F-Stop Junkie

I've been round, knowing nothing of the track, and in someone else's car. Just remember it's not competitive. If you can drive down a country lane, you can drive round the Ring. If you're not comfortable, just go a bit slower. The problems people have with damage comes from thinking they're better than they are, the realising they've got the corners mixed up just as they've turned in 40mph too fast to make the bend. The first lap I did I was braking and downshifting where now I'd be flat out. I had immense fun going slowly, going round the car park, just soaking up the atmosphere. It's a cracking place. Prawny - the steak is apparently still expensive, but going down in quality.. Pinnochios is where it's at

I've done about 9:45 two up in an MX-5 (not that it was timed or anything...) It takes some experience and familiarity to break 10 minutes, my first laps must have been around 15 minutes or something! One instructor has done 8:47 in a 100bhp MX-5. Now *that* is commitment!

Problem? If you're there for a week, then the evenings where the track is open will only be for a couple of hours - all be it quite quiet lapping. There is stuff to do round there though, and some of the more remote spectating points are amazingly close to the track! And some are really bizzare (I know the stitching isn't great, but I was hanging off a scaffolding at the time...)

One guy I know used to keep a Golf at the Ring for the season, they just travel out now and again to drive it. The garage who were storing it also used to undertake routine servicing which he didn't have time to do. They spotted what they thought were problems, and rang the Nurburgring office to warn them that the car was unsafe if it should turn up. They were talking similar rubbish, trying to charge him a fortune and so on... At the other end of the scale, you then get people like Manthey who do amazing work, but charge the sort of premium you'd expect for a team who regularly win Nurburgring endurance events at the highest level.

Garages are weird out there. There is no Quik Fit. If you need a tyre, brake pad or the like, most places will order them in for you. The good garages are busy, and others are just hard to find... So, in conclusion, don't crash, and make sure everything's in good working order!

If you do drop oil or hit the barrier, do the honourable thing. Don't try and run away to avoid the bill (don't forget there will be drivers circulating who may report you, as well as marshalls in cars/on bikes and trackside who will do the same), but ring the office and tell them. Especially if you drop oil or fluids! If you're there on a touristfahren (one of the turn up and drive days) legally you're on a two lane, one way toll road. If two cars crash, it's considered a road traffic accident and the police attend, doubly so if someone is killed. If you hit another car and it's judged to be your fault then you are liable for the costs incurred in any track damage, damage/replacement of the other car(s), lose of earnings/medical bills of the other drivers/passengers, etc... Armco is charged at around 100 Euros per metre long section. Multiplied by the number of sections high. A new post is about 60 Euros, removing the old posts is about 15 Euros. Track closures will cost you about 2000 Euros per hour. Oh, and recovering your car is about 65 Euros. To their credit, the marshalls are pretty fair, and not looking to screw you. I've heard of a few cases where people have reported light barrier damage, they've gone to the scene with the marshalls who have judged it to not affect the strength of the barrier, then they've had a very, very quick lap in a comedy S-Max. However, if you're dropping oil and a biker slips over behind you on it and is killed, then you've comitted an offense. Similarly if you come round a corner and there's a biker in the middle of the road on the ground, and you run them over, legally you've caused injury to another person on the legal highway. Sorry if I'm painting a scene of doom and gloom, but it's good to be informed. I've been twice and seen some bizzare things. A car that went out full of luggage and passenger and when it rolled spread clothes for about two hundred yards. The first car I ever overtook was a Vectra estate boot full, kids in the back in baby seats, Dad giving it some with a huge grin on his face, a 2CV. Fortunately they've stopped coaches doing laps now... Locally there's some lovely bits of countryside. Nurburg has the Ringhaus, Bergstube and the hotel am tiergarten (which usually has a line of Porsches outside, not surprising when you see their prices. The last one also contains the Pistenklause restaurant which is a Nurburg institution for steak on a stone. The nearest bigger town is Adeanu, which has a lovely road upto the top car park. I've stayed at the Blau Ecke, which is very nice and Brit friendly. There's supermarkets there, some garages and shops, and places to eat. I'd recommend Pinnochios for huge pizzas and Italian, and there's a Chinese a bit further down run by a slightly mad couple. Nice food though. Just outside the grand prix circuit gates is Camping Am Der Nordschleife which is crazy cheap - Maybe 12 Euros a night per person if I remember correctly. Very near, as long as you like camping. Tends to fill up if there's a big event on at the Grand Prix track, and it can be very noisey! It's not a cheap place to be. The Euro is pretty much equivalent to the pound now, and fuel is the same cost as here (or more if you go to the Dottinger-Holle petrol station!). A friend of mine took his MX-5 over last year, and reckons the whole trip (5 days I think, ferry, fuel, laps, beer) was somewhere in the region of about £1200. Lapping is addictive. I meant to do four laps one trip, and ended up doing about 15. The prices are slightly up on last year, from memory it's 22 Euros for a single lap, then going down a bit if you get four, eight, 15 or 25 lap tickets. Plus fuel. The MX-5, usually about 30mpg, was down to 10mpg. One company who ran GT-Rs for Nissan for prospective customers to try were getting about 3mpg, and they worked out it was costing Nissan about £1600 a lap in consumables. I think a set of tyres was lasting four laps. Now, the serious stuff. If you crash or stop on circuit, tell the marshalls Ring +49 2691 302215 and tell them where you are. There's distance markers and numbered marshalls posts. They'll send someone out to you, close the track if required, send medical crews if there's been an accident and so on. If you suspect there's a problem with the car, stop where it's safe to do so and check. It's ok to stop if you need to, you won't get charged. If they can recover you without closing the track, they normally will. Check your car before you go out. Then check again. Fluid leaks are lethal, but also make sure you're topped up with oil, and that everything's as it should be. You're about to give your car a work out, make sure it's upto it. Know your limits. Don't time your laps. Don't think you know the circuit because you've played it on a console. Assume you know nothing. Keep an eye on your car as well. If your brakes fade, it'll happen quite suddenly. If you've got to drive home, then it's worth enjoying yourself, but not taking risks. Too many people go out, get on a circuit for the first time, and go mad. Also once you go under the gantry, back off and let the car cool down. When you get back to the car park, don't put your handbrake on! Leave it in gear. Depending on your pads, some cars have had the hot rear pads seize onto the disc, while others have the brake go loose as things cool and contract. Then the car starts rolling away. Don't be a twat Remember people live in the villages round the Ring. Certain owners clubs have a bit of a reputation for doing burnouts and hooning around on the country roads round the Ring, then not actually going onto the circuit but clogging up the carpark instead. No-one is impressed, and the police are often out catching speeders during the busier periods - Especially if your car isn't on German plates! (BTW, those German-style plates that are fashionable in the VW scene are deeply illegal in German, and the police will stop/fine you for them.) Have fun Enjoy the experience, it's an amazing track. There's great cars there, some great driving, and great atmosphere amongst the drivers. Have fun, but be sensible. Helmets, for example, arn't compulsory but really recommended in my opinion. Oh, remember you're in the mountains. It will be sunny, it will be windy, it will chuck it down without warning, sometimes all in the same hour. Take appropriate gear, and if you go at Easter there will be track closures. You won't get any indication of why (until a car or bike comes out on a trailer), or how long it will go on for. Out of a day's running, you might get all of it, you might only get a few hours if there's a big accident. Also TF sessions can be cut short, cancelled or moved at pretty short notice. Don't expect the track to be open every day. That's enough for now. Any more questions, just reply in this thread and I'll answer as best I can...

Never used a standalone unit, but Tom-Tom is definately easy to use, and quite happy to take your money for extras like speed cameras which are useful if you update on a semi-regular basis. I use the TomTom smartphone version which can pull live traffic info off the data network for nowt and is very handy! Posher standalone units can get traffic info off the RDS network and costs nothing extra. Traffic updates are genuinely useful for avoiding and routing round the worst accidents. It's also easy to update for Europe/US/whatever map you need additionally. Garmin are more popular in the US. Stick to one of those two brands.

Yep, that's Dougie Lampkin riding round Lord March's gaff... Danny Mac in the steel city eh? May have to show him a thing to two...

Pics or it didn't happen!

Why doesn't that suprise me? I'm suprised Adam hasn't designed and built a rig for verifying frame geometry with a control fork...

You'll get business from those unwilling to order stuff from abroad, but things like that are a race to the bottom. You'll make more money wholesaling them to other sellers, market stalls, etc...

An ex-colleague of mine did Geography at Uni, and is now a hot-shot pre-sales engineer for a multinational IT firm... One thing I would be wary of, a friend of mine went for the University of Life approach, and it served them well, but they've now hit a point where more senior jobs require or expect a degree. They're now working during the day, and doing a remote learning course by night for the next couple of years to earn that degree.... Anzo, if you want to know any more about corporate IT, PM me...

I don't think IBM have that much job security at the moment (look up Project LEAN, or read about it From this link...) IBM are really marching to the same beat they did in the 70s, it's all big iron. I do an increasing amount of work now with i-Series and z-Series, and think IBM are really taking their eye off a lot of smaller products they could do well in. I've seen a couple recently that are shocking, half developed, half full APIs and so on... Don't forget they've sold off their desktop/laptop arm to Lenovo, so there's no IBM work there now. Also a lot of big customers buy safe, or they buy to whoever gives them the biggest discounts. They still run apps from the 70s. After all, no-one got fired for buying IBM... PwC do several different things, as do similar big firms. I can't remember who did the tax credits system... CA? Anyway, if PwC are brought in to do project management and development, you'd see a different side from their audit teams. Going down the SME route can be interesting as you have to be a master of everything, but you don't have to build systems that scale or are massively redundant. What you'll find in a large enterprise is that the networks side is massively segregated, to the point of having a team responsible for the design, implementation and maintenance of the network, but then a separate team of blokes who actually go and screw kit in and run cables.

It's not enough to just be reactive, it's about being proactive. The worse the job market is, and the lower your qualifications/experience, the more you need to be speaking to people, actively going out an marketing yourself. If you're only applying to jobs which are advertised, you're not getting considered for the jobs which arn't advertised. I know it probably sounds like it's easy for me to say it as I'm not in your situation, but it's true. The more work you put in, the more you'll get out.

Respectfully I beg to differ... IBM are in the process of slowly self-destructing, shipping more and more jobs out Asia, and leaving mostly sales and third line support within the UK. Sure, they charge a lot of money, but I don't think they have a huge reputation within the professional services sector. Places like Price Waterhouse Coopers have a much higher reputation, and Cisco are incredibly demanding recruiters. There's a lot of jobs in IT, but it's a question of learning the differences between large and small companies, as well as the different roles within each. Would you be happy as an engineer just laying cables, moving boxes and so on? Do you want to be on the server side? Development? Compliance? Especially in the current environment, it's about speaking to everyone you know, getting any job that is worthwhile experience (and a pay cheque!), and then using that to move on. Applying for one job a week and moaning when you don't get it won't get you anywhere.

I love that. Does Ali get any odd or sod that turns up in an order? If I knew that, I'd spend all day going through incoming boxes, holding up a tin of Spam or a stuffed squirrel or an empty bucket and going "Look what came in this order! Ali, want it?" Nice top though.

Are you flogging Magura clothing now? Or just Ali's personal deals?

There were some around a few years ago. Decent enough, but astronomically expensive, and required special pads that were hard to get hold of and very expensive. Heck, even alloy discs were too much...

Bah, stupid statistics proving me wrong. Fair point. Still fuming that I got a leaflet through the door saying "People like you vote BNP!" No they bloody well don't.

To everyone who has said thus far "The BNP have some good policies.." Like what? Tell me what those policies are. I'm just interested as I haven't read their manifesto. For the record, the number of votes the BNP has received in recent elections hasn't increased. Instead the voter turnout generally has decreased due to voter apathy. The next election campaign should be headed up by the slogan "For God's sake vote! For anyone. Except the BNP." BTW, Socialist Worker seller in favour of socialist ideals shocker. The problem with big bonuses is not that they are somehow anti-society, but that people will chase their bonus and do what they need to in order to secure it. It doesn't matter if it's someone selling loans in a call centre or an investment banker hoping to reach £1bn in trading profit for the year. I just think that if a company, who has taken no Government money and has made £12bn profits in a year wants to throw a couple of million to some of it's employees, then it's no-one's business but their own. Plus for bank staff at all levels, the bonus is not some great pile of free money, but just part of their overall pay. Instead of getting £10k a year, they might get £9k a year, with an expectation that they'll get £1k in a bonus. It may be more if they do very well, it may be less if they don't. Get rid, or limit, bank bonuses, and either banks will move, or they'll find a way round it.

Great blog! (I know, I know, a little late to the party...) One point, can whoever writes the updates do so in the third person? I know it sounds a bit pedant-y, but when I read "Ali and I did..." then at the bottom of the post it says it was posted by Tartybikes, then I can only assume the actual shop has gone on a ride. Love it though, new stuff, behind the scenes stuff. And two warehouses? That's just showing off!

I think it's still the biggest trials event there's been in Britain, certainly outside the Bike shows... To take over the centre of Nottingham like that was just amazing. A great event to be involved with.

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To be honest Nick, it may be down to some sort of account period. You may find that you start paying it back at the start of a quarter or half year, or maybe next April when the new tax year starts...

Yep, your employer will just start taking off the contributions.... Quite a kick in the pants when you actually see how much you're not getting each month. I think if people realised they might not be quite so quick to take all they can get!