Dr_Grip
Made from concentrate
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2008
- Messages
- 15,207
- Location
- HEL
- Car(s)
- 79 Opel Kadett|72 Ford Country Sedan|03 Volvo XC70
After the great success of last year's day trip, I decided to spend the whole weekend at Race 61 this year, even though heavy rain was forecast all weekend. So I washed the Kadett, went shopping, borrowed a tent and off I went:
As I mentioned last year, the car show/concert/race is on an old Russian army airfield littered with abandoned Soviet military technology, and if your car is cool/old enough to be part of the show, you can camp on the festival grounds without the need to use the outside campground.
That of course means that burnouts, cruising and general automotive mayhem take center stage, especially later, when alcohol takes over (luckily, the camp's organizers combine a very relaxed attitude to intoxicated cruising on the festival grounds with a zero-tolerance policy towards any attempts to leave the grounds while driving under the influence.
The boys and I assembled quite a gang to take on the camping holiday: Apart from me in the Kadett and Oliver and Martin on their bikes, Dan had a buddy take his matte black Opel Rekord estate (more on that in a minute) cause he got to take the 68 Mercury Cougar of another friend of his. We were joined by "the logisticians", two stoner Ford guys, one with a Granada, the other with a Consul hearse and another guy in a MK1 VW Passat. Saturday night, a female friend joined in her matte-black telescope eye Transit. We set up camp next to the Lenin statue:
(There are lots of other photos following in the next days, including me trying to shave using my passenger side door mirror, party and general atmosphere shots plus tons of motorbikes - all taken by my friends. Will post them once I get my hands on them).
Friday night was just an insane amount of insane fun. While the camp rules clearly ordered "no burnouts after 10pm", we still were allowed to cruise all night, with the Cougar getting the most attention, but the estates clearly showing their superior people carrying power. Friday night saw one of the stoners drunkenly getting his hearse stuck, leading to us towing him out with the obvious choice for a tow vehicle: the Cougar!
Saturday, disaster struck: Some show-off departing from a nearby airport decided to do an improvised aerobatics performance above the festival grounds. And while we still were busy trading Ramstein jokes...
(Dashcams: not only in Russia)
While no one except of the pilot got killed, he crashed less than fifty meters away from the dragstrip's starting line/race control pavilion. The combined shock of witnessing a fatality and almost gotten hit by a crashing plane led to the organizers canceling all drag racing on Saturday along with the starter girl contest and (obviously) the AN-2 roundtrip flights, even though the pilot acted on his own and without any knowledge of or connection to the Race's organizers. Combined with some bouts of torrential downpour, this resulted in a gloomy atmosphere that lasted for most of the daytime.
Saturday evening and night saw a return of the cruising madness, though. With a vengeance. It was a bit like everyone started to overcompensate for the ruined day - Martin and I waited two hours in line for a burger, having Dan deliver beer to us in the Cougar, of course performing a burnout to entertain the burger line. Some clearly drunk middle-aged polish women in hooker-like clothing did a pseudo-burlesque performance on the roof of a seventies Chevy estate (while they clearly had some fun, it had a bit of a low budget callgirl service vibe about it) and we decided that on a car festival, every stand should be a drive-in, got seven people into the Rekord and got in line to buy some waffles (with some inspiration from guys in a stretch limo doing the same at the burger stand). While the Cougar definitely was the more impressive car in conventional measures, the Rekord soon became our easily-recognizable signature vehicle and we took turns driving it. At one point I found myself circling the grounds with three girls I had never seen before as passengers, one of them told me that she's a cop on her day job - drunk driving with a cop as a passenger: Achievement unlocked!
Later that night, we parked the cars and went into the "Airfield Casino", a hangar transformed into a 50s-style bar, with tasteful period decorations:
Some Gin Tonics and a bit of sleep later, I felt good enough to take the trip home (not without visiting the Wall of Death, a second time, of course), while others clearly were knocked out of their boots:
Oh, and there were cars, too (not as many pictures as last year cause I was too busy enjoying myself, sorry!). Have some wurst as compensation:
And a bit of political commentary on top of it:
As I mentioned last year, the car show/concert/race is on an old Russian army airfield littered with abandoned Soviet military technology, and if your car is cool/old enough to be part of the show, you can camp on the festival grounds without the need to use the outside campground.
That of course means that burnouts, cruising and general automotive mayhem take center stage, especially later, when alcohol takes over (luckily, the camp's organizers combine a very relaxed attitude to intoxicated cruising on the festival grounds with a zero-tolerance policy towards any attempts to leave the grounds while driving under the influence.
The boys and I assembled quite a gang to take on the camping holiday: Apart from me in the Kadett and Oliver and Martin on their bikes, Dan had a buddy take his matte black Opel Rekord estate (more on that in a minute) cause he got to take the 68 Mercury Cougar of another friend of his. We were joined by "the logisticians", two stoner Ford guys, one with a Granada, the other with a Consul hearse and another guy in a MK1 VW Passat. Saturday night, a female friend joined in her matte-black telescope eye Transit. We set up camp next to the Lenin statue:
(There are lots of other photos following in the next days, including me trying to shave using my passenger side door mirror, party and general atmosphere shots plus tons of motorbikes - all taken by my friends. Will post them once I get my hands on them).
Friday night was just an insane amount of insane fun. While the camp rules clearly ordered "no burnouts after 10pm", we still were allowed to cruise all night, with the Cougar getting the most attention, but the estates clearly showing their superior people carrying power. Friday night saw one of the stoners drunkenly getting his hearse stuck, leading to us towing him out with the obvious choice for a tow vehicle: the Cougar!
Saturday, disaster struck: Some show-off departing from a nearby airport decided to do an improvised aerobatics performance above the festival grounds. And while we still were busy trading Ramstein jokes...
While no one except of the pilot got killed, he crashed less than fifty meters away from the dragstrip's starting line/race control pavilion. The combined shock of witnessing a fatality and almost gotten hit by a crashing plane led to the organizers canceling all drag racing on Saturday along with the starter girl contest and (obviously) the AN-2 roundtrip flights, even though the pilot acted on his own and without any knowledge of or connection to the Race's organizers. Combined with some bouts of torrential downpour, this resulted in a gloomy atmosphere that lasted for most of the daytime.
Saturday evening and night saw a return of the cruising madness, though. With a vengeance. It was a bit like everyone started to overcompensate for the ruined day - Martin and I waited two hours in line for a burger, having Dan deliver beer to us in the Cougar, of course performing a burnout to entertain the burger line. Some clearly drunk middle-aged polish women in hooker-like clothing did a pseudo-burlesque performance on the roof of a seventies Chevy estate (while they clearly had some fun, it had a bit of a low budget callgirl service vibe about it) and we decided that on a car festival, every stand should be a drive-in, got seven people into the Rekord and got in line to buy some waffles (with some inspiration from guys in a stretch limo doing the same at the burger stand). While the Cougar definitely was the more impressive car in conventional measures, the Rekord soon became our easily-recognizable signature vehicle and we took turns driving it. At one point I found myself circling the grounds with three girls I had never seen before as passengers, one of them told me that she's a cop on her day job - drunk driving with a cop as a passenger: Achievement unlocked!
Later that night, we parked the cars and went into the "Airfield Casino", a hangar transformed into a 50s-style bar, with tasteful period decorations:
Some Gin Tonics and a bit of sleep later, I felt good enough to take the trip home (not without visiting the Wall of Death, a second time, of course), while others clearly were knocked out of their boots:
Oh, and there were cars, too (not as many pictures as last year cause I was too busy enjoying myself, sorry!). Have some wurst as compensation:
And a bit of political commentary on top of it:
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