We started off the day early meeting up at the Circuit and there were a lot of people from the track who were there to point out for us all the safety issues and facilities available on the track. We were all eager to start, and I was part of group three in the beginning, but there were a few cars that couldn’t go due to technical issues so I was moved up to Group 1 heading out right away with some very powerful vehicles.
We headed out into the track with the track chase vehicle in front of us which is a modified Lexus IS 350 and it can move. The after the first warm up lap I started going a little faster and a few laps in I started getting a feel for the vehicle and I was blasting music the whole way around. It was fantastic chasing vehicles down and seeing if you can over take them, it is all about the abilities of the drivers, the cars can only do so much.
You start off slowly pushing yourself and figuring out the limits of your car, and some of the guys have good basics but lacking some techniques. A lot of people were missing the lines and apexes which basically means you loose speed and power coming out of the corner, I know I am improved as I was driving the course but I need to take a course to help me improve even more.
We started off with the three groups and each group gets 20 minutes each so that people can get used to the track without any pressure. Later on they had open track sessions for anyone who wants to go out to go, and I went out more times then I could count. I took at least 10 passengers over the number of times I was on the track, I was on the track for most of the day but it does take a toll on your vehicle. They tell you what to do and what not to do on the track to cool down your vehicle, and cooling it down is extremely important.
There was a few technical difficulties with a few vehicles but at least nothing bad happened to anybody and these are issues that can be fixed. I think everyone enjoyed the whole day on the track, and I know that everyone had a smile on their face through out the day. There were a few times when people were clowning around but it was all in good fun, nothing too dangerous.
You will soon be seeing a GulfRun video of what was being done since we mounted a camera onto the front of vehicle while racing around. I was chasing some cars, but their were some vehicles which were impossible to follow on the track since they were driving like demons.
Then there was the drag race which is a very entertaining session, and I just wanted to enjoy myself and I didn’t want to do it too much. Some people went a lot to test their vehicles, my tires reached their limits a long time ago since they need replacement.
It was one hell of a day but well worth it and very exhausting, this was an experience that every person should enjoy.
We started off by filling up the cars with all our bags, then we loaded up the essential items such as the water cooler, spare parts and a few other items for GulfRun and other people. We went to fill up gas before heading to the first border check, and we only start the movies on the Saudi/Bahrain road.
We had to change the movies since I didn’t find all the ones I wanted, but I did find some nice old school movies.
- Bad Boys
- Bad Boys II
- MIB
- Old School
- The Last Boy Scout
When we went through the Saudi Customs it was ok but the guy was a jerk and he didn’t feel like doing anything. He was giving us a hard time but we were all smiles, but I wanted to punch him right on the nose. I was happy we went through and everyone else was pretty good.
Then we started Bad Boys after getting some candy and drinks from the gas station after the border check point, I also filled up the gas. We were enjoying the beginning of this road trip and there was a lot to go. 80% of the road to Bahrain was ok, but the bumpy parts were real bumpy.
I have to say that Bad Boys is one of the best action of this quarter century, it really is a classic that every person has to see. Great action, wit, comedy, and explosion, what more could you ask from a good action movie. It was during Martin Lawerance’s peak and the introduction of the Fresh Prince who made a great combination. We also watched the music videos when the movie was done and we were all singing to it and dancing in the car, good times.
 
This has been one hell of a weekend, I think I have driven a total of 1200 km in the past three days! It was insane, enlightening, entertaining, and anything else I can think of!
I haven’t enjoyed being behind the wheel this much in a long time, and I have to say that the GulfRun guys did a fantastic job organizing everything and the Bahrain International Circuit were great to us as the GulfRun drivers, they would pretty much let us do as we please as long as we respected their major rules. The road trips were hilarious and fun, the border was a fiasco at times, and the funny part was the border guys kept seeing GulfRun people coming through so they were curious what was going on.
There was a lot that was learned during this trip, a lot of us became good friends because of everything we went through. We learned the limitations of our driving and enjoyed every moment on and off the track. I have to also say that Bahranis are very nice people, they were more then helpful in a lot of situations, and even when asking questions they go out of their way to help you.
One hell of weekend, I didn’t even have a chance to sit and I got very little sleep.
There are some support vehicles for GulfRun, and this Landcruiser is one of them, to be exact one of the two Landcruisers.
I’m carrying some spare parts for people’s vehicles as well as other items for the event. We are going to be three guys driving to Bahrain which hopefully won’t take more then 4.5 hours if we are taking our time. I think we are one of the last groups to leave, there are some people driving and some flying.
Its going to be a fun road trip since we are going to watch a few old action movies, I want to watch Bad Boys, and Bad Boys II which is just filled with non-stop action and Will Smith wit. Then on the way back we watch MIB and MIB II for the conclusion of the trip, and I chose the movies without listening to other people’s opinion. The Driver is King.
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)
Since I had my stickers all ready and done, I just went to see some friend and the other people going to the event. The build up is great it feels like its getting closer and I can’t wait for everything to get started. The organizers did a great job with the sponsors, and the Al Falah Car Wash have been great about everything. Systematically cleaning each car and applying the stickers to them, this night there were around two dozen cars which were three rows not including the support vehicles.
The two support vehicles that were there was Stallion’s Landcruiser, and my Landcruiser which are two generations of a great machine. The only spare parts that I am getting at this point is brake pads for the front and back, and I plan on changing my rear tires but it took a lot to find a pair the same as mine, there are better tires available from Michelen but I wanted the same Continental that I have been using since I am familiar with their limitations and I don’t want to learn the limits off new tires in an area that I don’t know.
Within an hour from our arrival a van pulled up which turned out to be the Al Watan TV crew with their announcer. Its great that they are getting some press coverage for this event, and the Al Watan Crew were quite funny, the announcer sat in a few cars and the funny part was seeing a lot of the guys avoid the camera as it was moving, it was a funny site. They kept stopping the guys from washing the cars to take video of all these vehicles, it was driving me nuts since I wanted my car dried and done.
The guys were applying the stickers as fast as they could, there was one Porsche GT2 that got probably 10 times more stickers then anyone else and it looked good that way.
Tomorrow is going to be a crazy day, I really recommend everyone to be check it out on the Gulf Road starting at 3 pm at Saahat Al Salam close to KPC, you can’t miss 22 cars and police cars parked in a parking lot and the move starts at 4:30pm down the Gulf then to Doha to be loaded onto the Agility Trucks.
This short summer vacation I was in California and during that time I drove a lot and during that time I managed to get a few speeding tickets in that time. I crossed from Southern to Northern California and back at least 3 to 4 times which led to the incidents with the police. I took different steps with different tickets hopefully to lower the damage done to my insurance.
Ticket 1:
Location: Orange County
Situation: Racing a 2007 M5 in a faster car and I managed to hit 178 mph and braked really hard before passing the cop.
Ticket: Speeding more then 90 mph (Lucky he didn’t know the real speed)
Fine: $340
My Action: Paid $378 for Fine and online traffic school to avoid point.
Ticket 2:
Location: Los Banos
Situation: In the mountain pass with an empty road driving fast, around 134 mph.
Ticket: Speeding, doing 96 mph in a 55 mph zone.
Fine: $430
My Action: Paid $430, since there is nothing that can be done and its in the middle of nowhere, and I can’t take traffic school for it. So I got the point for this one.
Ticket 3:
Location: San Mateo
Situation: Driving fast to San Francisco and pass a hidden cop hiding under a bridge
Ticket: Speeding at 80 mph (which isn’t too bad, when I was doing 95 mph)
Fine: $200
My Action: Paid $150 to Lawyer to fight it and drop it.
This is going to be really fun, there are is a good number of people going. I know only half of them, I don’t know the other half but they seem like decent people. There are a few things taking place that we need to do to get things going like details with your car and everything like that. I really like how organized the people are, and they have a lot of the paperwork ready to go through to get things done, they are also helping some guys with tickets and problems to get their cars cleared for transport.
All these events are open to the public if anyone wants to check them out its worth going. 24 cars from Kuwait so thats going to be fun, and I think a few from Bahrain.
Event 1:
Time: Nov 11th, 8:00pm
Location: Al Falah Car Wash in Sharq
To get cars cleaned and then applying the Gulf Run stickers to all the cars, I want the number 24!
Event 2:
Time: Nov 12th ,4:00pm
Location: Parking Lot on Seaside next to KPC in Shuweikh
Transporting the Vehicle, there will be a special police escort from there down the gulf road to the docking area by entertainment city.
Nov 15h : Gulf Run
8am to 6pm
Link: TheGulfRun
When leaving work I take different routes home depending if I have anything to do or if I see traffic. One of those routes is the fifth ring road, and as soon as I got on to it from the Malik Faisal Expressway I could see traffic wasn’t moving and I was wondering what exactly was going on. Then as I was approaching the end of the exit about 50 meters from the merge point I could see a car on its side in one direction and another car crashed into the barrier. I don’t know what exactly could have happened but I think one car may have flipped over the barrier, I’m just hoping that everyone survived and there were no fatal injuries. It seems it just happened because there weren’t any cops on the road and I could see them approaching, people were trying to help but I had no clue what was going on.
I always have this tendency when I’m driving to get ahead or move away from traffic if I can, and if I can’t I go with the flow. I’m an aggressive driver but I make sure not to endanger the people around me like idiots especially in the mornings when there are families or drivers taking the kids to school. I don’t really worry about myself as much as I worry about doing something stupid that could injure a kid or do something worse. Even if I’m in a hurry I try to find a way around just to minimize the risk of something bad happening. I get really pissed off at these drivers that think they are McLaren on the damn road and they do something that causes this car full of kids to swerve or become scared. I chase after them sometimes and get in their way to see what they would do, at that point sometimes I become overly aggressive. It isn’t always the best solution but I do get worked up.
Now the when it comes to drivers its a different issue, some families trust drivers with their kids unconditionally. You don’t really know what the driver is doing until you see what they do, and when it is to do with my family I tend to grill the driver or to do other things to check them. I would make sure they know what are the parameters of what they can do when driving with the kids and what they can do, and also the consequences of anything stupid they do. I’m a fireball when it comes to kids, and I’m even worse when it has to do with my families kids, be it niece, nephew, cousin, or friends child. I’m just as protective, and I rarely get angry but when it comes to them my blood boils and all I want to do is rip the guys’ throat out if he does something stupid to put them in danger.
(This is a bit long)