While the Elefant Meeting 2015 was something quite spontaneous, the Meeting 2016 was entirely different. In France it was announced that the next meeting would be in Denmark. Depending on where in Denmark it should happen, that was still reasonable close to Luxembourg. Based on the great experience in 2015 it would be definitively worth to consider the trip and go there.

In autumn Mikel studied the Elefant forums to figure the date out. It was a more than positive surprise when the first rumors came up there that the meeting would be in Tuscany and not in Denmark. The contact was Alessandro Gradi. Mikel did contact him and when the final location was communicated, Mikel couldn’t wait until he could communicate the news to Irene. Sovicille, a small town in Tuscany that was very close to Siena. It was not far away from Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, a place that both of them did favor over lots of other places on this planet. It was absolutely clear - they would go there and Mikel’s Elefant had to be in a good shape and street legal until June 2016.

The introduction for the meeting was probably done by the best Italian marketeers: “The 2016 International Cagiva Elefant Meeting will be held in the beautiful Tuscany, World and Unesco heritage for its 7 incredible beauties and historical value. Ideal place for gourmet lovers, this land rich of history and passion will welcome you with its secular traditions, the cypress trees that draw the horizon, medieval towns and unique art work. All these reasons will make it the event of the year that you can not miss: The 2016 Cagiva Elefant International Treffen.” ... How would they possibly miss something like that.

Over the winter there were almost 200 people that did sign up for the meeting. This should make it the most successful Elefant meeting ever. Apparently Tuscany was not only for Irene and Mikel a very popular region. They managed to get almost 3 weeks holidays, which is quite exceptional and they could combine during this timeframe the Ducati WDW and the International Cagiva Elefant Meeting 2016 in one trip. What a great holiday this would be! It could only become better when Tony and Laura confirmed that they would spend some days in Tuscany in the same timeframe and Gio and Toto decided to come down to WDW as well.

In June 2017 finally Irene and Mikel found themselves back on the way to Tuscany. They both did ride their Monster and no Elefant was going to Italy from Luxembourg. The Elefant this time simple decided that he didn’t want to go there! But that is a different story.

The first Elefant Rider on the road they met was from Switzerland and they found him at a petrol station close to the Swiss/Italian boarder. He offered them to team up but they decided not to start the holidays in a hurry. The initial plan was to arrive on Friday but that was to optimistic. They left one day too late and is was raining like hell until they had passed the Saint Gotthard Pass. When they finally arrived on a Saturday afternoon the meeting was already up and running. They still recognized some characters from the meeting in France. There was Mats from Sweden and the Alessandro, who did guide them the inscription process and asked them to install themselves first.

The campsite was huge but beautifully located in lovely Tuscany. There was plenty of space to ride an Elefant trough a valley that you had to pass if you want to reach the tent site. Great place - nobody would be disturbed here unless you ride there during nighttime. On the upper side of the place on the hill, there where plenty of bungalows. This time fortunately they had a tent even if Irene was attracted by the bungalows.

The guys were building up an outdoor stage for the ceremony in the evening. A couple of Elefants just returned from the day trip while Irene and Mike made there way with the bikes trough the gravel to install their tent.

While installing the tent, a tall Elefant Rider came over to talk to them. He had his tent in the neighborhood. Mikel did recognize him. He was the the famous Elefant Rider with the guitar and he presented himself as Marcus. Marcus was full of enthusiasm and pointed with his finger excited to the number plates of the new arrivers. His question first to Mikel was then obviously if they would come from Luxembourg? As the answer was positive they saw Marcus getting even more excited.

The story was apparently that the Elefant Riders after 16 years slowly did run out of European countries. Of course Europe had at that moment 44 countries and not only 16 but obviously they needed a host in the target country. They could organize the meeting multiple times in the same country and it did already happen in the past, but there was always the question of fairness. When the meeting was organized in the south all the guys from the north had a long ride and vice versa for the opposite case. Only a new county was neutral and no one would argue about a new location.

Two german riders (Matze und Anja) came from Saarbrücken, which is close to the German border to Luxembourg and had proposed Luxembourg as next destination country. The mission of “Marcus the Guitar Bähr” was now to get this proposal trough the board of directors. Marcus was very active in the Elefant community and represent the Elefants in the north of Germany. With two Luxembourgish Riders just arriving, he saw a good chance to succeed with his mission.

Marcus was a great guy. His Elefant was gorgeous and he had the guitar suitcase mounted on the right side. His guitar did follow him everywhere. Irene and Mikel had hardly time to finish their stuff, as they had to come over to the the other neighbors to say hallo and have a drink. In the meantime Marcus was busy to fine tune the Luxy plan. Maybe in the beginning the guys have been a bit taken by surprise but after 10 minutes even Irene was supportive and in favor of Luxembourg as next location. The whole team would support them as good as possible. Marcus highlighted that it was most important to find a location that was Elefant friendly and he had already an idea that he presented. He did know Weiswampach in the north of Luxembourg. There were several Harley Davidson meetings that had been organized there over years. It potentially was the perfect place.

The next thing was to explain the plan to the board. Especially the Italians had to be involved as they represented a large group of the riders. Marcus expected the French Elefant Riders to be in favor due to language and Luxembourg as country being close to France. The guys from the north would also have less an issue with Luxembourg. At the end that sounds all quite calculated but honestly - Marcus is a great and honest guy and he just wanted to find a solution that is good for everybody.

They did walk back to the meeting place. More bikes did arrive - back from their day trip... Not only Cagivas but also KTMs, AfricanTwins and others.

There was a shopping booth area. Plenty of stuff that no one believed still existed were presented and you could even buy it here.

The main attraction have been the real Dakar and Pharaoh race bikes.

Irene and Mikel did hang around and watched the bikes. While in the tent the Paris/Dakar videos went on and on, outside you could watch the stuff in real.

There was no specific age for Elefant riders...

The afternoon did pass too quickly but what then happened was even more curious as the story with Marcus on their arrival. They got back to the Italians, who have been obviously at that moment very much under pressure to get the evening perfectly organized. They just had their final rehearsal for tonight. Irene and Mikel met Riccardo "Kiwi" Tori, another great guy from the Italian Elefant Riders, who was introduced as the Italian President. The Italians discovered immediately that Irene was one of them (Italian) and further that she speaks fluently a bunch of other languages like German, French, English, Spanish...

There was no protest possible. Irene was promoted on stage to do the non Italian translations and she had to start right away. There were some important news that had to be translated: like the program of the upcoming night or that Elefants shouldn’t ride during the night through the camp side.

Then it was already slowly time for the dinner. There was plenty of grilled meet and wine. It was delicious. Marcus came over with more and more guys, that he engaged to help the new friends from Luxembourg to organize the next meeting. He presented On- and Off-Road guides and many other profiles. Slowly it looked like the Luxy guys became famous while everybody started to know them. Several guys came an told them that they should write or call if they needed a hand.

After the dinner with plenty of wine the highlights of the evening came closer.

The main attraction followed straight after dinner. Ciro De Petri was asked to come on stage. The crowd did welcome him like a reigning champion. Ciro did win twice the Tunisia Rally and twice the Pharaoh Rally for Cagiva. In the Paris/Dakar of 1989 he became 3rd and made it onto the podium. One of the stories that he told that night to the audience was from his first Dakar race for Cagiva in 1986. He had good chances to win his first race when his Ducati engine died with a broken gearbox. The Pantah gearbox at that time was maybe suitable for road racing but certainly not for racing in the desert. Old memories came up as Mikels first Pantah gearbox died in 1984.

For Ciro it was impossible to repair that defect in the dessert. He did with the help of Franco Gualdi swap the motobike but unfortunately the helicopter caught him and he was disqualified. Unluckily a TV team had in the helicopter had the full incident on tape. What a story! Others stories like, running in the desert with only one cylinder did follow. Apparently Mikels Elefant was not the only one that runs sometimes only on one cylinder.

Ciro finally ended his speech with the statement that he did ride a lot of bikes in his life: KTMs, Yamaha’s, Honda’s - but the work that he did with Cagiva and the Castiglioni Family did remain in his heart and were the most important in his life.

The next highlight was the Alex Fischer price. Gégé from France was unfortunately not able to come to Tuscany to pickup his price. He was replaced by Evy - neighbor and wife of his friend Philippe. She publicly read a letter from him. Everybody was deeply touched by that.

Next stage was the challenge for the most beautiful Elefant, the most elegant Elefant, the most Off-road Elefant,  and so on... Several beautifully made bikes got presented on stage and all of them surely deserved their prizes. Finally there should have been a prize for the ugliest Elefant, but as the jury couldn’t or didn’t want to find any ugly Elefant, the prize was changed to the coolest and most unique Elefant. The winner was Marcus the Music Baehr. He did ride his Elefant on stage and seemed to be not entirely convinced that the prize wasn’t for the ugliest Elefant. But finally he accepted the prize as the one for the most consumed Elefant. He explained on stage that Rebecca thought yesterday, she had passed him by riding now 365000 km with her bike but Marcus Elefant had at that moment already 383000 km on the clock. Wow! ... more than 380000 km... the crowd went wild.

Finally Kiwi did ask Irene and Mikel to come on stage to announce the location of the international Elefant Meeting 2017. By that time almost everybody did already know the open secret. The selected location was Luxembourg. It seams that most of the guys were in favor of the location. Marcus was happy as well. The Elefant trophy was handed over symbolically form Italy to Luxembourg.

What a day! This morning Irene and Mikel did hardly know these guys and now they had been selected to host the next meeting. After the formal part plenty of guys came to congratulate, offer their help or did just warn about the work that was in front off them. Gavin and Paul came and offered help on the administrative level and offered the website for the inscriptions. Marcus had Heike motivated to design and print the 2017 TShirts... and so on.

The evening ended like all those Saturday Elefant Meeting evenings used to end, with the guitar of the Music Baehr and plenty of beer.

What a day! ...

The next morning Mikel discovered that one entire day was missing. Today the guys would do a last trip to Siena at Piazza del Campo to make the final group photo of the International 2016 Cagiva Elefant Meeting. After that the official part was already over. Surely a lot of the guys would hang around at the Camping for a few days but most of them are restless and the place wouldn’t keep them happy for a long time. 

Irene and Mikel decided not to join for the Siena trip. They woke up late, had enough kilometers over the last three days and would today probably just thang around or take one bike out this afternoon for a short trip. It was impressive to see the Elefants leaving the campsite.

Some of the Germans and most of the French riders did leave already on that day. But there was still enough time to discuss with several of them. Especially the French have been very thankful regarding Irene’s translation services. Irene and Mikel spend a few hours to watch always other groups of Elefants congregating and leaving the place.

They made a shot trip with the bike in the afternoon and discovered a great place for food and wine and came just back before it started raining. The day ended with red wine in Sovicille.

They stood couple of days at the camping and used the place as a base camp for daily Tuscany trips before crossing Italy and spending a few days at the WDW on the Adria coast. The other Elefant riders that decided to stay for couple of days were mainly guys from Bavaria and Austria. Great people. Especially the Austrian probably did ride hard but did also know how to drink wine and have fun.

At a certain moment also the last Elefants left the place. Not everybody went back to the north. Some of them moved over to Croatia because apparently the weather was good there but in the meantime the weather was perfect in Tuscany as well. Irene agreed to stay for two extra nights if she would get a bungalow.

They found Rebecca days later back on the Adria coast. It was just a couple of 100 Kilometers away from Sovicille but the difference was that she was by that time already returned to Germany an back agin in Italy.

The next big thing for the Elefants would be in Luxembourg and Irene & Mikel had to organize it. Of course they would do their best but it would be by no means as great as event in Tuscany. But lets wait and see...

A few days later Laura and Toni came with their bikes down to Tuscany and got immediately engaged in the team to organize the International Cagiva Elefant Meeting 2017.

More to come...