Vlearmoestreffen

38th Vlearmoestreffen 2012 - Needse MC

This year, Jürgen and I also drove together to the Vlermoes meeting. On Saturday afternoon, Jürgen Krechel (BMW K100) and I, Hans Mondorf (BMW K100RS), set off towards the Netherlands.

Getting there was no fun in wet and cold weather. We even took a little coffee break at a motorway service area. As we drove out of Neede towards the direction of the farm where the meeting was taking place, we saw some emergency vehicles with blue lights from afar. Our first thought was one fire service. Hopefully the barn hadn't burned down.

When we arrived at the farm, the first person we met was Luc van Steenberghe from Belgium. He informed us that there would be no party this year. There were two dead people on the camping meadow. We asked the organizers if we should go back home or if we could set up our tents. We then drove to the campsite. There was a large area around a tent cordoned off by police. As you know from crime shows on TV, there was a white pavillion in front of it with officers dressed in white examining everything.

We set up our tents on the opposite side of the meadow and went into the barn. You could drink a beer and also get something to eat. But understandably no music was played. Details became known later in the evening. If we have understood it correctly, a married couple had laid down in their tent in the afternoon to have a short sleep. Since the weather was so wet and cold, they had apparently turned on the gas stove to warm up the tent a bit. Because the modern tents are so airtight, they apparently died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

All participants were in a depressed mood. We spent the evening with interesting conversations with our motorcycle friend from the Mayflower MCC, Robert Skelton (at least the parts that we could understood because of our poor knowledge of English).

As you can imagine, the evening ended quite early. After breakfast we headed home. Our thoughts were “Is this meeting going to take place next year?"

- Hans Mondorf