My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Sunday June 10, 2001

The Ontario Contingent of the Gran Turismo Forums Has a Small Gathering

On Sunday June 10, 2001 I finally met in person some of the fellow Gran Turismo afficionados whom I had previously known only via the Internet.

Present at the party in Burlington were friends from www.granturismo.com: Fogelhund (the host), malkie, dubmode, SlipZtrEm, as well as George, a friend of Fogelhund's, and of course, myself (GT2toXS, aka SportWagon).

The event was a lot of fun even though, for various reasons, I did not win a single race.

Here are pictures:

With one exception (the one with three people in it) I named all the subjects from your left to right. That's why you have SportWagon and malkie when seen from behind, but malkie and SportWagon when you see them from the front, okay?

Somehow I lost the more sombre of the two prize-presentation pictures.

Note there is a lighting problem for the original presentation shot (faces too dark to distinguish on some screens). My version used ImageMagick gamma transform, whatever that is; it seemed to lighten it for me, and fix the problem when I viewed my LCD from an angle, but I may have overdone it a bit.

Those are pretty much all the pictures we took.

Fogelhund said of the event:

I want to thank everybody who attended the first GTF GT Party in Ontario.... Thanks. I had a great time, and it was nice meeting you guys in person. Mrs. Fogelhund seemed pleased the way the event went, which means it is not out of the question that we can possibly host another one in the future.

Everybody got to meet the real Fogelhund, Foster, [a German Retriever] and of course we had a bit of friendly competition going. There was some great racing, Dubmode really had his Lotus Europa set up well, but in one of the races, he had it a bit off and given it was the green Lotus, we had to rename it the John Deere Special .

Malkie discovered that the Camaro Z28 is indeed not a bad ride, and will be giving me fits now in the Historic Sportscar Series. Thanks for bringing the Pop and Chips as well. Mrs. Fogelhund swore at me when she saw the case of Coke..damn it took 4 months to get rid of the first case we had..now we have another..I explained it just meant we would have to have another GTP soon. Nice drive in the Alfa DTM at Tahiti.

SportWagon, aka GT2XS, was kind enough to bring quite a bit of equipment, including a computer to show us Grand Prix legends, and a bit of a display of his cracker jack gameshark programming. And of course many thanks to him for donating the prize car for the driver who would win the mini-tournament that was held, the 1996 LeMans Oreca Viper, from when the car was still running in the GT1 class. Also thanks for setting up my Mercedes DTM for our race at Tahiti, it handles great.

SlipZtrEm had a well prepared 71' Nissan Skyline in the Historic Race, and taught me a lesson I won't soon forget. No mercy, ever. It was great having you out, and we will have to do a bit more racing against each other some time, as we do live insanely close to each other. He also showed some master driving, moving the Big Speed 12 around Red Rock in a speedy way.

My friend George was there as well, but don't mistake him for the "George" on the GTF board; they are two separate people. George managed to keep up with the GTF experts pretty well, especially given he had only really raced at Tahiti Road, and High Speed Ring before.

Thanks again guys, and it was nice having some great competition in 2 player racing.

SlipZtrEm replied:

Hey now, you forgot my lovely finish through the pit at Tahiti

It was really great fun, I must thank everyone for coming, in a similar way to Fogey

SportWagon - We both had a heck of a time at Red Rock with our almost-identical Speed 12s

Malkie - For bringing along Colin McRae, and the bump and grind racing we had at Tahiti (too bad the Calibra was such a handful).

Dubmode - If I remember, you were the one I ended up in the pit against . Close racing, and always nice to meet an old teammate.

Fogelhund - You taught me how to properly drive freaky! I never did it quite like that, and I'm quite sure without a hands-on experience, I would never be able to. Oh, and I really didn't set up the Skyline anyways, you did.

And while George isn't here, I'd like to thank him for the close racing we had, and for giving me the ride home.

Definitely fun, and I'm surely up to another, maybe with GT3.

Fogelhund then added:

Damn, how could I forget that...a first I think, slides his car too far to the left coming out of the last corner at Tahiti, and into the pits. It was hilarious, last lap, and with a bit of a lead, going down the pits at max pit speed, with Dub closing in quickly..Slip just barely wins...we should have saved that race.