Status Report #32: Abenteuer & Allrad special!
Greetelings there, good people!
It's Amalia here, and welcome to what is the first Top Gear Status Report special!
Some friends of ours went to a local-ish convention in Bad Kissingen last week, called "Abenteuer & Allrad", meaning "Adventure and All-Wheel-Drive", and we tagged along!
It's a convention about things like this!
However! We are actually quite outdoorsy. We like hiking. And also, video games have quite strongly shaped our interests over the years, and well, we -did- write about 4x4 Evo, which was very formative for Michael.
We also absolutely love Spintires/Mudrunner/Snowrunner, which you shall indeed be seeing on this blog soon.😉
Plus hey, it was just an interesting event to go to. Not really something we get to experience everyday!
That said, enthusiasm notwithstanding, we didn't really feel like we had enough of value to say about it to write an entire blog post, so instead, we're hijacking this Status Report for it. Really, we just wanna share some impressions.
Don't fear, we'll also get into everything else we've been up to, further down below.😉
That said, let's talk about the day we had at...
-Abenteuer & Allrad-
Well, it started with something else you don't see everyday. Going down the highway, we actually passed by this scene:
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| (Wow we got so lucky with the camera focus on that one!) |
It's a burnt down wind turbine! We'd never seen that and figured it was worth capturing.
Anyhow, the event!
So there were exhibitors from various "niches" around, from shock absorber and bull bar manufacturers, over RV designers and solar panel salesmen, all the way to.... well, a small rail-crane thing for the back of your van, as you can see above.
There were even some people with the most charming old Mercedes truck selling a travel book!
((Just to be clear, we're entirely unsponsored, here!😉))
Meanwhile, a tire manufacturer forgot to bring half of their car and just went with what they had (also, note the asymmetric wheels):
And actually, speaking of Snowrunner, here's the biggest, most chunkiest of the vehicles we found:
One thing i'd like to say here is that while it was very enjoyable to walk the convention grounds and see all the cool stuff, it didn't feel like things were.... "categorized". Everything was just kinda spread out. One of the friends we were there with was actually looking for a small-ish, foldable solar panel for his fishing excursions, and the relevant exhibitors were spread all across the convention grounds. Might have been better to group similar exhibitors together in certain areas?
But then again, with the way it's set up, you have a reason to explore and see more cool stuff. Stuff like this!
...... because we rode on a different track, in this!
.... and yes, there was a member of the press onboard. I wonder if we technically count as press too, as a blogger? But then, we're self-employed and (currently) make no money from this, so probably not.😉
But yeah, the Unimog ride was definitely the highlight of the day. Felt like a rollercoaster, only way more rugged and cool. Who needs speed anyway?😜
Beyond that, there were some curiosities we captured, like this car hat was.... just a tad out of place:
What we also weren't expecting was an ADAC (german car owner's club) exhibition with a rollover simulator:
One thing that was definitely where it needed to be was this:
A Swedish-designed military personnel carrier and utility vehicle. And indeed, the only tracked vehicle we saw at this convention. Probably makes sense to be honest. For private civilian use, tracked vehicles are probably a bit of a maintenance nightmare. Plus, they're right out as daily drivers.😉
Anyhow, before we finish telling you about the convention, we must share the most important thing we found:
Also, we thought it was a bit weird that it said Kilometres on it, because one would think that Australia uses the imperial system but...... nope. We looked it up. Australia fully switched over to the metric system in the late 20th century.
So what we have here is a commonwealth country full of Mack and Kenworth trucks, using the metric system. Okay then. Did not know that, and wasn't expecting it. Y'learn something every day!
Oh, and as a small bonus, on the way back to the parking lot, after we finished our unusual exploration of the world of off-roading, we actually encountered a sight from the far more familiar world of aviation:
..... and with that bringing us back into our more usual element, let's finish our special section on A&A 2026. We probably won't have reason or opportunity to come back unless our friends go again and invite us along, but it was a fun day!😀
For now though, let me hand off to Michael, so he can continue with our usual program, starting with:
-Art-
So, let's talk about our normal endeavours.
Art-wise, well, we've now nicely established a habit of doing Sketchbook Saturdays, our little weekly feature which gets us to draw more often. Though with that said, Amalia is planning to try her hand at a proper self-portrait, which will take up much of our drawing time, so Sketchbook Saturday might have an entry or two of just sharing progress on that.
Also, we will, inevitably miss a Sketchbook Saturday every now and then. Hasn't happened yet, but be prepared for it.😜
-Music-
Well, we're not working on a musical project for the time being, so there's nothing to tell.🤷
-Blogging-
So, good news. If you're reading this post when it comes out, a new Hitman WOA post is imminent! Should come out on Tuesday, evening.
Also, Amalia's mentioned it earlier when writing about A&A, and imma just make this official: We're going to be writing about Snowrunner, the off-roading game.
In fact, much like with Hitman, Snowrunner is a pretty big game, and part of the reason we wanna write about it is to give ourselves an excuse and/or motivation to stick with it for a good while! In other words, we're planning to make it a bigger project.
Originally we figured we'd do the whole game and write about it location by location, very similar to how we're doing Hitman, but actually, with Snowrunner being a bit more of a grinding game, you can put -a lot- of time into each of these maps. Too much time to only write about it when you're done with one.
So instead, we're thinking of more regular updates, (and thus, regular brakes in-between) showing off some general progress. Kinda like a slow, written let's play. Though we're also intending to record plenty of footage. Snowrunner seems like a lovely game to just show off without commentary, as is our way.
Unlike with Hitman, we're not quite sure if we wanna fully -finish- Snowrunner for this project, mind you. Again, it's a pretty grindy game, and while writing about it gives us a great excuse to finally really dig in and stick with a save file in the long-term, we can't promise we won't be utterly sick of the game by DLC season 8 or something.
Because oh yes, at the time of writing, Snowrunner has 17(!) expansion DLCs, each bringing a new location, new missions and a couple new trucks. So there's -a lot- of this game to go around.
.... but then, approaching it this way might be a good idea. Taking regular breaks to do some Hitman (Or indeed, play another childhood game of mine) would probably help a lot.😉
So anyway, look forward to that!
-DCS-
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| Ran out of fuel a stone's throw from the carrier. Very dramatic! |
Just wanna point out here, the F/A-18C in DCS has fully become our go-to fixed wing. (For helicopters, we're team AH-64.)
It can do just about any job you need it to do, it can do it from a carrier and it even gets some of the funkiest toys, like datalink-connected Walleye bombs that you can FPV-guide mid-fall or Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
We've been finding some time to practice with this thing lately and yes, can confirm we still feel silly about buying all those other planes when we had the F-18 on our account all along.😛
Mind you, when the Tornado, Eurofighter and (Eventually?) F-35 come out, they're still very much immediate purchases for us. So we have things to look forward to, while also now having established our two main aircraft. Maybe we should do a Retribution campaign as a series on here at some point! Or at least more Digital Wombat Simulator on YouTube.
-General life stuff-
Well, i don't mean to brag, but Amalia and i have the next couple of weeks off work! And while we're planning to take some time to relax, go on a couple of local hikes and generally have a good time, we're also looking to get plenty of good stuff done, namely more drawing and getting started on the Snowrunner stuff.😉
Also, i think we mentioned last time that we were playing Distant Worlds 2. Well, after 44 hours (jeez), we finished a playthrough. Didn't quite win, but our space empire of Teekans (Kinda like Jawas) came a close second. Also, we played the Return of the Shakturi expansion, which felt a bit rough around the edges, but ultimately was also quite enjoyable. Still, after 44 hours, we're well and truly done with that game for the time being.😩
So yeah, that's what we've been up to, and what we'll be up to next! Hopefully you enjoyed your read and until next time our dear, fellow Wombatants, stay safe, lock those diffs, and have a good one!
P.S., have a few more impressions from A&A that we haven't shown off, yet.😉
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