Friday
We briefly
toyed with the idea of arriving in time for the evening session,
but quickly concluded that this would be too much of a rush for at best
a handful of laps. We instead aimed for a relaxed journey to arrive in
time for a leisurely dinner.
En-route,
we passed the location of Hogan's Heroes
(if you are too young to remember this, just smile and nod politely):
The radio
entertained us with a news item
of a driver stopped for doing 210kph in an 80kph zone. He was caught because
he did this speed while overtaking ... a marked police car.
Less entertaining
was a traffic warning of 10k tailbacks
following an accident. We had a look at the map, and I found a diversion
which would take us past the affected autobahn on local roads running
parallel. This worked well for the first half of the detour, but then
the police closed the autobahn and all the traffic was diverted onto our
planned route. We were moving one car length a minute at best:
However, GPS
to the rescue.
I zoomed right in to maximum detail, and found an agricultural track that
wasn't marked on the map. This ran parallel to the diversion route. Granted
that it wasn't technically a road, it did the job nicely:
First left, first right,
and follow that track ...
A short time
later, we rejoined the autobahn
by coming into the side of a service station. Sorted.
As our usual
B&B was fully-booked,
we were staying in Adenau. We arrived at 8.30pm, about half an hour before
they roll up the pavements for the night. Birgit couldn't have noodles
with a Non-Official Noodle Dish because they only had four serving of
noodles left - at eight-thirty on Friday on the busiest weekend of the
year.
However, we
will forgive them because they had a fantastic soup
which Karl had recommended. This is a cream-and-bacon soup served inside
a hollowed-out loaf of bread. Yummy!
When I win
the rollover lottery, I shall buy Adenau
just to show them how to make money out of the place.
We weren't
planning on an early start:
Eifelfeuer
('Eifel fire') is apparently a traditional local drink. I explained
to Birgit that in the UK the same stuff is sold under the brand-name 'Dettol':
Matt wasn't
convinced that his room booking for September was confirmed,
so texted me asking me to check. I said that if not, he could sleep in
the 944. He also asked me to check that brake-pads for the Golfs had been
left in strategic places inside them to prevent RR from borrowing them
for other Golfs. This proved easier said than done. The CCar was full
of seats, axles, etc, so I couldn't get at the glove compartment or tell
what was in all of the numerous boxes, and I didn't yet have a key for
the GCar.
Saturday
I'd asked
Uwe to check my brakes in between the two weekends and was very
pleasantly surprised to find that he had. "All is perfect."
This was one
of the other cars we had to move out of the way
to get my 944 out of the garage. An odd people, Germans:
There was
the usual evidence of whoops moments
hanging around RR:
And Bren's
Westfield was looking a little down on power:
It is rumoured
that RR have been told they must apply for planning permission
if the Westfield stays in that spot for much longer.
Birgit had
decided that today was the day to visit Adenau-Forst. As this
was a fair hike, she decided to make a day of spectating after a first
couple of passenger laps. Being Birgit, she of course likes to do these
things in comfort:
She managed
only a couple of shots of me
- apparently, without stickers the car isn't distinctive enough. I can
see some kind of stickers in the car's future ...
Adenaur-Forst
did not disappoint:
The Ring taxis
also seemed to be enjoying themselves:
Birgit later
went to Hatzenbach and Hocheichen, this time staying well clear
of the armco! Lacking a tripod, she improvised:
Again, a couple
of 944 shots - though in the second one the auto-focus decided
the blade of barley or whatever in the foreground was the subject ...
The car-park
was very full:
With some
interesting parking:
Does this
car ever move? Every trip, it is parked in the same spot:
The track
was very empty - and yet there were a great many crashes. Fortunately
most of them seemed very minor.
I bumped into
Rob Stanley
- the man we have to thank for hosting my websites. He was part of a group
of 16, staying in Cochem. Like Adenau, the place started running out of
food by 9pm, and they were basically told to go home at midnight. Crazy
place!
Unfortunately
his Cobra was not working,
so he was there in his BMW 7-series:
He still managed
to have fun in it.
There were plenty of other Cobras there, though:
The 944 was
running well,
and I was even enjoying the agricultural tyres. Although their grip was
very limited, I simply modified my speed to suit, and sliding around so
much actually gave me a very good feel for the chassis and suspension.
Photo: Jochen vanaremberg ;) of www.nurburgring.be
I did have
one minor panic moment
when I returned to the car in the car-park and saw the dreaded sight of
fluids on the tarmac beneath the car! However, a brief peer under the
car showed that these weren't from the 944 and had obviously been dropped
by whatever was parked close by earlier.
The only actual
car trouble I had
was the over-heating starter motor (which will be fixed later, but for
now parking at the top of the car-park will suffice ...) and the right
headlight which decided to adopt a jaunty angle when switched off:
There were
several Maseratis lapping,
one of which was driving in a very aggressive fashion, so I was not particularly
surprised to see him embedded in the armco at Wippermann a few laps later.
That one closed the track for a while.
This provided
an opportunity to wander round
looking at some of the Oldtimer machinery present:
This Aston
Martin wasn't allowed onto the track due to the oil it was dropping:
A guy called
Stef introduced himself to me. Or Lord Bastard as he shall henceforth
be known. He works in the Porsche design studio, so was here in his company
996 with his company-paid-for tyres and his company-paid-for brakes. Hmph.
There was
another closure,
this time for a nasty-sounding bike crash at Brunnchen.
Coming out
for a cooling run and petrol a little later, Karl followed me
out of the car-park and flashed his lights. I waved, but didn't want to
stop immediately while cooling the car, so indicated for him to follow.
Chaos at the tankstelle meant he gave up, and he called me instead. The
bike crash turned out to be Bren.
He had been
flown to Koblenz,
but was apparently conscious and talking. By the evening, we'd heard that
all was ok and he was being released the following day.
Wayne came
up to me in the car-park
and said he'd had a text from Ross asking after the Ringer concerned.
I filled him in on what I knew, and he said it was rather bizarre to be
at the Ring and to learn of a crash there from Ross who was in hospital
in the UK! News travels fast ...
Someone found
an elegantly simple approach to selling their car - one marker-pen,
one Ring car-park:
I finally
managed to get a photo
of this regular passenger in a Boxster seen lapping the Ring regularly:
There were
several 350Zs there:
They do seem
like great cars,
though one of the bronze ones didn't make it through the day.
Coming into
Wehrseifen,
a blue Mini went straight on and broke the front axle. He ended up just
out of sight on the exit to the bend. I parked up on the kerb a little
further on and grabbed my flag. I initially went back around the corner
to the end of Miss-Hit-Miss and was flagging there, but then noticed that
people were slowing for my flag, seeing nothing at Wehrseifen and speeding
up again!
This might
explain the marshalls' flagging behaviour,
recently discussed on Ringers. I thus moved back into Wehrseifen and flagged
there.
It took a
good 20 minutes before a safety car arrived,
and I was pleased to see him: flagging is hot work! However, far from
taking over, the marshall just gave me a thumbs-up and proceeded to make
a start on the paperwork ... After a further 10 mins, he reversed the
safety car back round the bend into view, and I took that as my chance
to escape.
I've given
up organising Ringers dinners
- they simply got too big and impossible to control in terms of ensuring
that those who booked got seats and those who hadn't waited. I now simply
make informal arrangements on the day with whoever happens to be around
towards the end of the day.
On this occasion,
Karl texted from 'the Pig'
and I said we'd join him shortly. We had quite a reasonable little gathering
for drinks, with a slightly smaller group for dinner:
Being Karl's
local,
he had managed to persuade them to substitute a couple of photos in the
'hall of fame':
Asia is vegetarian,
and we weren't 100% confident that the Wilde Schwein would understand
the concept, but they did manage a cheese salad that appeared to be meat-free:
The evening
was one of refined discourse with the local intelligentsia:
Karl's remarks
about the waitress won't be reported here in deference to Claire
...
Niek was for
some reason carrying around a ticket from 2002:
Asia still
managed to look at him adoringly:
Christer had
obtained a couple of VIP passes to the Oldtimer GP. The ladies
acquired one each:
Jochen was
keeping Karl up past his bedtime:
Jochen, incidentally,
acquired a new nickname: Jochen vanaremberg.
And so we
decided it was time to call a close to the proceedings.
Sunday
Germany is
still quite a religious country:
Getting into
the car-park took a while:
Once there,
it was again very crowded, with plenty of automotive eye-candy:
Birgit again
did a couple of laps before heading off to the GP circuit to
take advantage of the VIP pass. This gave access to an air-conditioned
lounge and the drivers area. Some pics in her trip report here:
http://www.birgitkatzer.de/August%202004.htm
It has to
be said that all the Testosterone Boys
were out between 10am and noon-ish on the Sunday. There was some very
silly driving in evidence, including several wholly-avoidable spins and
some stupid diving up the wrong side. However, it appeared that Nurburgring
GmbH again had plenty of spotters around the track as I witnessed two
of the worst culprits being pulled over at the barriers for a discussion
with the marshalls.
The track
got quieter was the day went on,
and I was really enjoying myself.
Photo: Jochen vanaremberg ;) of www.nurburgring.be
Photo: Pieter Van Impe
Another quick
walk around the car-park:
'Above 200kph, a man
has no friends'
We were again
expecting heavy traffic,
so once more planned on a 3pm exit. I again asked Uwe to check the brakes
before next weekend.
It was slightly
surreal seeing all the Oldtimers on the autobahn,
but made for an interesting drive. And that was trip 36. Four days to
go before trip 37 ... :-)
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