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By joel, December 22, 2009 4:32 pm

I’ve been meaning to check out eastern Oregon for a while now. I’ve been thinking a little more seriously about it lately, and have plotted out a preliminary route. Part of the goal is to avoid the main highways, and cars, as much as possible. The other goal is to see a variety of scenery and end up with lots of photo opportunities.

Google Maps link when you click on the image.

The part that really bothers me about that map so far is highway 395. Every time I’ve been on 395 I could swear the engineers attempted to find the most boring way to drive through an area. There are often no passing zones, speed limits are too low, roads are too straight, and there are too many cars. I’m sure I’ll have to modify this route quite a bit to avoid some of the more crowded and boring stretches of road, but it will likely be worth it.

So far Google tells me this route is nearly 1500 miles and 35 hours of driving. I’m up for it..

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By joel, December 19, 2009 7:41 am

Why take the boring route that everyone else takes?

Why follow roads that use 2.5 hours of your time when you can use roads that use 7 hours of your time?

Am I crazy?

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By joel, December 18, 2009 7:43 am

I’m been thinking of taking a trip to Montreal in June. The Canadian F1 Grand Prix is back this year, in Montreal. It’s the only F1 event in North America and it’s an awesome course, so I figure this is a good excuse to see an interesting city as well.

The big question then presents itself: Should I drive to Montreal and back in my own car, or should I fly to Montreal and then rent a car for the few days I’m there. Wanting a car to drive around in while in Montreal is not a question. I definitely want a car while I’m there. It would definitely be cheaper to drive there and back (diesel is awesome like that) than to fly round-trip, however I would obviously save time, save paid-time-off hours from work, and save the wear-and-tear on my car.

However, I have been wanting to make a cross-country road trip since I got this car, and this would be a great opportunity to do so. That said, I’ve already seen a majority of the country along the preferred route (mostly I-90, before turning north). I could drive straight up into Canada and then head east from there, but this path would add time, miles, and cost to the overall trip very quickly.

Another option is to rent a car, one-way, to drive to Montreal, and then fly on-way back home. To me this seems the most practical option, but it is also the most expensive by far. All of the car rental quotes I have seen for such a plan would be astronomically high, and the single plane ticket would be higher than two for the round-trip as well. With these things in mind I have given up on this possibility.

I think I would prefer driving over and back if possible. The biggest negatives are the wear on the car and the extra time away from work. I can try to make the drives as quickly as possible, but that sort of defeats the purpose of a cross-country road trip for me. So, in the end, if I do decide to drive both ways I will need to take off around 5 – 7 days of work, similar to the time I used while in Germany this year. That is nearly half of my available time off for the whole year, so I will need to consider this choice carefully.

The least fun option, but still the cheapest, is simply to fly both to and from Montreal. I would only need a few days off from work, I would avoid putting the six or seven thousand extra miles on my car, and I could completely avoid the monotony that is driving through parts of Montana and the Dakotas.

The more I think about this the more I move toward the ’safe’ choice of simply flying both ways. It isn’t too much more expensive than driving and it avoids a lot of other ‘issues’ involved in driving across the United States.

I would certainly still thoroughly enjoy my time in Montreal, and I might even be able to squeeze some sight-seeing in when not enjoying the grand prix weekend events. Then the only concern is the large expense required to properly enjoy one’s first F1 Grand Prix weekend.

You can count on updates as June grows closer.

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By joel, September 13, 2009 9:38 am

Please note: there are two new posts below this one, with tons of photos

the day after the ring:

I got to bed late Wednesday night (about 2am) after offloading the days photos and working out my route for the rest of my trip in Germany. I woke up as late as possible the next morning. I checked out of the hotel just in time and then sat in my car figuring out where I was going to drive that day, and figuring out where the Ring Werk was so I could pick up a couple souvenirs. Sadly a thick fog had rolled in late Wednesday night and had settled quite heavily by Thursday morning. I gave up on taking photos of the various test centers around the ring (Nissan, GM, and BMW all have large test centers) and drove straight into town to pick up some goodies.

The Ring Werk area. This is all new construction as part of the “Nürburgring 2009″ project, near the Grand Prix circuit.

a large recreation/model of the Nürburgring in the Nissan area

an RS4

no idea what this is..

Aston Martin store

huge video screen inside the building

This place oozes BMW..

inside the souvenir shop

After taking photos of all the cool things along the way, I picked up a Nürburgring shirt and a few ring stickers for my cars at a home. It was so foggy I actually used my rental’s rear fog light, and had a hard time seeing the buildings when looking for a place to park.

I got out of town really quite late, after noon, and started on my way toward Stuttgart. I was hoping to make it to Stuttgart in time to stop at the Porsche Museum before driving on toward the Austrian border further south. However my body had different plans for me as I ended up feeling very tired while driving on the Autobahn. I ended up having to pull off into a Parkplatz and catch some rest in my car. I slept a couple hours and missed the closing time of the Porsche Museum.

in between Nürburg and Stuttgart.. everything is old here, including the mountains

I ended up staying in another hostel on Thursday night, having driven only a couple hundred kilometers that day. It felt like a complete waste. I checked into my room (single room this time) and immediately settled down to work on my photos from the previous day. This took me about four hours to complete. I got my photos online and went to bed.

the first Z1 I’ve ever seen..

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By joel, September 12, 2009 2:22 pm

I just remembered that I haven’t posted this yet. I stayed up too late Wednesday night after the tourist session and planned out the remainder of my trip. I’m having to skip out on a lot of stops I might want to make, including only the important bits that I really don’t want to miss.

Here’s the basic route I’ve taken since Thursday morning, and what I plan to do from Wolfsburg on the way back to the Frankfurt area.

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By joel, September 8, 2009 4:11 pm

Day number 4. Tonight and tomorrow are going to run together for me, as I have made it to the Nuerburgring. I won’t want to leave.

Tonight I ate at the Pistenklaus Restaurante, owned by Sabine Schmitz’ parents. It’s not bad, and was full of ringers after their track time tonight.. and talking about tomorrow. I ended up sitting right next to a guy from the UK, and another guy who is an Aussie living in the UK, so we ended up talking for quite a while. Both had sort of decided to drive over from the UK at the last minute today. I so wish I could live in Europe, just for this

The town is packed full of Porsches. I’ve seen only a couple 911’s in Germany until today; now I’ve seen about 40, most of which are either GT2’s or GT3’s (many are RS’s as well). There are a ton of other very expensive cars here as well (surprise!). If it wasn’t so late I’d be down the hill taking night shots of GT3 RS’s on the side of the road, and of the parking lots full of 911’s, Lambo’s, and Ferrari’s.

I’m staying at Bergstube Hotel tonight. It’s just down the hill from the Nuerburg castle and overlooks the Eifel hills around the ring. I can’t see the ring from Nuerburg, but you sure can hear the cars on the first part of the track. It’s amazing. It’s a nice little hotel by the way. It’s run by a bunch of bike geeks who ride on the track whenever possible.

Tomorrow morning I’m meeting up with a few people from the finalgear.com forums & irc channel.. a sort of mini-ring meet. I’ll probably sneak a couple slow laps in the rental before heading back to rsr nurburg to pick up the Clio for the rest of the day. I get about 130km for the price, and I might squeeze in one or two extra laps if the traffic isn’t too heavy.

We’ll see though. I’m told that Thursday is some exotic car instruction day, where a bunch of rich idiots have flown their cars in from all over the world to have private instruction. So, because Wednesday is a full open day they’ll all be out driving like newbs in their expensive cars. The locals are expecting a couple crashes from that group, at the least. This means the course will be shut down a couple times.

Oh, the drive in to Nuerburg from the Autobahn is simply amazing. The only ‘negative’ is that the roads are just like every other B road in Germany: lots of speed changes, some small towns, and no where to pull off and take photos. The scenery is awesome though, and the roads are great. It’s a beautiful area; I could live here easily as long as I could get to work without too much hassle..

I did do other things today. I spent most of the day driving on back roads from Kassel to the Edertal area, bouncing from village to village while checking out the scenery. It was a fun drive, but it took way too long and used too much fuel. The car gets better mileage at 150kph cruising than it does at 50 – 100kph on the back roads. It’s a decent car for the Autobahn I suppose, but definitely not a good twisty road car. As with most newer Golfs & Jettas, this one needs better suspension. By the way, after seeing several mk6’s on the road now, I think only the GTI has any real improvement or significant change in the looks department. The biggest difference with the Golf is the headlights and taillights, and if you don’t catch those you think it’s a mk5. The biggest practical difference inside is the doorcard design, so that the power window switches are higher up (which I kind of like).

I stopped in Gudensburg earlier in the morning as well and spent quite a while there, climbing the hill in town to the site of a castle from around 1100 (if I remember correctly). The view was awesome, so I took a few shots I hope stitch into a panorama nicely.

One last note: only in Nuerburg would you have the waitress stop at your table to correct you on the names of corners on the nearby road course

I’ll post up photos tomorrow night or Wednesday morning. I won’t be in any hurry to leave this town.

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By joel, September 2, 2009 4:18 pm

I severely dislike packing. I procrastinate until the last minute. Nothing has changed this time around. I now have only tomorrow (Thursday) to pack for my trip to Germany before I fly out on Friday. Thankfully it shouldn’t be a huge deal to pack, but it will definitely take time to finish moving files to my netbook, getting some last minute information, charging batteries, washing clothes, and so on. I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep much tomorrow. But it will be worth it.. flying to Germany in less than two days now. That’s worth some sacrifice.

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By joel, August 26, 2009 12:12 pm

I was just sitting and thinking about the highways I need to drive on before Winter arrives this year. I haven’t been on the North Cascades Highway in about six years, and I have skipped past most of SR-12 east of Mt. Rainier for about eight years.

(click image for Google Maps)

It’s nearly a 14 hour drive in total.. over 600 miles. I would stop and spend the night at Sun Lakes State Park in Dry Falls (one of my favorite areas in the state).

(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dry_Falls_WA.jpg)

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By joel, August 26, 2009 9:43 am

I spoke too soon apparently. I received an email back from Martin at Burgstube shortly after my last post saying they could reserve a room for me. A few minutes later I called the hotel and made reservations for the nights of September 8th and 9th. The hotel is quite small (only ten bedrooms), quite close to the Nordschleife and Nürburg. I ended up paying 90€ for the two nights, which includes a breakfast. That’s still less than what I paid for one night in Vancouver, BC.

It should be noted that I also received a nice email from Sliders Guest House, which is a little further from the ring. They offered 32€ for each night, which would have saved me quiet a nice amount of money. I opted for something a little closer to town that will provide a better experience though. The Sliders Guest House site also fails to mention anything about wireless Internet, which will definitely be required for me.

My preference for a room would have been Hotel an der Nordschleife. I received a response very quickly from Eddy via email, however they are already completely booked (as is expected.. just look at their location!).

I think I got a pretty good deal in the end and I can’t wait to show up in Nürburg in a couple of weeks!

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By joel, August 26, 2009 7:29 am

I don’t know why I did this, but I waited until I had ten days before leaving to try and reserve a hotel room for my stay around the Nürburgring in Germany. Obviously, only two weeks before a full open track day at the ring, most hotels are rather full now. It also seems that most hotels and guesthouses have just one or two single bed rooms, with the rest being two bed rooms. Their single bed rooms tend to range from about 35 – 50 euros, but the double bed rooms jump up to over 80 euros very quickly.

So at this point I’m not really sure where I’m going to stay while at the ring. I had wanted to stay nearby so I could experience some of the atmosphere from the people and the cars that had traveled to the Eifel Mountains to experience motoring bliss. Now I may just settle for experiencing the Green Hell. I doubt I’ll complain too much

In the mean time, I’m just finishing up a few last pre-trip issues, working on a packing list, and counting down the days until the plane takes off. Ten days to go!