After our founding father and long-time president passed away in February, we decided at the General Assembly on February 24, 2024 to organize the Reinhard Eigler Memorial Ride on May 18, 2024.

The idea behind the event was to return to the place where the club was founded, namely to the Stubenbergsee in Styria.

We met in the morning in the lakeside restaurant at the Königsdorf natural bathing lake, where Reinhard liked to sit by the water and drink a glass of wine in the evening sun. We had received this tip from Martin Reinhard's son and the tip was worth its weight in gold. We started with a second breakfast and waited for the arrival of the other participants with coffee, Burgenland pastries and delicious drinks. But the wait lasted a little longer, as a car stopped working with a defective ignition on arrival and did not want to continue despite loving attention from Walter.

After all participants had arrived, the first stage brought us to David Gölles' whiskey distillery, the "House of Whiskey", where we had a guided tour and could taste various drinks with a view of the Riegersburg.

Unfortunately, I was only able to follow the lead partially, because another car with fuel pressure problems had quit the service and Walter, who wanted to help, had lost contact with the group.

After the tour, we went on to the Stubenbergsee to the restaurant Oachkatzlschwoaf in the Stubenbergsee, where we enjoyed an extended lunch on the terrace with a view of the Stubenbergsee and in magnificent weather in the crowd of rover friends, after Christian and Klaus had also joined us. With some delay, Christan arrived, who, due to a lack of tools, repaired the electrics of his P5 with fingernails and teeth in order to build up fuel pressure for the onward journey – an example of extraordinary automotive passion.

Since the social gathering and the petrol conversations had a negative effect on the schedule, the visit to an apple farmer with an attached schnapps distillery had to be cancelled and we went to the end of the trip to the Pöllauberg, where we visited the church and lit candles for Reinhard.

Because no one wanted to go home yet, we sat down together again in the garden of the Bergasthof König and let the day end in an atmospheric way with stories in memory of Reinhard.

Thomas