My hat goes off to the GulfRun organizers for making this happen, I was really surprised how many cars there really were, you can’t tell how many there are when its at night. I came directly from work to the parking lot on the Gulf Road but it turns out I am one of the few that came directly from work, everyone went home and changed, then came. Many cars met up on the way there and you could hear them coming. I met up with one of the support vehicles and a Monster of a Porsche, and we were searching for the parking lot.

We were the first bunch of cars to arrive and then more and more cars started showing up. They all looked great during day time and the parking lot was blocked off by some of the support vehicles. When you come in, you register the details and sign the track disclaimer agreement, then you get your tags and vehicle tags. I thought there will be a few onlookers but it turned out to be a lot more then that. The parking lot was packed full of people, and some people came to me and told me they found this place from my blog and they remembered the number 24.

You could tell a lot of the cars kept passing the parking lot because you could hear them screaming by, and a few times the guys were told off by the police officers that were at the event. The organizers managed to organize with the police to be there and escort the vehicles to the location, at first there were about two police cars, and when we were about to move out it was six police cars, but that turned out not to be enough.

There was a lot of press at the event this time, Al Watan TV and Al Rai TV showed up with their crew and announcers, it also seems that the TV crew from Al Watan will be traveling with us to Bahrain. Then there were the news papers, Lialina (who annoy me), and other reporters. I was busy taking pictures of the event for the organizers and myself, and then some more stickers were being applied to all the vehicles. By 4:30pm all the vehicles had arrived and it turned out to be a larger group then I thought, a number is different when you see them in front of you. I think I took about 150 pictures by myself, not including the other cameras I was taking pictures with. We were all talking to each other about how it was going to go since we weren’t sure of the route, but we found that out when we were leaving.

Then when we were leaving the police spoke to us to stay together and in an organized manner. I have to say that I thought that would be difficult because I know how a lot of the drivers are, especially myself, but it turned out great and we were extremely organized together which is great. The only issue was that six police cars and four support (96 Landcruiser, 08 Chevrolet Silverado, G55 Mercedes Wagon, and VW Toureg) cars weren’t enough to keep people off our backs and block the roads. There were a lot of people who couldn’t deal with this long line of cars following each other on the route. We took the Gulf Road to the Sheraton road, then the Sheraton Round About to the First Ring Road, then the Gulf Road to the Second Ring Road, then made a left at the end to head towards Doha. The guys were trying to be as safe a humanely possible because their were some curious people and a lot of idiots on the roads. The drive itself wasn’t bad and the weather was fantastic but everyone was concentrating on the road and trying to keep the pack tight but leaving some room just in case if we needed to maneuver, and I was part of the end of the pack so we were moving around a lot to make sure we can get out of the way.

When we were getting close to the end of the route the roads were clearer and we were enjoying ourselves towards the end. Then we had to load all the vehicles on the Agility Transport, and these guys were professionals, their transports are top of the line for these types of vehicles, I was impressed. The whole event was well done and their were a lot of people the contributed to the success of this day, but this is just the beginning then there is the day of the event and everything else to follow.

(A lot of pictures below)