Summer Salutatio..
Posted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 8:19 am
Hello Everyone!
First of all thanks to @SINGH for gathering us to welcome the Summer in the desert. After a driveless weekend, seeing the usual suspects and chitchatting with everyone then getting on sand and practicing your skills is priceless.
Originally, this drive supposed to be for 5 - 10 drives Newbies. However, thanks to our Founder @alshamsi_m, "10+ big boys/girls" also got a drive out of it.
I've been to the meeting point nearly 10 minutes earlier than the meeting time and there was nobody at the exact point. It was surprising because generally there are many early birds in this club... After I just looked around, I saw few cars parked on a dune 100 meters away from the meeting point.
Apparently, @giorgio came to point before the dawn and he was chilling out over there. @Laarni, @NahorJP, @jcarlosgarme and finally me were lured to his nest.
After a short briefing from @SINGH, first convoy was ready to go. Just after they leave, @alshamsi_m turned to us and said "that is their plan, you are big boys I am not going to treat you like them". Plan was quickly passing the area reaching to pink rock, big red and crossing the flyover to reach the other side and play there.
We get in our cars and started to line up, I was pretty excited because this was the first drive with my new tires (Kumho AT51 Road Venture) after the stock ones. Lining up started with an incident and left few beautiful scratches at my rear bumper .
Drive started fast and before we got warmed up convoy started having some issues on side to flat crossings. Either due to incorrect approach angles or due to not enough momentum. Maybe after 15 mins driving, @alshamsi stopped the convoy and reminded us the main principles. The point has to be taken from my side was "brute force is a bad habit and will make you roll over sooner or later, practice your skills instead of cheating with brute force".
After this talk and warming up (also our founder started to be nicer to us), convoy was flowing without major problems. Only few second tries but without hampering the flow.
This drive was a bit different for me because I was following @desertwrangler, this was the first time we met but from the talks I could understand that he was an old member. It was a pleasure to follow him and his gentle lines. It was obvious that he had more experience than our convoy and he was always getting a better line than the ones in front of him. Whole drive I watched him closely to learn some new stuff and tried to improve his lines as much as possible. Additionally following a manual wrangler teaches you the importance of keeping the distance and force you to practice split second decisions.
Additionally, kudos to @brett! I was always keeping and eye on him from my mirror and its looked like he had a spotless drive.
At the end we couldn't cross the flyover but enjoyed the Pink Rock and Big Red pretty well. Even challenged the Big Red several times.
One note on the tires, I choose those tires considering the experienced member's suggestions and I am extremely happy with the choice. Comparing with the stock tires, these have much more grip and floats on the sand with a better stability. It has been only one drive and it is very early to express the opinion, but I can feel we will get well with those tires.
Thanks again for everyone who make this drive possible (@Jasper, @Abu Odai, @AbuJawad) and thanks for the usual suspects @Flor, @Laarni, @brett and @CARLOSS.
Have a great week and see you next week on sand! (Extremely excited for the next weeks drive under the lead of @Solmaz)
First of all thanks to @SINGH for gathering us to welcome the Summer in the desert. After a driveless weekend, seeing the usual suspects and chitchatting with everyone then getting on sand and practicing your skills is priceless.
Originally, this drive supposed to be for 5 - 10 drives Newbies. However, thanks to our Founder @alshamsi_m, "10+ big boys/girls" also got a drive out of it.
I've been to the meeting point nearly 10 minutes earlier than the meeting time and there was nobody at the exact point. It was surprising because generally there are many early birds in this club... After I just looked around, I saw few cars parked on a dune 100 meters away from the meeting point.
Apparently, @giorgio came to point before the dawn and he was chilling out over there. @Laarni, @NahorJP, @jcarlosgarme and finally me were lured to his nest.
After a short briefing from @SINGH, first convoy was ready to go. Just after they leave, @alshamsi_m turned to us and said "that is their plan, you are big boys I am not going to treat you like them". Plan was quickly passing the area reaching to pink rock, big red and crossing the flyover to reach the other side and play there.
We get in our cars and started to line up, I was pretty excited because this was the first drive with my new tires (Kumho AT51 Road Venture) after the stock ones. Lining up started with an incident and left few beautiful scratches at my rear bumper .
Drive started fast and before we got warmed up convoy started having some issues on side to flat crossings. Either due to incorrect approach angles or due to not enough momentum. Maybe after 15 mins driving, @alshamsi stopped the convoy and reminded us the main principles. The point has to be taken from my side was "brute force is a bad habit and will make you roll over sooner or later, practice your skills instead of cheating with brute force".
After this talk and warming up (also our founder started to be nicer to us), convoy was flowing without major problems. Only few second tries but without hampering the flow.
This drive was a bit different for me because I was following @desertwrangler, this was the first time we met but from the talks I could understand that he was an old member. It was a pleasure to follow him and his gentle lines. It was obvious that he had more experience than our convoy and he was always getting a better line than the ones in front of him. Whole drive I watched him closely to learn some new stuff and tried to improve his lines as much as possible. Additionally following a manual wrangler teaches you the importance of keeping the distance and force you to practice split second decisions.
Additionally, kudos to @brett! I was always keeping and eye on him from my mirror and its looked like he had a spotless drive.
At the end we couldn't cross the flyover but enjoyed the Pink Rock and Big Red pretty well. Even challenged the Big Red several times.
One note on the tires, I choose those tires considering the experienced member's suggestions and I am extremely happy with the choice. Comparing with the stock tires, these have much more grip and floats on the sand with a better stability. It has been only one drive and it is very early to express the opinion, but I can feel we will get well with those tires.
Thanks again for everyone who make this drive possible (@Jasper, @Abu Odai, @AbuJawad) and thanks for the usual suspects @Flor, @Laarni, @brett and @CARLOSS.
Have a great week and see you next week on sand! (Extremely excited for the next weeks drive under the lead of @Solmaz)