From Germany to Latvia and back on a ‘90 Honda Civic EF.

This summer we had our first SHADOW FRIENDS MEET which we held in one small Latvian village that Faby decided to come to - all on his own - on his 1990 Honda Civic EF. The distance was approximately 1800 km between his home and the place where we decided to meet, and this is how it went.

Faby had decided to split the road in two parts. First one was to get from Frankfurt (Germany) to Warsaw (Poland) where he would stay at for the night, and second - from Warsaw to Riga (Latvia) where he would meet shine in the evening and stay at his place. Car did it easily, ate no oil, no leaks and no issues in general.

Not long after Civic went through a bit of harsh driving on back-roads at midnight and driving on abandoned fields that “magically turned into auto-cross tracks on their own” on Shadow Friends Meet. * Note: Faby’s Civic was faster than Reezmi’s Lexus IS200 and Milz’s Subaru Impreza in time-attack runs by more than 6 seconds, and he won a bottle of cola for that.

Faby had decided to stay for a little bit longer in Latvia and help shine fix his BMW that refused to work properly no matter what. Faby also gave shine his car for couple of days to drive to work with, and as a result of overwork (both job and working on his BMW) shine bumped into something and crushed rear-left fog light on the Civic. Quite a sad turn of events for a car that had 0 issues after all it went through. Both of us tried to cheer each other up and not to fall into depression, because it felt equally bad for both of us, and we understood each other quite well. What made our mood better was the first set of banners that we made for all our cars rear-windows.

Once the situation with shine’s BMW cleared out it was time for Faby to head back home. He took the same route back through Warsaw where he slept over and then got back home. The car again managed to do it without any issues, and returned back to its daily routine with no problems.

This winter Civic is going to see some heavy changes and mods, so this trip will be a good memory to look back at and compare how much things have changed.

* a little word from Faby *

Why did You do this entire trip?

Faby: “I’ve been in Latvia a few times already, but the rest of Shadow Friends had never seen my Civic in real life before, even though they were the ones who inspired me to get one. In short, I just wanted to see them once again, show them my car and enjoy the car-friendly environment.”

Was it worth it and would You do it again?

Faby: “It was definitely worth it, I had a lot of fun. Also I helped out shine in the progress, since his BMW needed repairs and he relied on a car to earn money. I would do it again, but I can do it only once per year, sadly. I’m working full time, it’s pretty expensive overall, and it puts a lot of stress on my car. All of that shouldn't stop me from doing it again though, since owning the car alone in Germany is lame. It's supposed to run alongside my teammates and their cars...”