munkybizness

My second night drive and I can safely say I'm falling more in love with night driving than the day. The calm in the desert at night combined with the simple hum of our engine as the only sound crackling through makes me feel like I'm on an exploratory adventure - for both the mind and the body. In @Brian Dev's words, it's a "trance" indeed. As I settled into the drive, I cued Tchaikovsky and let the orchestral scores announce our grand entrance every time our lights opened a dark area, a feat occuring every other second. But what good is an orchestra if not for the conductor guiding the symphony. @Gauravand his light bar opened up new expressions of the desert sand, sometimes even a distant planet. Halfway back @Tbone kept the string of the halfway quartet connected. Waving and dancing on slopes, he gave fervent new expressions for the score we were crafting. And in the back, the calm and soft @Janarthangiving the resolute affirmation that our score was strong. On a serious - and less poetic note - @Gaurav Soni, I must apologize if I was unable to find the right spacing. I could see in my mirror that I was sometimes forcing you to stop in uncomfortable spots. Thank you all for a splendid drive. And let's go see Mars next time.

Thanks @Brette and @Hisham Masaad for the drive this AM. The bowl runs at the end were a great way to cap off the drive. @Joseph Sebastian- your TJ is absolutely stunning and having it lead me was a treat. See you all on the sands again, soon!

Confirmed 🙏

Seeing your Defender as part of the convoy is an absolute treat!

@Frederic If you have the Office Suite, you can also use OneNote and sort different topics into pages so it gives you the ability to create folders and structure. But I guess you already have a method to your madness... 🤓 It all goes swimmingly until your bookmark folders have nested folders 😬 Awesome! Thank you @Gaurav Always happy to alpha test the solution whenever it becomes a part of your roadmap.

I've been delving deep into the forums over the past few weeks and just the astounding level of detail is mind-boggling. There's so much amazing insight, guidance and opinion here that I've truly learned so much than I ever had before. But one feature I've been looking for is the ability to save/bookmark/favorite a comment on the threads so I can come back to it later. I've been following the topic and reacting to them so they appear in my timeline as a way of leaving bread crumbs. But I'd like the ability to go directly to the comment on a topic that really stood out to me. Is there a way on the Carnity forums where we can favorite a post and commit it to our profiles so it can be visited again and again in the future? And while doing so, being able to add tags to the bookmark so I can tag it into categories. In the meantime, I'm just saving those pages the old school way as bookmarks on my browser in addition to following the topic but keen to see how the others are tackling this.

I would be careful using the "additional weight" argument with your SO 😉

Please waitlist me, as second drive.

Congratulations @Daniel Yang! You and your Y62 are both awesome

With enough sleep in the biological tank, I’m just waking up to last night’s experience. As my first night drive, I was a fair bit anxious and nervous going in, so much so that for the first 5 minutes in, I completely forgot how to turn on my high beams. Fortunately, @Rizwanm2 ensured that I had a floodlit stadium view of the desert landscape unraveling ahead of me. If I have him on my tail, I’ll never need to get additional lights 😎 It was a pleasure to finally put a face and voice to @Gaurav deftly guiding us away from sand walls aplenty. And to top it all off, seeing you work that shovel for what felt like an eternity has inspired me to get back in the gym. Climbing Pink Rock with you providing additional vocal power on the radio helped to get me up there - nerves intact. And to @M.Seidam, your shoveling technique is fascinating . I’m going to steal it with pride. Thank you gents & lady (in your stunning TJ?) for another exciting drive!

Taking a moment to truly appreciate the phenomenal leadership and resilience that @Lorenzo Candelpergher & @Veedooshee (under the guidance of @Wrangeld) have imparted to the entire convoy this morning. It was a challenging day with lots of recoveries but seeing Veedooshee's Pajero and Lorenzo's Rubi running back & forth every time truly showcases why Carnity's drives teach so much more than just how to drive. And at every site, they were in there digging away with shovels. I tip my proverbial hat to all three of you for showing us how to never give up, and demonstrating exactly the kind of elbow grease that goes into becoming as valuable to the convoy, as you were. I have so much learn from all of you.

Awesome - yes, I will join! Guess I need to turn in early tonight...

GPP also do a Fujifilm loaner where you can book out a body + lens or just lens. There's a sizeable security deposit but you can get the X-T3 or X-T4 which are both excellent low-light performers if you're just getting your feet wet. https://gulfphotoplus.com/blog/905/The-Fujifilm-Loan-Program

Please add me to the waitlist too - as a second drive.

My off-roading sojourn began in 2011 when at my best friend's engagement brunch (under the influence), I stupidly boasted that I would take the couple out for a drive. I'd never driven in the desert before. I was hoping nobody would pick up on it until he did. Little did I know that his neighbour was a marshal in an off-road club. And suddenly, my ill-conceived boast had blown into a drive the next morning. I immediately proceeded to head home, to sober up, and watch as many videos as I could find on "how to drive off-road". The morning after, with sweaty palms clutching onto the wheel of a borrowed 2002 LC, I reached my friend's house to find that three of his ten year old cousins were also being bundled into this "fun trip". I should have come clean at this point. I didn't. At the meeting point for deflation, my story began to unravel. As I bobbed around like a confused munky, another driver came to my rescue and that's when I came clean. He quickly gave me the low-down (pun intended). The loud blaring music was turned down, the radio now chirping, three kids in the back, a half-nervous couple who were getting an Arabian Adventure for free, and me, trying to cram like I did ten minutes before exams in high-school into my short-term memory. H comes before L, Diff after L, L only if you're stuck, radio confirmations, something about gravity... And then we were off. Nervously overbearing on the pedal sometimes, and then backing off, I was quite the erratic driver. But as soon as we hit our first small dune, the crest and trough melted all of those fears away. And then another, and another, and another. Everything came together. The storm inside (my mind) was finally calm. The backseats not so much. This is the first pivotal moment when I caught the proverbial bug. It was all was very smooth sailing until we hit our final "playground" Iftar Bowl, where my short-term knowledge broke the cardinal rule - "never fight gravity". I did that at the tip of the bowl, nose pointing twenty degrees upwards, in a car full of screaming children, a couple planning their happily-ever-afters, and the car itself contorting to the side of the slope creaking and croaking with sound effects straight out of a horror movie. I remember the next thirty odd minutes like it was a day. But with tons of guidance, I managed to get it unstuck. Back at the base of bowl, our car was eerily quiet going back to the exit. However, inside my mind, I wanted to go back there, and figure out how to do it safely, and right. This was the moment when I truly appreciated the happy fear that comes from taking on something big. The kind of fear that forces you to learn and scale yourself up. I wanted to get that feeling again, but more so I wanted to learn to do it correctly. It would take 10 years for me to finally commit to driving off-road. The two drives I've had with Carnity so far have been transcendent 🐵 This topic (thanks @Enrico Biscaro) and the amazing response I've seen in the past two weeks makes me feel like I've finally found the right place to do this.

Hi @Frederic, firstly still can't believe how quickly you turned this little ping into this! I'm an enthusiast and will be bringing my Fujinon 35mm f/1.4 and XE-2.

Joined! You lot rock 🤩