It's about damn time - Al's 964

in for the ride and the tales

911 and a 914 lucky guy

Four months since I let this thread hang, but only because a huge part of my life fell apart just after that last post. Stuff's settling down a bit now and writing helps, so I guess I'll carry on with this!

Thank you! They're not, but they're on their way, if that makes sense? I've mentioned them in other posts here and I'll write it all up at some point in the future as catharsis or therapy or whatever.

Keep going Al, I'm sure things will sort themselves out in the end, they usually do.

Where to next? Still with a couple of hours to kill and with no real idea of how to kill them, and knowing that tonight is going to be a late one, we head out of De Lier, along some dijks, and park up in the middle of De Hoek and decant to a pub. I've got twenty Euro left, so we order a couple of drinks and ask for change from the 20 in bitterballen. Remember this was 2014? We end up with a salad bowl full of the buggers.




This cool old Merc sails past while we're demolishing dirty Dutch snacks. Eventually it's about time to head for the ferry, and the rule that 'there's always cool stuff in the ferry queue' remains unbroken.








Now. A top tip if ever you sail Hoek to Harwich in the daytime is this - bring earplugs, or noise-cancelling headphones, or MDMA and let someone else drive at the other end. Maybe I was just unlucky and it's not always that awful, but you know the seagulls in Finding Nemo? Imagine them, but rather than them being Aussie, they're 'mate'ing in Geezer. For four hours. I have never been so happy to get into my silly little car than I was after that ferry journey. But my nerves were absolutely frazzled so I definitely needed to be stuck in a slow-motion convoy on the A12 behind a drunk driver after that, eh?
Tired, grumpy, and in absolutely no mood to be putting up a tent I near collapse in the Travelodge in Wellingborough. Yes, I'll take the buffet breakfast tomorrow morning. please and thank you.

Why Wellingborough? Well, there's an old WW2 thing nearby.







































Shows are cool. Having to argue with the gate wifey that we were really only here for the day when she could see the back seats filled with bags and camping gear less so, especially when I couldn't just produce 24 bottles of Chimay Bruin as proof that we'd just been in Europe for a week as the Pod doesn't like you bringing glass in... The ferry tickets in the door pocket satisfied her, thankfully. Shows aren't just about the cars, though, and anything multi-day really needs a group of pals. By 1 o' clock we'd seen everything we were likely to see and hadn't seen anyone we knew. Time to head home. Satnav says seven hours. The drive back up the road goes smoothly, with the only upset being a jammer on the M74 throwing up gravel and putting a starburst in my windscreen. Halfway across the Friarton Bridge the satnav says it's 1h30m home. I pull off and head past Scone, where it reappraises and says 2h00m. I turn it off, because I really don't need it anymore. It was dead on, though. Quite how it knew I had to stop in at the Co-op in Aboyne and get bread and milk I'll never know.

Welcome back !

Glad you are back, I hope things are going the right way for you.

There's a gap here, one of a couple. Hopefully it'll serve as a reminder to back up your pics regularly and across multiple media. I do, but I appear to have lost most of 2015 anyway. At least one of these is due to a Sony M4 Aqua - I went through four of the things and corrupted too many pics before Orange straight up gave me a brand new Samsung and an apology. Doesn't bring the pics back, though.

Anyway, in 2015 I headed over to Beautiful Budel, a now-defunct aircooled show painfully close to the Belgian border in Brabant. And in what was due to become a recurring theme, my 964 spent some quality time being a dick. I didn't really have a plan this time. I wanted to visit De Wolfsburcht as it'd had a wee write up in one of the copies of Ultra VW I'd bought then remembered why I didn't, so that was the first stop plugged in to the satnav. Things went well until that bottleneck in Utrecht. You know the one - where five lanes scooch down to three before splitting into two twos. it's normally fine, to be honest - I drive through there semi-regularly now and I've only ever seen it as bad as that fateful day twice. Aye, so, it's early September at this point, and warm. It's only ever in heat that my 964 gave me grief, so of course these problems never showed up on the edge of the Highlands years ago. This day it was not fine - traffic tailed back about a kilometre, maybe more. I'm crawling along in the outside lane and then the traffic just stops. My oil temperature does not stop rising. Being aircooled, whacking the heaters on full does not do anything so I don't bother. It's probably fine, at least until the point that it's not. And that point is the upper red. I kill the engine and manually raise the rear spoiler in an attempt to get at least some heat out of the bay. Which is when the traffic starts moving again. Ugh. I hate this stupid immobiliser. Lock, unlock. Stick stick in hole. Revove stick from hole, turn 180 degrees, reinsert stick in hole. Beep beep beep! Turn ignition. Click. Again. Click again. Pissflaps. We're in the outside lane and all of a sudden the traffic in front of us is moving. As is the traffic in the two lanes to the right of us. Right. Keep ignition live, jump out, push like curse word, jump in, into second, drop clutch. *VVVAAAARRRROOOOMMMMMM!!!!!*
Thank whatever imaginary deity for that. The traffic remains slow but at least moves, and an Italian truck driver next to me shouts down and asks if I'm okay? Yeah, I think so. Got too hot, did it? Yeah, a bit. She'll be fine. Take care, okay? Okay. Wanting to keep the cooling fan speed up, we blast through the relatively cool Leidscherijntunnel in third. It sounds GLORIOUS.

As I said previously, brilliant !!
In for the long haul, short haul, in fact any haul at all !!
I've believe there are many cars that can be considered more prestigious, faster, more "desirable" (probably) but I have equally always said I would donate my b***s to science to own a 911,
Looking forward to future updates,
Nigel