No 56k: Ringmeet 2012 - Nothing to see here, move along

Fantastic piece of work, Ice. :banana:
 
Eifel Rally, cut-together raw footage

 
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I think I have not yet posted anything useful in this thread, so its about time to change it. I will sum up the week/weekend around the ringmeet in some words and the post pics somewhat sorted, and depending on how I feel when I'm done uploading them, I might even comment some.

The Review:

Wednesday, 18th / Thursday, 19th:
This years ringmeet started for me completely different than planned. Although I considered doing the roadtrip (in my new 1-series) earlier this year, I had already cancelled my participation in that weeks ago and was now waiting for the ringmeet to come. But then, a good week before the ringmeet, some stranger from Norway tried to convince me to get into his car. He used V12 and free candy, errr, fuel to do so. Although my schedule for that weekend did not involve going to austria, slovenia and italy, I used the friday to ask my superiors at work for some more time off on the shortest possible notice (next day), I went to my brothers place to get the sleepingbag (and got caught by a mobile speedcam leaving there, yay..), and agreed on being co-driver and cameraguy for the mentioned norwegian stranger.

Friday, 20th to Thursday, 26th:
This happened: https://forums.finalgear.com/photog...roadtrip-2012-no-evidence-here-officer-53921/

Thursday, 26th, evening:
I arrived at the well known campsite, leading the slower convoy from Stuttgart, being DaBoom, Joker, Tobias and me (knowing the way and having GPS). I expected to see Adrian, Ice and MXM already there as they went ahead faster, having GPS and the adress. But somehow they managed to arrive ~10 Minutes after we did :D. We said hi to the people already there, set up the tents and - later that evening - decided to find some food. Problem here: To find something that was actually opened. Took us a bit but eventually we found the (by others) mentioned D?ner-place. Upside of all that: I got to drive an E30 again after years! Thanks for that again DaBoom, although it did to me exactly what I expected it to do: It made me want an E30 again! Rest of the night: Eating, driving back, sleeping.

Friday, 27th:
This day was mostly spend in Daun at the Eifel Rallye Festival. I think I don't need to write more on that topic, has been done before. Sufficiently. Short: A lot awesome on wheels. To Daun and back Joker drove my car, he asked if he could do so, I agreed, and he seemed quite pleased with it. The day was continued with the obligatory ringmeet friday-night-BBQ, this time it felt somewhat better organized and thought through, and MWF as grillmaster was very entertaining. Actually I think MWF was quite entertaining all the time, regardless of what he was doing :D. The day was quite suddenly ended by the thunderstorm coming down on us minutes before midnight.

Saturday, 28th:
As most of the people did, I headed to the GP-track to watch some Caterhams race and crash too. After checking out the useless new parts nobody uses (like rollercoaster) we eventually headed for the stands. Just in time as it turned out, race was about to start. The race was fun to watch, the commentator was even funnier :D. After the race was over we went inside the building again to see what else is there and found a Nissan Lounge, with 3 cars, a 4x4 meters 3d-model of the Nordschleife (covered in glass to walk on), and a nice lounge with leather-sofas. Oh and some PS3 with a racing seat, wheel and GT5 running. While abusing that it started to rain like shit outside and we diceded to occupy the lounge. The nice (and bored, he was surfing on facebook) nissan-guy gave us the key to their wifi and we waited for the rain to stop.

Afterwards we headed to Br?nnchen, hoping to see some racing-action and later some touridrives. Unfortunately the racing was somewhat boring and over soon anyway, and the touridrives got delayed 1.5hrs, right until we had to leave to the restaurant. So we (at least some) went back to the campsite to change. Cloth and cars for that matter. A wild MacGuffin appeared to see wether we already left for the restaurant or not, which resulted in me driving the 640d Cabrio (<3) with him being the passenger and Speedtouch crammed into the back :D. As we still needed more cars and drivers, I was looking for someone to drive my car to the diner, and I found Tobias. I did some very short explaining "There, car, throttle, brakes, auto-gearbox, have fun", left my phone with set up and GPS running in there and took off in the 6-series :D. Food was good, bill was aparently off a bit again this year. We need to fix that crap next time. Back I took my own car as MacGuffing headed directly to his hotel. We went for Rewe to get some more food and drinks and then back to the campsite.

Earlier this morning I got myself a coffee at the campsite and got asked something by the guy and woman working there: Who the hell are we and what are we doing here every year? I tried to explain with few words that we're basically a bunch of carnuts who met online, now meeting offline annually. They seemed to like the idea behind that and told me they noticed how we fled to the tents last night due to the rain, and offered me one of the two big partytents (benches, tables, light) for a special price of 20? per night ("1? per person for a private pub, thats a steal." as MWF called it :D). I told that the others and told them we will inform them when we want it. Being at the restaurant D-Fence then did exactly that and called them. And despite it being suddenly 25?/night, we went for it. And it was totally worth it. Not just did we successfully ignore the rain that appeared several times that evening, but we also had a lot of fun, as you can see on the pictures I took with Adus camera. I had to lock it in my trunk for the night to prevent people from deleting evidence :D. The night ended for me and the other last people standing a few minutes before 3am.

Sunday, 29th:
Well after that night getting up early was not an option. Not for me and not for several others. Eventually the finalgear-camp was torn down and cleaned up. When everybody paid their bill, I paid for the partytent and when he said "it was 25, right?" I just replied "err, no? it was 20 yesterday morning, remember?". So I paid 20? for it and started/tried getting 1? from everybody involved, which almost worked out.. ;). Instead of just leaving for the ring, we then started the finalgear-olympics, playing Kangoo-frisbee. Eventually we managed to get going and went for the track where several people did several laps, until the track got closed again in the afternoon. Some people planned on using that to get some food, others seemed to be disappeared into nowhere, so I decided to head home ~3PMish, calculating ~4hrs of driving with some traffic and doing some laundry for the upcoming workweek (didn't have the monday off). As it turned out the others were getting food too, so I kinda failed on saying goodbye to some people still in the area, sorry again for that.

On my way home I suddenly got a call from Ice, asking wether he could stay at my place for the night, in order to split the trip home and spend more time at the ring. I agreed and he said he'd call me when he leaves the ring. I arrived home ~8:30pm, still waiting for a call from Ice, so I called him, but he didn't pick up (see his lap-video, the phone ringing :D). Eventually he left ~7pm and we calculated his arrival for 10:30pm. In order to not starve I ordered a big pizza, scheduled for 10:30pm, which got delivered exactly on time, opposing to Ice, who arrived mere 5 minutes later ;). The rest of evening was spent going through the first raw gopro-footage and watching the lastest futurama-eps.

Monday, 30th:
The next morning I moved my work-schedule by 2hrs and kicked Ice to the curb around 9am when I left to work.

Friday, 3rd:
As a belated roadtrip-/ringmeet-finale, I met up with Beni who was heading home from italy for a nice Burger at Route66, the local burger-place several finalgear-people know by now :D. Afterwards we got some Ice(cream) and did some obligatory car-talk, followed by me taking the beater-MX5 for a spin. And I have to say, this little thing drives rather nice! :D

This mini-meet concluded my Finalgear Ringmeet 2012, which for me was the most epic one so far, by far! Not just because of the roadtrip, also because of the people at the meet, it was just hilarious. Ringmeet 2013 better be awesome, it'll have a hard time keeping up with this years :mrgreen:.



The pictures:

(To not kill browsers, internet connections of people with loadingtimes, pics will be split into several posts).


Thursday, Daun, Eifel Rallye, Finalgear people!

People arriving in Daun:





People standing around in Daun:

















People found food in Daun:













Preparing the Viper for some ride in some rallyecar that never happened:





Joker being paparazzi!






Thursday, Daun, Eifel Rallye, cars!



















































































































































































































































- - - Updated - - -

Campsite, friday evening and saturday morning:



















































































 
People at the GP-Track / Caterham-race:

A wild Kip appears!




Of course, first destination - food:








Then we went to the stands and watched the race:











Speaking of the race, car-pics incoming:







































































































And thats it for my own ringmeet-pictures. I'll end that with some artsy pic:


 
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Back I took my own car as MacGuffing headed directly to his hotel. We went for Rewe to get some more food and drinks and then back to the campsite.

Actually I drove to REWE, too. Suddenly you were gone and three others had hijacked the seats in my car, so I assumed you wanted to go back in your own car :) But actually I'm quite glad I drove. Who knows? Maybe you you would have been tempted by Adrian's nutty attempts to provoke me into a race on the way back? :) He actually did a powerslide around the roundabout in Adenau...
 
I also performed a flawless drift through the first hairpin. :wheelchair: :burnrubber:
 
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Actually I drove to REWE, too. Suddenly you were gone and three others had hijacked the seats in my car, so I assumed you wanted to go back in your own car :) But actually I'm quite glad I drove. Who knows? Maybe you you would have been tempted by Adrian's nutty attempts to provoke me into a race on the way back? :) He actually did a powerslide around the roundabout in Adenau...

:blink:
Hmkay.. somehow I remember you wanting to go back in your car, not sure why. I was suddenly gone because Adu & Co were looking for a (sober) driver to the rewe to not miss the opening hours, and I sai yes, somehow thinking that you wanted to go straight to the hotel.. :D. Anyway, as you said, all worked out just fine :). And no, I'd probably have ignored Adrians driving, I'm so used to it by now that I enjoyed driving around relaxed during the ringmeet :mrgreen:.
 
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Adrian should have that on his GoPro-footage. Until he's done with that, the pics I took on site oh him, the damage and the skidmarks will have to do ;).
 
Taken me ages to get round to uploading the second race, but if you're interested, here it is.....for anyone who can't be bothered to watch 30mins of racing, last 5 or so are particularly entertaining. Also.....car shouldn't normally be that drifty....wrong choice of setup on my part!

 
That race looks like fun, if a bit scary... :lol:
 
That race looks like fun, if a bit scary... :lol:

It's been like that almost every race this year! Definitely gets the adrenaline flowing, but generally, because we race each other all the time, we kind of know what everyone's likely to do. So some people, you'll be happy to go round the outside of (the ones you rarely make a mistake), and others, you wouldn't dare!
 
I just uploaded the snipplets of videos I took from the Touristenfahrten.
I'm not sure I caught all (DaBoom might be missing).

Fell free to giggle as you see the hash I made while wrestling with too cameras.

 
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