Friday

After a good breakfast (fresh German bread, nice cheese, good meat, boiled egg, artificially flavoured yoghurt) it was time to go to the track. Not surprisingly it was cold. A very damp, seeping down to the bone cold. This prompted Matt to show off his Scooby-jacket: according to him it's warm, fleece-lined, waterproof, and folds up into a small package. Of course Matt had to model the rear too.

By this time it was not so early anymore, and Ben and Birgit showed up. Ben was armed with a large roll of static-cling Ringers stickers. I duly purchased a pair of them and proceeded to put them on the rear side windows of my car.

With my new Ringers stickers duly affixed to the car I went out for some laps. The track appeared to be much grippier than I'd expected given the cold and damp conditions. The first lap was spent warming the engine and the tyres. After letting two or three faster vehicles by I before Hatzenbach I didn't encounter anybody during the rest of the lap. Glorious. Laps two and three were a bit faster, but still quite conservative with yesterday's moments still fresh in my memory.

A little break gave me time to eat and drink something. Matt kindly offered me some Pringles. I'm not much of a fan of the sour cream and chives flavour, but they weren't too bad. By this time Ruud had shown up, and of course everybody had to admire some of the upgrades of his car. For some reason oriental cars tend to have mods with loud colours. The strut brace on Ruud's car was no exception to that rule. The battery was a bit more unobtrusive, which was a good thing given it's inclination to leaking. A custom-made splitter in the air intake in the bonnet/hood was another visible upgrade. The more observant viewers might notice that the Subaru logo isn't identical to the one on Matt's jacket...

Having stood around long enough to let the car cool down (and get friggin' cold myself) it was time for more laps. Ben came along for the ride, witnessing some interesting behaviour by other track-users. First up was a big red boik with tiny mirrors. In absolute terms his mirrors weren't all that small, but apparantly they were to small for the rider. At any rate he tried very hard to make contact with my car, whatever I did to keep a safe distance from him. Naturally he weaved all over the place on the approach to Bergwerk (where I could have overtaken him safely, easily and quickly), keeping me behind him through the turn, then signalling right and accelerating full throttle out of the corner. At least he had the sense to back off a little when the first kink of Kesselchen came into view, allowing me to pass him.

Once past the boik we came upon Kim in the Smart Roadster. Passing him up Kesselchen wasn't much of an accomplishment, but it was a friendly moment typical of ringing anyway: he waved to us, we waved to him, and we all went on our merry ways.

A bit less merry was the encounter with a silver older-model Civic with a big sticker in the rear window. It was quite obvious that the sticker obscured not only his center rearview mirror, but also both his wing mirrors. Either that or he was completely blind. It took quite a few corners to find a safe opportunity to overtake him. After this fun-filled lap we went out for a second lap, where we didn't encounter much in the way of other traffic. Perfect, really.

Back in the carpark Ben and Birgit were playing with a solid state digital camcorder. Across the road somebody felt the effects of cold combined with an exciting lap: apparantly he couldn't make it to the toilet in the Grüne Hölle. Ruud demonstrated that he'd come prepared with a large case filled with tools, including thingies you need to change the camber or somesuch. An inventive German put his name in an original-looking VW font on the back of his car.

Sir B. made an appearance too. The BastardWagen had had a new (well, secondhand rebuilt) gearbox fitted and was shod with new tyres. Karl thought the tyre pressures a bit on the high side, and on expert advice decided to lower them by letting 2 seconds of air out of both front tyres. Having finished with his preparation he drove off into the sunset with a determined demeanor, one arm hanging out of the window.

Meanwhile the parking lot became busier and busier, providing lots of entertainment in the shape of loud paintjobs and exposed engine bays. There must be a reason that when two similar cars are parked side by side, both open the hood.

The standing around made me cold all over. This was easily solved by flagging down Ed in his Clio Ragnotti (a.k.a. The Rag). Ed was on his usual routine of lapping until the track closed or he ran out of gas, whichever comes first. I lost count of the number of overtakes, but we (ahem, Ed) overtook many many cars and bikes. For some reason there were many Swiss cars out on the track. The audience at Brünnchen was quite big by this time.

After a lap or three we went into the parking lot to have a chat with the other Ringers present, but there were no free spaces. As Ed doesn't do parking lots anyway, we went straight back out again.

Out on the track we saw an oldish Golf on a very original suspension. Also interesting was a procession of Audis. Most entertaining was the big-engined A4, who refused to acknowledge that a little French-built car could be actually be faster. It did give us the opportunity to admire its rear bumper from up close.

Next victim was a Porsche 996Turbo. This one was holding us (well, Ed) up through Hohenrain, T-13 and Bastard Bend. We (well, Ed) then moved over a bit to let an orange Speedster and a UK-registered E30 through. Ed set The Rag up nicely through Hocheichen ("It's exit speed that counts"), managing to pull alongside the 996Turbo. Being somewhat curious I snuck a quick peek at the driver. She was very blonde and quite pretty. Instead of letting us get ahead she immediately floored it over Quiddelbacher Höhe, with us in tow. Approaching the crest before Flugplatz she stood on the brakes. Me thinks she didn't quite know where the track was going, but didn't like the idea of being overtaken by a Rag. In the end she decided to let us by after Flugplatz.

A Swedish 944 was next. Ed stuck to his rear bumper nice and tight, conveying the message that we (well, he) would like to go past. Having overtaken the 944 we (well, Ed) went screaming through Pflanzgarten, using a line that he'd observed from the industry driver: instead of going over the jump in Pflanzgarten 1 in a straight line he went over the jump a bit diagonally, as if turning in early. It seemed to work quite well for him. Well enough that despite finding a slow white van in a slightly inconvenient place in Pflanzgarten there was a lot of clear tarmac behind us when we exited Galgenkopf.

On the next lap there was even more traffic: it looked like every Opel convertible driver was out driving the Nordschleife. When we came into Adenauer Forst a bit of a surprise was waiting for us: a car was slowly coming towards us, cresting the outside kerb of the outside of the first lefthander. Not exactly the safest way to recover from a spin into the dirt. Before Schwalbenschwanz one of many white GT3-RS's came buzzing past, performing an interesting overtake on a white Passat while entering Schwalbenschwanz.

All in all about 6 highly entertaining very fast laps. Even the brakes worked every time. Despite the functioning brakes we (well, Ed) went round in about 9.17BTG.

Meanwhile Ben was provided with a good excuse to use the fire extinguisher of the C-Car. As you can read in his trip report, he was overtaking a smoking Golf. The smoking Golf stopped on Döttinger Höheto find its engine on fire. Ben grabbed the C-Car fire extinguisher and put the fire out. While Ben was doing the hard work, Birgit received a donation for the help-the-syndicate-replace-their-fire-extinguisher fund. Said donation was subsequently found by me on the ground in the parking lot and duly passed on to Birgit again for safekeeping.

The conversation during lunch (with Christer and Søren) turned to the accomplishments of the Ecurie Europe during the first VLN race of the season. From there it was a small step for Søren to buy half of Christer's Dedicated Ring Tool, a BMW 318is.

To illustrate how cold it really was, Ross was keeping his leathers zipped up in the parking lot. Even under the most extreme circumstances Ross thinks a thin T-shirt is enough to keep him warm. Ross' mate John came into the parking lot a little later: he'd run out of fuel on the track and Jeppe was kind enough to bring him some fresh fuel. Like all good Ringers Ross had acquired some new Ringers stickers from Ben. Half of them had already been blown off his fuel tank though. Bren came round also, to show his assembled-from-bits new boik.

In another corner of the parking area I noticed a sweet-looking Morgan, a groovy TVR, and a smart-looking Boxter-S with US bumperettes that was occupying my favourite parking spot all day long.

Other traffic in the parking lot included a promising entry for the category "unlikely Ring vehicle", a Swiss Celica that had been used as a dirt-shovel, an ancient Audi that had broken down. Meanwhile I noticed that someone had added a reminder to overtake on the correct side to the back of the C-Car (not that the C-Car is ever overtaken by anyone, mind you).

In the meantime Sir B. had been busy on the track, until his newly installed gearbox blew. Karl had only had 7 laps of service out of the thing. It did bring back memories of how he described one of his laps in terms like "bang it into third, rev it until it screams for mercy, smash it into fourth"... Still, he managed to run the BastardWagen for an entire year that way, so you'd expect he'd keep it running for another year with the new box.

I'd also met Kurt who'd rented an Opel Speedster. The same one he used last year, and it hadn't been serviced in between Ring trips. Apart from some tyre wear the car seemed to be holding up OK, particularly in the brake department. Kurt hadn't been on the Ring in a Porsche yet, which was quickly remedied by inviting him into my passenger seat. At Hohe Acht we overtook a black Astra with a wobbling left front wheel, a bit as if his tyre was flat.

Some more walking round the carpark yielded pictures of a crashed RX-7. Ben commented that it was cruel to take the picture, then stood shoulder to shoulder with me at the fence and proceeded to take the exact same picture. As you can see the Ixus can easily be operated with one hand.

Another impressive sight in the carpark was another Swiss Toyota with enough after-market plastic added to it to finance an entire year's Ringing.

To finish the day off I went out with Kurt in his Speedster. The bog-standard Golf was out too, providing it's driver (and us) with lots of entertaining moves from the suspension. It could definitely use some of Keith's anti-roll bars.

The impromptu Ringers dinner took place at the Pistenklause. My recollection of the evening is a bit hazy, but I do remember that we concluded that batteries hate the cold even more than us people. I also faintly recall something about Jeppe buying a house (well, almost) on the advice of Søren (well, kind of). We also established that GPRS is the racing version of GPS. To stay with the gadget theme: Robin T. came by and played around a little with Ben's Ixus. Food was the usual, followed by an enticing desert of oven-heated icecream with strawberries. Or somesuch. A bit overpriced at 6.50 euros if you ask me, but it tasted pretty nice.

Ben imparted some words of wisdom to Jeppe about kiddies: your kids learn to walk, they learn to talk, and they say things you think are cute. Please note that all kids do that, and they are not. Matt decided to share some parenting experiences and found it very simple to describe what it was like. Apparantly it's an intangible wonderful feeling. There's no logical explanation. Somebody concluded that it was like buying a Subaru, then. He also told us that poo is overrated. Ben had some constructive hints for Jeppe on how to entertain his future kid, suggesting he put a pet in front of the kid and replace it when dead. Then again, we later established that Ben is a CIA operative whose cover got blown while taking pictures at Speaker's Corner because his earpiece gave him away.

A somewhat related topic was arms-control laws in Denmark, which promoted the use of orange cannons instead of firearms. Going back to the gadget theme I was instructed to caption the picture below with "Clueless in Nürburg". Dunno who told me, but it seemed to make sense at the time. After a long and tough day of Ringing most people decided to call it night relatively early. Ben & Birgit were the first to pay, but Birgit got stuck behind some Danes who figured correctly that it wouldn't make much sense to all get up, move out, let Birgit out, move back in again, pay their own bill and get up and move out again after just two minutes. Let's just say that everybody who wanted to leave finally had a chance to do so.

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