Storming it!
Eat rocks and shit gravel bro!
Yeah, that's definitely not Rotorua, no geysers. I'm still jealous. ;-)
*Skillful riding and *quality soundtrack.

Only fake plant

Plastic bowl, no soil, just some gravel to make noise

Leaves on plant didn't move when cat supposedly brushed by it.

Plastic bowl didn't fall far enough to really hurt that bad.

He never really did anything that awful to the cat. Grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and pushed with his foot rather than kicked it.

Fake. Funny, but fake.

I think that's only true on gravel, not bitumen. We don't have ice or snow here, so can't comment on that.

Last two winters in Finland have been pretty black. Freezing in the night in to solid ice, melting during the day. There was a tiny sliver of cold air that arrived just days before christmas so it's white now, expecting to melt away before new year. Makes cycling pretty much impossible, they haul gravel on to the pavements, it falls thru the melting ice only to get trapped in it when the night comes and you got clear, solid sheet of ice again in the morning. I have never seen so much gravel in the streets in the spring as i did last year. Good news is that -20C only happens for two, three week tops.

WELL deserving of a nighttime fill-in of the grooves with #8 gravel and sand

better yet a nice troweled out concrete job

How long do you figure it'll be before someone loses a hand (or a head) to one of these? The rotor tips are the only danger...especially on one big enough to carry a person. For those full-size babies, any piece of gravel or wood on the ground under it could easily turn into a bullet.

My initial reaction was why not weave to the left side, I figure crashing into gravel is certainly better than between two sets of semi wheels. But its hard to notice how fast he may have been traveling and how little turning power he had with his current decelleration

The weight of that thing could push the block down into the gravel.

@ant
@lucky760

It is flat out fact that colds are caused by virus.

Being cold IE not wearing a jacket out in winter might knock your immune system down two power points but the cause of cold and flu are virus and bacteria not because you got some chilly goosey bumps on your hair follicle.

I love the fact this baby is embracing an atmosphere I once participated in, this is wonderful. The baby has no harm of getting sick.

Unless the water is laced with that drug/substance they are saying was in the non burning snow ! !

FUn fact 245: When I was around that age, I "swam" in our newly built houses gravel driveway, the ruts were a fair size and I was a wee size. Many front and back and splishy splash strokes where made, No sniffles were consequential. A mommies Txt proves it so.

I'll give the guy all the credit for a suberb run (and balls of steel) but it's just not the same thing as driving it on gravel in a group B car.

Even if you ignore the sun in the eyes, stick gear changes and the way Vatanen had to use the clutch in the corners because the engine just had too much power, the sheer difficulty of traversing a low friction surface like gravel puts his time in a league of it's own.

Watch the two videos and you see the complete technical difference, Loeb goes in to low gear through the corners, doesn't drift at all (even drops in to first at points), and uses the cars acceleration combined with tarmac traction to get back up to speed. He even hits 6th gear quite a few times in the run. His control of the wheel is very smooth and measured.

Now watch Vatanen. Most of the corners, he's probably riding 2nd or 3rd and instead of breaking, is using the crazy horsepower of the engine to keep him going round the corner. He doesn't reach the same sort of top speeds of course because he's constantly fighting the loss of traction even in a straight line. His wheel control is excellent, but you can observe how he is constantly fighting to maintain his place on the road.

I suspect Loeb probably could better Vatanen's time with the same car and similar conditions, but we'll never know.

Some good points in this thread - I gotta say, watching the highlights of the record when it was on Gravel was a lot scarier, partly because of the gravel, but also because of the camera angles. As @rancor says, would be nice to have had some helicopter shots, especially near the top. Really well controlled run though, and the amount of power/torque that car has... is just ridiculous.

In both cases the car is a monster Peugeot driven by a top rally driver, and each film has its own merits. What you can't compare is the times, 8m13.878s on bitumen vs 10m47.77 on dirt/gravel... except to say that each was really quick It certainly looked faster 25 years ago!

Vatanen has some interesting things to say about the earlier car, here - http://www.arivatanenrally.com/en/cars/peugeot-405-t16-pikes-peak.html

I'm sorry, this cannot be compared to Vatanen's run. You can't equate paved and gravel. Besides... ONLY 2 minutes quicker?

I found out through two incidents in as many days (back-to-back) which happened while working on a contract job on a state highway outside of Newton, Kansas back in the summer of 2002 of an imprinted and innate capacity to "switch-on" in the most dire of circumstances while others on the crew either went into pre-shock or became completely functionless.

Two accidents. two days inna row during our road closures on a dangerous highway fulla truckers trying to beat tolls on the interstate and take the short cut:...both days, 18-wheelers in cruise control blew thorough the closures and caused major fatalities. I was one of 4 people on the crew to switch into rescue and control-mode, when the rest of the world nutted-up. Had state police thinking I was EMS already on the scene...(in my flagman uniform)....Did not know I had it in me, it simply happened. Exhausted me but I had no post-traumatic inabilities the next days, went back to work after the first accident when a couple of guys burned to death with no jaws of life there to save them...did all i could for the victims and my fellow crewmen after.

Next day, assumed flagman position (after having worked on on the main crew having handed my fagging position over to a greenhorn) and another accident, fully-loaded gravel truck was struck by a another 18-wheeler hauling two butane trucks...commanded the scene and kept a woman form going into shock by taking control...5 fatalities when the truck simply compacted two car-fulls of peeps into the back of a fully-loaded gravel truck in the front of the flag line.

I was one of the only people there with my wits about me-Guess I was there for a reason.

I have been in a lot of accidents i simply walked-away from-God works in mysterious ways with the damnedest of sorts.

You want a guy like me around for any potential shit-storm maybe??

No sand, no gravel,no plants. I'm not an aquarium aficionado, but surely this environment is way too spare for "mental health" and physical health