day 21, friday 20^th august 99

In the morning, marvin wakes up and says something very sensible (which I can't remember). Jeremy says, "go back to sleep, Keith, and wake marvin." He immediately closes his eyes, leans back for 10 seconds or so, then farts loudly, shouts "where's me fags?!" and jumps out of bed.

Amanda gives marvin and I get a lift into Adenau, a local town. She wants to buy fluffy towels, marvin wants oil for the mighty FJ and I need a tray for draining the oil out of Trixie. After much messing around, I buy a microwave proof cake tin, which looks very silly but is sturdy enough to do the job. I also get Trixie a Nürburgring sticker.

With much help from Andy, the oil and filter get changed. The oil that comes oil looks to be in pretty good condition, which pleases me and interests marvin. He announces that he will put this oil into his FJ. Andy the Pugh nearly has a heart attack and gets all upset, thinking that it's just got to be wrong to put old engine oil (no matter the condition) back into an engine. This moral dilemma in neatly averted when some grass cuttings get into the oil. Not even marvin will put it in his bike now.

Off to the 'Ring again for a further six laps spread over the afternoon and early evening. I don't get particularly faster, which is frustrating. I do see three other TRXs there, which is a surprise, having seen only 2 more during the whole trip. One of the TRX riders, a pleasant German (no, really!) is very fast indeed. How embarrassing.

During the afternoon there are four crashes, including some friends of Adamanda in a car. I see a man pushing his R1 off the track with a very bloody nose. Jeremy and I go out for a lap and stop to help a German ZX-7R rider who has rendered his bike unrideable just before the second Karusel. Andy is timing us on that lap and has a rather worried expression when we finally arrive at 20+ minutes. Adam takes marvin and I out in the Scooby for a little spin. Just before the Karusel, marvin gets a call on his mobile. He calmly takes the call but doesn't natter for too long.

Jim finally arrives at 5:45 p.m., or thereabout, and does a few laps. The Super-Efficient German dealer has taken his time to do the work.

We go back to the same restaurant, eat, drink, watch a totally crap in-car video and drink some more. As we're going tomorrow, we're not all up for hours of drinking. Jeremy & I wander back to the guesthouse and bang into Darth Lovejoy and companion.

At about 2:30 a.m., marvin bounds into the room, cannons off Jeremy's luggage and exclaims "as cool as a rat's arse!" No reply as Jeremy and I are doing the trying to sleep thing. He tries it again: "as cool as a rat's arse!" but it doesn't quite have the effect it no doubt did earlier in the bar. He stands still for a moment and then bounces off most of the walls in the room, turns the TV on, turns it off again and starts snoring loudly. I have to put my earplugs in to get back off to sleep.

Mileage: some more