kloh’s posterous

My car has finally left Germany!

Next major milestone has finally been reached! However, the status on the BMW tracking website hasn't been updated to reflect the next state yet (En Route). I expect it should within the next couple of days. Re-delivery is still over 3 weeks away but I'm glad it's finally on it's way instead of just sitting in some warehouse gathering dust. Now it's gathering dust on a cargo ship. I'm really glad I washed it to clean off all the bug residue before dropping the car off.

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I think I found the exhaust I want but it's pricey.

 I love the button-controlled butterfly valve system on this bad boy. Nice to have a stealth mode, but is it worth almost doubling the price?

 Will probably be a few years before I get to this mod, but it sure is tempting...

 { Sent from my iPhone }

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Bah...I knew it was wishful thinking. M3 will be in Oxnard on 9/27.

Typo confirmed. The destination date has been updated to Sept 27th instead of Aug 27th so those two dates were not transposed. If it gets into Oxnard on Sept 27th, hopefully it doesn't spend too much time in customs and I will be able to get it before October. From the looks of it, the Polaris Leader is en route to Beirut now. At least my speculation can now be put to rest as the questions surrounding the dates are now gone. I should not track this daily since it will drive me up the wall, but I'll probably do it anyway. I don't plan on writing about it though. The next post about this won't be until a major milestone is hit...probably when the car gets put on the Polaris and leaves Bremerhaven.

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The Ship my M3 will be put on is in Egypt.

This is from the website DigitalSeas which is one of two sites I'm using to track progress. The other site is VesselTracker which did report a similar position a couple days ago on the Red Sea but I wasn't sure it was accurate. At the time, DigitalSeas was unable to report a position, but now that both sites have indicated similar things, I guess I'll go with it. Ironically, when one can report a position, the other can't. Good thing I have both sites available :D
 
At this point, the car is not on the vessel yet. According to the shipping company, it will be on by Sept 4th. *sigh* I still keep hoping the dates were flopped and it will be on Aug. 27th but that's wishful thinking. Right now, I'm not expecting to get the car until October.

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I'm on a boat!

Well...sort of. My M3 is finally assigned to a shipping vessel now. Took 8 days after drop-off to get assigned, and by the looks of it, the departure date and destination date are reversed. Wishful thinking makes me want to believe the departure date is the only one that's wrong and that the car will actually be at Port Hueneme in 9 days, but I kinda doubt that. I sure hope the departure date is not actually in September.

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Map of full European Delivery trip.

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Leaving our drop-off location and heading to airport. Goodbye M3.

*sniff* it's been a fun week. See you again in 6-10 more...
 
{ Sent from my iPhone }

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Example of the fog at Nürburgring when we drove in on Saturday. Track was closed that day too.

The thought never crossed my mind that this fog would have prevented us driving on the Nürburgring. I found out today that the track was also closed the day this video was taken...guess this should have tipped me off. I'm very bummed that we came all this way and didn't get our track day in. Who knows when our next opportunity might be. I'm thinking it will be a LONG time from now :( 

The boy took the news of the track closure surprisingly well. I thought he was going to be cranky all day. I think taking him to Phantasia Land was a good distraction.

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Day 6: The drive to Nürburgring.

Hard to believe it's already been almost a week since we've been here. This is the last "long" drive of our trip. Tomorrow, we drive the Ring (in a rented Renault Clio Sport) and the day after that, we drive to Frankfurt to drop off my new toy and fly home. This has been a fun vacation but I can't believe it's already over. Thankfully, the highlight of the trip (aside from getting the car) is still ahead and is something we're both eagerly anticipating.
 
Today's drive was very much like yesterdays with one exception: Rain. It gave me a chance to try out the auto wipers which are really cool. You just turn it on and the speed sets itself automatically based on how much rain is coming down. I'm sure there will be some other nice features I'll discover over time. I still haven't had time to hunker down with the Owners' Manual yet (beyond the quick lookups of things I needed to know about right away). I just happened to come across this wiper thing while I was looking for something else and forgot about it until it started raining. The rain also cleaned off my windshield for me...which was getting pretty full of squashed bugs.
 
Gas in Germany is not cheap. I've filled up 3 times already and each time it's cost me over $100. Of course, it's 95 - 100 Octane so I guess I expect to pay a little premium for that, but still...that's probably twice as much as gas costs back home...maybe more!
 
Once you get off the Autobahn and into the Nürburgring surrounding areas, it seems ALL of the roads are a lot of fun to drive. I was pleasantly surprised by the hilly, twisty route that took us into Adenau. It felt like a mini, two-way version of what was soon to come, hehe.

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Day 5: Driving notes. This car just screams speed.

The previous drives were fun and all, but since there was either traffic in the city or we were driving some nice twisties (with speed limits), I hadn't had a chance to open up the car...until today.
 
Realizing that I'm still in my break-in period, I didn't want to push it too far, but being on the Autobahn and having VW's scream past me just seemed like a lost opportunity if there ever was one. I had to see what this car is capable of...and let me tell you, it's FAST. Not just the regular fast either. I was up to 130 before I even realized it. The car handled amazingly well. Didn't even feel like we were going that fast at all. The ride was smooth and the engine purr sounded great. I only pushed it up to about 5000 RPMs (redline is at 8300) so I didn't even get close to it's potential. Stupid break-in period!

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