Category: Genesis

Dear Mum,

We are sorry we haven’t written, mums worldwide are on the edge of their seat waiting to hear of how many times ralliers have had a nice meal, in a nice safe hotel, somewhere similar to home. “Actually just come home”, mum says.

“No.”

So fans (read: mums, we know it’s just you), what are we up to? We are pretty tired, we’ve been meaning to write for the last 10 days about the road so far but aside from one or two days we’ve generally been on the road for 10-12 hours a day and if you aren’t driving, navigating, DJ-ing or hanging out the window at speed to get a good shot (see below) you are catching up on the sleep you aren’t getting at night as you sleep at 1am and can’t sleep past 7am due to the heat.

We’ve been convoying with two teams, Brothers Be Trippin’ and SightSeers which is huge fun and helps keep the road interesting, although the scenery has been so incredible it really just takes it up a notch.

In short, it’s amazing, everyone should do it. We are now in our 11^th country and on our way to the 12^th. We have pulled over 3 500 miles (stupid English car with it’s “miles”) which is over 5600kms in modern speak (miles x 1.6 = kms for the kids reading).

At the moment we are on our way to what is reported to be the world’s most dangerous road (sorry mum) and if this goes up I suppose we made it. The car is holding up well although we fitted a sump guard (metal plate under the engine to protect it from rocks) in a back-alley metalwork shop in Cappadocia after showing him another Micra with one. So now the car makes many funny noises and we are just hoping our modification doesn’t break something we actually need to drive on roads to require the sump guard protection in the first place.  Update: We just found out a team went there for a sump after us and they drilled it into their radiator. Oops. 

We promise to write soon with events from the first weeks and our run in with some Turkish guns last night…

Love,

The key source of stress in your life.

Given that we are now on the road you correctly assume that I did end up purchasing a car. After seeing so many terrible cars (yes, all of those “walk away” moments actually happened) I finally hit gold when I went to TCC Car Company in Enfield, north London. The owner, Peter, was a champ and gave us a 250 pound discount and weathered my suspicion of him with grace. I’d 100% recommend to any future purchasers.

After buying the car I took it to a friend’s usual mechanic for an independent review at Lordship Lane Tyres. The Geoff and the guys there gave it a full bill of health (minus needing a service and brakes) and didn’t charge us a cent but instead asked we made a donation on their behalf. We later went back to them to get four new mud/snow tyres for the off-road component of the rally and an extra rim so we could carry two spares. They also helped us drill through our bonnet so we can attach Adventurists logo “diplomatic flags”. They didn’t charge us labour for any of it.

In summary, people have been incredibly helpful and lovely.

The only issues with the car after I drove it around for a few weeks included the radio cutting out every 30 seconds for a second, a broken AUX input and a bit of a wobble at 140km/h… Obviously as an essential, the stereo got replaced, can’t say the same about fixing the wobble.

As Jeremy has mentioned, in my personal style I’ve procrastinated and am now far behind on blog updates so instead I’ve summarised what I remember of the last few weeks in London before the second coming of Jesus-eremy

Other notable events included:

• I tried to design a logo for the team. I got this far:

• Glastonbury with a group of work friends. What a huge privilege and massive bucket list item. Big thanks to Jamie for sorting us out and setting up camp. The Foos headlining was mindblowing, the sheer mass of people, size and lineup they pull is incredible, enough said.
• SMACC: had a work conference the next day in Berlin. Whilst educational, social and great fun, I’ve now realised that I am too old to pull an all nighter at Glastonbury, get straight on the coach to London, clean everything till midnight, then leave at 3:30am to catch a plane to a conference starting that day, then virtually do the same thing on the way home.
• Much stress over getting visas, managed to get Mongolia, Uzbekistan and for bonus prizes, Iran in London after belatedly realising I did need a visa to enter Iran…
• Met a lovely trio at the Uzbekistan Embassy who gave me cash to donate to Cool Earth.
• Ordered stickers and flags for our car
• Mass purchase of items off Amazon including

• New stereo
• Cigarette lighter to 240 volt inverter
• USB car chargers
• Recovery tracks for mud
• Cheap guitar
• GoPro accessories to fit to car
• Selfie stick
• First aid kit
• Petrol powered camping stove
• Camping pots and pans

As Jeremy boarded the plane it became a general feeling of why did we leave this so late?

And so it has finally begun.

30 minutes until I board the second of my two flights to London. The 31.5 hour journey has given me a little time to reflect on the preparation we’ve done.

The transit is usually the worst part about any trip but, truth be told, I was sort of looking forward to it. People constantly asked me if I’m ready, and I think with something like this, you can never over-prepare. There is always the weight of having something to do, but once you’re on the plane, you are powerless to do any more preparation. All you can do is sit there for the duration of the flight. There’s a sort of freedom in that. It releases you from some of the stresses of preparation.

And there has been an awful lot of both. In the approximately six months since the trip was confirmed, we have booked flights, organised visas for 8 countries (5 of which were costly, difficult and time consuming), organised a charity trivia event, researched and bought a car, learnt (not enough) about cars, set up a facebook page and blog, picked a route, purchased a satellite phone/emergency beacon, created packing lists, music playlists, updated travel vaccinations, purchased the odd bits and pieces required (maps, medications, equipment etc), and done all the admin to get the car registered and allow us to legally drive it across half the planet.

This was all happening whilst temporarily living out of home, starting a new job and maintaining a busy social schedule. Oh and for most of this time, Mitch was on the other side of the world, making communication a bit of an issue too.

We haven’t even started, and I’ve already learnt something about myself. I like to be prepared, and prepared early. I leave room for roadblocks, hurdles and slippages in timelines. Mitch, on the other hand, is a bit more relaxed with the planning side of things. Don’t get me wrong, he’ll always come through and get it done, he just leaves things a bit later than I would.

However, through all this planning we have worked pretty well as a team. We haven’t wanted to kill each other yet (but don’t worry, there’s still time!). Despite the communication complexities, having Mitch in England for most of the planning phase has actually been a great convenience. He has done a fantastic job purchasing the car, which took a fair effort (refer to blog post 2).

Although there was a lot to do, the planning process went relatively smoothly. Up until a couple days ago, when I double checked the dates on my visas. Mongolian visas are valid from three months from the date of issue. There was a bit of confusion with the dates, and the visa machine applied too early, so my visa expires about five days before we realistically think we’ll get there.

I can just get a visa from the embassy in London, right? Well, yeah, but not this week. It’s closed for a public holiday all week. And as the rally starts in a week, we’ll have to somehow get it en route. Apparently there’s an embassy in Prague that I can get it from…

We’ll call that challenge #1.  Oh well, it’s all part of the rally

When buying a second hand car, one must remember the shady Brit who is unlikely to care if the car he sells you may save your life on multiple occasions over the next few months. For the record he also doesn’t care if it’s dodgy brakes kill you on the Pamir Highway (see below).

I’d been warned about dodgy private sellers and dodgy used car dealers and even dodgier purchases, so much so that a friend had to go to court to get their money back because they were sold something un-driveable. So I didn’t really have high expectations, I also was unsure I could ever make a safe purchase.  Even so, some of my shopping experiences include the following suggestions:

• If the engine makes a funny noise and the seller sprays some WD40 on it and says “that will fix it”, you should probably walk away.
• If you are crawling under a car to check for rust in anything that looks like an important joint (remember you don’t know anything about cars) and the guy offers to jack up the car and the car bends where he jacks it, you should probably walk away.
• If the car makes a funny noise when it turns and the guy says – “ah don’t worry about that, it’s just the drive shaft that needs replacing”, you should probably walk away.
• If the car has just been serviced and the radiator and radiator reservoir is empty but the car doesn’t overheat, this is not a mark of the excellent durability and the “bulletproof” nature of the car as suggested by the seller. The radiator is leaking. You should probably walk away.

Things I’ve learnt to check:

• Check the MOT history here it will tell you if it’s ever failed to be registered due to some sort of impending doom. Note: this will drastically lower the number of cars suitable and will break your spirit.
• Learn from the frequent failures on MOTs, look up what they are and how to look for it when checking your future steed before purchase. Each model tends to fail frequently on the same things.
• Do a HPI check here. Stolen cars are cool until you get all ready for the rally and it gets repossessed.
• Check the basics. Oil, coolant, general condition, milage, different coloured panels (suggests replaced). Look for leaky things, crawl under the car and look for anything that looks like it connects the wheels to the car or the car to the car – if it is motheaten with rust, said car will likely bend on jacking.
• Make sure they haven’t warmed it up before starting it. When they start it, check if it turns over easily, get them to start it and check the exhaust for purple smoke, listen for noises.
• Test drive it: Check acceleration, heavy braking, turn wheels to full lock and move to test for issues with the driveshaft, listen more for noises.
• Check out the seller, 90% chance he’s a dodgy bastard, avoid these people. Go with your gut and better judgement.
• Eventually buy a vehicle knowing you’ve likely missed it’s fatal flaw. It’s meant to be shit anyway.