. :lol:

More to come, stay tuned.


Edit: The rest of my journal (covering the final days during the Ringmeet) can be found here.

 

[IceBone]

No text with mine, I'll let the photos do the talking.

 

[Redliner]

I also have a Perry t-shirt, only mine is green. :lol:

 

[MWF]

And I am getting one as soon as I possibly can.

 

[loose_unit]

Joe will have the video from that; it lasted about 2 minutes :lol:

Here it is (note it falls at about 1:20):

Also; lol at the video of the Saab's wheel. From 'Can we think about looking for somewhere to stop' to 'o shit stop' in seconds

Was anyone recording with cameras good enough to hear our radio calls?

 

[Davetouch]

^ :lol: Didn't take long indeed...

And if you turn up lip's video you can hear the radio.

 

[47]

DAVETOUCH!!! :lol:

Must spread some rep etc. etc.

 

[loose_unit]

^ :lol: Didn't take long indeed...

I am glad we had the strap setup over the sun visor!

And if you turn up lip's video you can hear the radio.

Ah perfect! My sound must have been malfunctioning yesterday when I watched it (Dodgy cable on work headset) Love my quote "The wheel is coming off we think, it's gone all wobbly wobbly"

Also, I love the reply from Lip after we get on the radio and say "We have to find somewhere to pull over the car is making a funny noise" Lip says "No it's not" as if in desperation to avoid another breakdown!

 

[lip]

Well I couldn't hear any funny noises over the radio at the time (besides a certain funny kiwi accent), so I saw no reason to stop. Hehe.

 

[thomas]

DAVETOUCH!!! :lol:

Speaking of that name: When did you adapt the name here in the forums that I was using for you for years when doing ringmeet-lists?

 

[47]

Speaking of that name: When did you adapt the name here in the forums that I was using for you for years when doing ringmeet-lists?

I don't think I understand the Q

 

[thomas]

Simple: His nickname here used to be Speedtouch. Ever since I met him at Ringmeet 2011, I referred to him as Davetouch, mainy when doing Ringmeet-related stuff. Since not everyone got who I was talking about when just using "Dave" and I cba to use Speedtouch, I combined the best of both worlds to Davetouch . And just now I noticed, this made its way to the forums at some point apparently

 

[Davetouch]

Changed it about a week ago Yeah its got to the point that I don't go on FG other than for the meets anymore, and my name is Dave after all. It works and for that I thank you :lol:

 

[thomas]

I shall obtain the title "Creator of Davetouch". Well, the name anyway, not the person

 

[Davetouch]

Yeah that sounds much too wrong...

 

[TobiasG]

yeah....it's perfect!

 

[Sn0wman]

Awesome narrating Lip

 

[DaBoom]

My version coming up. In parts, like I did two years ago.

Also like previous years, I?ll start from few days before departure. The boat we booked was departing on Sunday afternoon, but I was planning on setting off Saturday morning, because I had Finnish BMW club meeting to organize nearby. The plan was to spend all Saturday there and then drive to my sisters place in Helsinki for the night. And as is typical for me I was still working on the car on Friday. Even if I ran out of time I was determined to change the dented left front fender before the trip. So that got hastily painted on Friday morning and more or less put in its place in the evening. At 10PM I thought I?d take a break and go pack for the trip (nice and early, as you do). I got the stuff sorted at around 3AM, and then made the mistake of buying Sygic navigation for my phone and spending next 2 hours programming the roadtrip route there. I was supposed to be at the meeting area at around 8 to meet up with other organizers, so at 6AM, with 1? hour drive to go I went back to the garage, to my still unpacked car to finish the wing installation. Needless to say I was a bit late to the meeting, but I don?t need a morning coffee anyway, so meh.

I spent most of the day at the entrance welcoming people to the meet, but when I shifted positions few times for some photos along the planned route I discovered that something in my air conditioning started to give up on me. Nice timing! Surprisingly I started to doze off in the evening, having not slept for 46 hours. I thought I?d head home instead of Helsinki, so that I can also check what?s wrong with the AC before setting off. In the morning I confirmed that AC compressor bearings were to blame, and the only fix would be to change the compressor. So after the short-ish drive to harbor we had a gear.fi minimeet, as I took in some more camping gear from frankiess and Galantti. Lastsoul was supposed to be there as well, but he managed to mistime his arrival by almost an hour.

MXMs tent still missing

Different kind of roadtrip car. Interior was mostly stripped as well..

The boat trip was as boring as usual, nice calm weather and almost nothing to do. Interwebs were basically limited to IM only, so Beni was kind enough to check out if a replacement compressor could be found so we could change that when we would visit him. Travem?nde welcomed us in a typical manner with an evening storm when we arrived on Monday at 9PM. Our plan was to split up so MXM would make it to the one shop I (thought I) knew was open ?till 10PM, while I would stop at the harbor shop to pick up some cider for some Croatians.. Well, that plan went just as well as you can imagine. While I know where I?m going, MXM doesn?t. I had set the navigation for him, but as maps and driving from memory can differ quite a bit I spent the next 40 minutes trying to find him, nearby some shops in the wrong place, and also already closed. So we were nice and late to arrive to Eye-Qs, who had kindly offered us a place to stay for the night, even if he had to wake up for work next morning. But despite the late schedule there was still time to check out his awesome (model) car collection and highlights of the latest TG episode.

The welcoming Travem?nde weather

Tuesday started nice and early, as we set off when Eye-Q was leaving for work. First stop was just around the corner at the nearest Lidl, because as a true nerd MXM needed to top up his mobile data card as soon as possible. Most of the day was then spent on the autobahns, keeping the relatively leisurely pace dictated by the 7. We arrived at Benis in the afternoon and headed straight for some nearby wreckers to see if they would have the AC compressor for me. One place claimed they would have one, but turned out they were wrong. Returning from the parts run we went for a meal and tour around the city centre, as most of the roadtrip crew was expected to arrive at much later hours. When we returned we noticed a topless Swede on the parking lot. After a shopping trip to the nearby mall we set for the (surprisingly long) wait for the mostly Norwegian reinforcements to arrive.

On our way to the mall in Benis old Merc

MXM checking his nuts (brakes to be exact, but that?s not nearly as funny)

There was time to set up a stand for the bleeding operation, which of course didn?t go as well as expected.

Then we moved some cars and parts around to make use of the available facilities to watch some Top gear and videos from earlier roadtrips.

At around 11PM Adrian and TobiasG arrived with LoOsE_uNiT and Shad, with worrying news about a knocking Alfa. As it was already late it was decided that the issues would be investigated further in the morning, and after setting up tents and watching some more Top gear we set down for the night.

V12 powered Bavarian camp site light

Wednesday started nice and early, as I, for some reason, went to wake up early -mode, which lasted for the whole trip. Woke up at seven and got up at around eight almost every morning. As most of the crew was still sleeping I wasted some of Benis valuable packing up time, as he took me for a tour to less used parts of their awesome family owned old, closed down brewery.

View of our camp ground with some more light.

Upper floors of the old brewery

And a quick peek of the view from the roof through a small hatch

When rest of the people woke up it was time to tackle the Alfa problem. It was said before the trip, that a CV joint in there would need to be replaced in near future, but should hold for the trip. So when some knocking appeared it was of course assumed that the CV joint was to blame. Few calls to nearby Alfa dealership and some wreckers, and the same place that said they?d have a compressor for me promised they?d have a fitting joint for the Alfa. So Tobias set off to the place with Shad as an interpreter. Soon enough with got a call from the side middle of the road, that Alfa has almost lost its wheel and they need a jack and some tools. So rest of us went to the scene to gloat help.

Nice place to do some quick fixes on the car..

Meanwhile onboard team camping gear, moar tents!

MOAR!!

So, half past noon we finally set off for Switzerland. Most this day was spent on autobahns as well. And if you don?t count one missed ramp for some cars due to roadworks and traffic, and MXM loosing a screw (that turned out to be fatal for the engine later) all went smoothly. Until we hit a traffic jam, 12km from the campsite. After sitting still for some minutes I noticed that we could sneak out to the next ramp, and onto some alpine passes we were supposed to drive anyway, although we were supposed to set up the camp first. After trying to send some info to lip of our plans and a needlessly long fueling/camera rigging stop we set off for the northern loop of the figure 8, consisting of Sustenpass, Grimselpass and Furkapass. Being rather late in the evening all passes were almost empty, and the sun setting on the high horizon added to the already spectacular views. It really made the day, and I did get a tad carried away with my improved chassis and steering feel.. It was already getting dark when we finally arrived to the campsite to meet up with our final Finalgear pre-ringmeet pre-roadtrip... roadtrip :? members, lip and joker. After setting up the tents we headed for the village late enough to find out that all the kitchens had just closed. Fortunately one restaurant was kind enough to prepare a group meal for us.

Some on the road spottings

A fairly good group shot

My new multi function steering wheel!

Closing in on the Alps

Objects in the mirror might zoom past at ludicrous speed if bored

At the top of Sustenpass

Cooling off

My car + some attempts at drive by shots..

Grimselpass

Heading down Furkapass

Part 2 will be released at some point.

 

[Redliner]

Very good pictures.