Eventually I managed to upload my pics of the weekend, so here comes my report. With pictures. And if your machine is not able to load this thread/page, I don't care
.
First things first: I decided to go for a rental due to several reasons: The 1's rear right brake is acting up (not releasing properly everytime) and I needed space for 3 persons, luggage for a weekend and some extra ringmeet-stuff. Could have done it in the 1, but I talked to Galantti and h-p prior to the meet and we decided to go rental.
For me the ringmeet started basically on:
Thrusday 11th,
5:30pm, when i picked up the rental after work. I was hoping for some BMW F11 (like MacGuffin's), but when I arrived they gave me an Audi
. The girls at Sixt weren't really eager to do a proper handoff, they just gave me the keys and told me the car would be "the black Audi outside". On my way out I noticed the keychain said A6 Diesel, so it was at least the proper (because booked) size. On the parkinglot i found a rather nice 2011 A6 (C6) Avant 3.0 TDI quattro S-Line responding to me fiddling around with the remote. I got in, drove home and loaded my stuff into the boot, which was noticable bigger than my 1's one.
Friday 12th:
7:00am: I left the apartment, got into the A6 and headed towards Frankfurt to pick up 2 finns. After barely 100km on the autobahn, something did not happen which would/could cost me around 1200?. Most people know what I am talking about, but to be on the save side for now, nothing ever happened, you know!
8:35am: I arrived perfectly timed at Fraport to pick up the finns and found some ultratiny parkingspaces, and eventually one big enough to fit the Audi.
8:40am: I notice that the finns flight is delayed.
Yay.
9:20am: Two wild finns appear!
9:35am: We finally found a way out of the maze called Frankfurt airport.
Sometime inbetween: h-p is taking pictures of the speedo while I'm doing totally normal and legal speeds on german autobahns.
11:10am: We arrive at the campsite and find surprisingly few people, and one Crutchie-Dutchie!
First things first, we installed the "Finalgear Ringmeet"-banner I brought, which temporarily resulted in Suedschleifes Keys hanging 4m up in a tree. After that, first pics were taken.
Adu, DanRoM, Suedschleife, h-p (behind him) and Galantti
At this point the numbers were quite low, people, tents and cars.
But that didn't last long, and suddenly.. woa.. PEOPLE!
More people, more tents, more cars.
And with one certain person some parts arrived, so work began...
Dr_Grip suggesting a different kind of support - ADAC.
Some random pics from early friday afternoon at the campsite:
nicjasno, metalnarf, D-Fence
Adu, Ice, DanRoM
Shad, h-p, Galantti, MacGuffin
Stig, TobiasG, Shad
Nugget, Ice
MXM, equirator, Dr.Grip
Some cars..
Nugget and his Apple-RS-Phone
Some Fence.
New texan embassy
Then we intended to go to Br?nnchen, the finns and me got into the Audi and drove off. After a few seconds Galantti from the back informed me:
You just drove over MXM's hood. I, slightly irritated responded:
"I did what? Are you kidding?" No, he wasn't. I turned arround and found MXM bending it back into shape, it was lying on the grass between the Lotus and the Audi. I apologized and tried helping (or not making it worse), but hey.. damage already done.
Doesn't look that bad from the outside, but some more damage from the inside.
Then we really went to Br?nnchen to watch at and listen to some cars of the OGP. Didn't take many pics (due to my not-so-good mood after that little hood-incident), so quickdump:
After that we went to the Rewe to get supplies for the BBQ, which was basically pure chaos. After that it was back to the campsite, and i checked in at the nearby hotel. Yeah, I was a hotelfag, but I don't do camping, I don't like it, I don't have any of the neccessary equipment.
Campsite later on Friday:
Britts arrived! They were quite late, probably had to loot something on their way.
Mah rental, the hoodkiller, the finn-transporter, mah speedtrap...
This time we had powaah!
Kip, Galantti, TobiasG, Fluke, Ice (and his new tablet), MacGuffin and nicjasno in the front.
The texan embassy, roomy!
Sued no likey camera..
Kip no likey Ice, D-Fence likes!
Ice didn't care (nor notice), he had beer!
Galantti checking out his new tent.
The 230GBP-mobil!
Later this evening a wild Ford Prefect and a friend of his appeared!
Compare: Tiny Texans vs. Big MacGuffin
For "just the friday" that was a very nice day, and a very bad day too. If you know, what i mean..
11:45pm: I said nn and left for my hotel, which was 2 minutes away.
Saturday, 13th (I didn't take any pics on saturday).
9:30am: As agreed on on friday, Kip and I had breakfast. Very nice, tables with nametags, nice food, nice coffee!
10am: Kip had to get fuel, so i volunteered to be holding his satnav to the gasstation
.
10:15am: We got back to the campsite, and it was empty! Everybody left towards the touri-entrance. This resulted in me getting a 20km ride in Kips Seven through the Eifel.
In one word: AWESOME!
At the entrance we did some laps, laps as passengers and repaired some Seven. Eventually it was time for the scenic drive. This time the route was quite easy and somewhat split into a driving part (twisty corners through the woods) and a scenic part (Ahrtal, whine-valley). I hopped into the passengerseat of my Slovenian brand-brother for the weekend and navigated ice (and a lazy swek im the backseat) according to the route. TBH I had a tiny advantage as I was on the scouting trip, so not a real chance to get lost. Just a chance to run out of fuel, which was prevented by Ice simply refueling. And as the Eifel is so tiny, few minutes later MXM arrived at the same gasstation (off the route).
Back at the campsite we waited for all people to arrive and then took off again towards the booked restaurant. Nugget and equi were already waiting there, as they skipped the scenicdrive to use every minute of their rented ringtool. Surprisingly we were really as many people as we planned to be, Ford Prefect brought along his other E30-beating friend and 2 others that seemed familiar with the forums
. We had some nice conversations, noticed that several of us got a nice sunburn (including me) without having barely any sun. After a while food arrived, mine was quite ok, but not really that much tbh. Anyway, after some more talking we eventually paid and left. That the paying-part was a true PITA was already mentioned, needs to be optimized. Some of us ended up paying some more. Back at the campsite it was some more talking and stuff, and the day eventually ended.
Sunday, 14th:
After the usual breakfast with Kip we joined the folks at the campsite. As we could see from our nice, warm and dry hotelrooms it was pouring with rain outside earlier, but fortunately stopped almost completely for the others to tear down their tents and clear the site. Also time to even out the bills (bbq, drinks and campsite).
I keep telling myself, that this face is caused by the rain.
I imagined finns would be familiar with the use of umbrellas..
And the Brits seem to have trouble with normal packing instead of looting and burning down too.
Notice the strange croation successfully ruining the picture :lol:
Wet crutchie-dutchie is not happy
NFI what they were looking for/at, maybe they tried to find the engine.
Lens decided Eye-Q is not interesting enough...
Tired swek is tired. Thats probably why he got the coffee later...
Mikas packing his rental
The not-so-identical twins..
The texan embassy is being torn down.
The d00d-wagon!
Then we decided to take the group-picture, so i went to get the tripod and left the camera with kip. Afterwards he told me he took some "really nice pictures" and requested them to be all posted! So here we go, the Kip-pics!
Eventually I regained controll over my cam...
D-Fences final attempt to ruin the Ice-Audi via software
And we eventually took the previously posted group-picture, after verifying that nobody was missing...
And we obviously failed, as we noticed minutes later, after the group disintegrated and the banner was taken off...
After that, some went home, some (including me) to Br?nnchen. There we had some rain, no rain, massive rain.. we had Eifel.
This guy was going sideways almost all the way..
After the rain stopped for a moment some headed to the entrance as joel was going to get his rented ringtool. Barely arrived it started raining like shit again and we took cover @ the diner. After a few minutes it suddenly stopped and sun came out...
Trafficjam @ the parkinglot..
For all the germans this will be a familiar look: One dutchie blocking two lanes of traffic..
Random cars:
Low car is low..
A wild V12 appears..
Wait, reverse?
"Oh, i need a ticket, what a unexpected surprise!"
An interesting pair...
The crazy guy again:
Joel got his rental:
A wild joel returns from his first lap
And as mentioned earlier, h-p almost failed to get any lap at all, so I made him be joels first
passenger.
Next one for joel, ..
..guess who's turn it was..
Indeed, Adrians.
Moar Joel-Taxi..
People..
A bit later, a wild Ford appeared and was looking for
passengers.
And the brits went for a turn
Eventually i did one last lap as passenger in
DaBooms BMW. After that it was about time to leave, the finns had to catch a flight.
We said a quick goodbye to whoever was left and in range and hit the road towards frankfurt.
Obeying every speedlimit on the way there I got quite annoyed and decided to ignore one. BAAAAAAAD idea! Suddenly, speedcam. 100kph-zone. ~142 speedo. Minus fast reading and minus 3% I'll probably end up with 120?, 3 points and ~25? handling-fee.
Eventually i dropped the finns off at the airport in time and kept on driving towards home. Or towards Sixt, where i parked my car. Arriving there i noticed that i left my carkey at home after getting the rental on thursday. So it was back home, bringing stuff upstairs, back to sixt and back home again.
Ringmeet 2011: My best and my worst weekend this year.