Motzkoman

Thanks to Chuck and Sam, we had another great meet and drive Saturday, with 14 SLK's participating. We met in Los Gatos and were honored to have our first southern California participant and his beautiful blue SLK55 AMG (welcome Jim). We several other local "first time" participants and welcome them as well. For the drive, we had 9 r 170's and 4 r171's, with a 5th (another 55 AMG) joining us at the restaurant.

A Quicktime movie complete with music of the 11/19/05
meet and drive can be seen here:
https://home.comcast.net/~motzkov/0511SLK.mov

Past Quicktime movies of all the meet/drives back to
January 2005 can be seen here:
http://home.comcast.net/~motzko/Steves_SLK_Page.html

Yellow R1

Steve, good job with the Vid, Kathryn & I thought it was cool. Better yet, we got a chance to meet some fello car enthusiasts.

We'll catch ya next time with our other car . See ya Steve - creative & high quality slide show!

-Matt & Kathryn

Motzkoman

Matt & Kathryn,
Great to meet you...and we look forward to seeing you on future events!!!

taroliw

Managed to capture a fair number of photos (esp of the meet and the drive itself) and have posted them to http://www.billsden.org/mercedes/slk...usiasts_200511

If anyone wants full-res copies of any of these, just let me know.

dsb

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

162 pics! more than just a "fair number."

btw, with all those slk's, did you guys ever run over the speed limit? just curious.

taroliw

*chuckle* Well, I started with 576 and it took me some time to sift through them to find the best ones. I suppose I could whittle these down a little more -- at least to my liking. I left some extras in because you never know that shot that might appeal to someone.

Actually, no. Between the number of cars (13 IIRC, +1 mid-drive), the roads being travelled, and the traffic we were amongst we all stayed pretty well within the limit. The October drive saw some mild over the limit speeds, but certainly nothing like the guys who pack ride along hwy 5 and the like. This was more a leisurely and enjoyable cruise.

I must admit though, that it would be a lot of fun to AutoX with this car. Don't need a 55 to have fun!

dsb

You're right. Although the 55 has great pickup, it does suffer somewhat from the heavy front end. I bet in turns, the 350 might actually be faster (ie slalom). Now get out there and track it!

PS. 576 Pictures?! Was your arm tired from holding that camera up the whole day?!

taroliw

hehe No, not really. Most of the driving shots were taken by raising the camera just above the windshield. I was taking extra shots each time -- 3 fps is a wonderful thing -- just in case some shots were a bit blurry or not framed properly.

A few shots I took through the windshield... mostly to be sure I had the zoom on the lens set to an OK position. The rest I was pretty much taking blind, since my camera doesn't have an LCD display, and my neck doesn't stretch that far. For the rearview mirror shots, I didn't have my eye on the eyepiece.. but I could see the viewfinder well enough to have an idea I was at the right angle to actually see something useful in the shot.

I would certainly do it the same way again, but next time I might increase ISO from 400 to 800 -- there were some shadow situations that were problematic. And polarizing filter for those sun issues wouldn't be bad either -- this is a new camera for me, so I don't have all the goodies yet. But I could a LOT better if I were a copilot and could actually concentrate on taking a shot, or turning around for rearward shots.