Saturday

Luckily the track was closed in the morning anyway. This gave us the opportunity to fit in a quick visit to Cochem to sample the athmosphere, walk around a little, and try out a new lens that a friendly USA-based Ringer had brought over for me. Incidentally: should you ever consider doing business with BestPriceCameras.com: DON'T! Even though you verify that the lens you want is in stock, it goes mysteriously out of stock the minute they realise that

• no, you don't want a filter with it
• no, you don't want an overpriced additional warranty with it

The drive to Cochem took forever, thanks to a group of boikers who insisted on never exceeding 70km/h the entire 30km. On some of the uphill stretches the fearless riders zoomed to the top at a stunning speed of 48km/h. That's indicated speed; true speed was probably about 45km/h.

Anyway, Cochem is a nice little town to have a walk in, even though it's very touristy. Luckily it also has several good bakeries and an Australian Chocolates outlet.

The castle looks pretty from a distance, but Helen and I decided that it was too much work and too little time to walk all the way up.

A leisurely lunch later we were back in the carpark. Jeroen jumped in to join me. A white Alfa 33 stationwagon was enjoying himself by turning in as hard as possible. Combined with soft shocks and a seemingly total absence of anti-roll bars (let alone those wonderful M030 anti-roll bars) the result was curiously similar to a 2CV driven in anger. Schwalbenschwanz was a bit scary: out of the corner of my left eye I saw a brown thing jumping up and over the armco on the left side of the track. A deer. In the middle of the day. And it started to run across the track... The Alfa must have missed it by only a few meters. Once we came round Galgenkopf we noticed a long queue on Döttinger Höhe.

Next to us in the queue was Jon (from the UK) in his Golf. At least the long wait gave everybody a chance to catch up with the latest developments, such as the Cannonball 8000 and the Eurothrash convoy. It also provided ample opportunity to fry your clutch and cook your brakes.

During the wait in the line before the barrier Job leaned into the open passenger window. Of course I couldn't resist rolling the car forward just a tiny bit when he started to lean against it. The lap itself was very nice: not much traffic. Actually, traffic was light enough that nobody overtook us until Galgenkopf, where I backed off because of the queue around the corner, while an Evo blasted through at full tilt.

To save the clutch (and my patience) further wear and tear I did a short cooldown outside the track, dropped Jeroen off, and parked the car across the road to hang around the carpark for a bit. On the way I noticed a familiar car: Steen's BMW Touring. A picture I'd taken of him going round the Ring a year earlier had been published in the official BMW Club of Danmark magazine.

I also noticed a police helicopter circling over the track to send a message to the Cannonball 8000 participants: we're watching you.

In the carpark I took my usual "I need at least two spaces to park my car" picture:

The usual mess in the carpark was increased when circulation in the carpark behind the Grüne Hölle came to a dead stop and people started backing out.

Parking your car in the middle of a no-parking no-stopping zone doesn't help traffic circulation either.

With the track closed anyway, Helen and I went on a photography trip. The first stop was Bergwerk. On the way there we spotted a red Alfa 155 tearing up the road towards us: that'd be Jochen, then :-)

We left the car by the side of the road, after Helen had mercilessly killed a life-threatening killer bee.

Bergwerk itself was very quiet: the track had closed yet again by the time we climbed onto the little platform outside the bend. Two Dutchmen had pulled off the track just around the bend, and we asked what the problem was. Apparently they had some engine trouble, and while waiting for the recovery truck they came over for a quick chat. Not much later the recovery truck arrived, sliding through Bergwerk on a perfect line. Time to run back to the stranded Golf.

With a deserted track before me I amused myself by taking some portraits of Helen.

After half an hour of no traffic apart from two ambulances and the Polizei (whose line wasn't quite as good as that of the recovery truck) Helen and I decided to move to another spot. A bit of driving and a bit of hiking later saw us arriving at the outside of the Karussell. Where it promptly started raining. The rain did make for nice clean air to take pictures in. The reflections from the track was a challenge though.

Of course, one way to get some special attention is to go round the track while sticking your middle finger up. Pity I couldn't ask him why he did that.

There were quite a few Porsches going round to. Some of them took going round a bit literally, but changed their mind midway through.

The GT3 is still a lovely looking car to my eyes.

Though a well-prepped 993RS or a 996Turbo can look very impressive too. The older I get, the more I'm starting to like the early 911s too.

Birgit and Jochen were on the other side of track, taking pictures too. Jochen was toting a big camera with an even bigger lens. The combination gave him some back problems later on in the day.

Loads of pictures later we went back to the carpark to do some final laps of the day, after dropping of my camera at the B&B to download the pictures to my laptop and to start recharging the batteries.

Before the track closed I did two more laps, both with a Canadian guest of Job's in the passenger seat. The first was reasonably clear, but the second even better: we only saw a handful of other cars.

At the Pistenklause we had our own room. Being able to do a slideshow of the day's pictures has its advantages: a seat at the table that is closest to a power socket. Ben spent some time explaining some complicated manoever to Jochen. Of course I forgot what it was all about before I started to write this trip report, but at the moment it was entertaining enough to capture on compact flash.

Helen had been casting some longing looks at a Palm Treo, and used the opportunity to testdrive one for a bit. It really is a very sweet gadget.

Matt and Birgit were involved in some kind of foodswapping scheme while I pinched Matt's potatoes.

Birgit still hadn't solved the problem of auto-rotating pictures. Luckily the Vaio is pretty light, which makes it easy to rotate images manually.

A bit of confusion about the exact opening times prompted me to activate some ancient technology to look up tomorrow's opening times: I used my T68i with an IR connection to my laptop to create a dialup connection to the Internet. For the younger readers: before ADSL and other broadband connections were invented, before 3G, and even before WAP and GPRS, people used analog modems to connect to the Internet. Some modern phones still offer these ancient mechanisms. The slow connection hammered home the fact that the official Nürburgring website isn't going to win any prizes anytime soon.

By then the participants of the midnight pushbike were getting antsy and disappeared to organise their bikes. Of course the start of their adventure had to be recorded for posterity.

Matt did a nice wheelie, but I failed to capture the moment with my little Ixus as it was nearly completely dark. Matt, being the gentleman that he is, did another wheelie for me which I did manage to shoot.

Of course Ben did a wheelie too. A slightly smaller one, but the front wheel did leave the ground for a millisecond or two :)

Back to Friday On to Sunday