Damn Odessa Internet Cafe...

The last time we posted we only managed to get half down before the damn INternet cafe timed us out. As such youall missed our other numerous Ukrainian adventures. Now we're nearly into Kazakhstan and have the various Russian ones to tell too. So this might take a while.
To backtrack to the Ukraine, our night before the one spent in Odessa was spent in a random small town in the Western mountains we can't remember the name of and involved alcoholic fromer economic students and friendly if scary taxi drivers. It began with a nice guy called Roman giving us a hotel recommendation and his phone number to call if it didn't work out so we could sleep on his floor. A couple of hours later we were wishing we called as we found ourselves assailed by every taxi driver and alcohlic in the town, all expressing an unusal interest in our car and sleeping habits. Asit turned out it was genuine curiosity and friendliness but at the time it seemed agressive to the point of worry. We even managed to store the car in a taxi drivers garage for the night (for a price) though there was a brief panic when he overslept and failed to turn up to collect us from the hotel in the morning.
The next night was Odessa where we hung around a bit with a couple of cool Italian Rally teams we met en route (Carface and Yesweekend). Reasnoably nice city. Slept in a car park with the nice security guard's permission, woken up by the not so nice seceruioty guard in the morning. Then we slept the next night in an actual hotel. Smallest rooms ever. Thinest walls too. Andrew and I managed to resist the temptation of the peephole gouged intoour wall but did wake up to the sound of an estimated three or four couples doing some waking up of their own. Not that we woke up in that particular way.
After Odessa and losing the Italians after catastrophic failures in organising our lives we drove straight to Lugansk and the Russian border. Not as bad as Ukrainina border until the very last point where we met angry-moustache-man with no English. Grr.
So, onto Russia! After rolling off the border to the melodies of 'Back in the USSR'' we managed to promptly get stopped by the police. ANd then again. And again. And again.... And again. Six or sevenm times in 1000 clicks. Luckily they don't arrest you, just exthort bribes from you. So we're left poor and tired after driving through the night trying to avoid them. On the plus side though, we've got the routine down now and got away without paying at all this morning. The formula seems to be: don't speak much Russian so they get tired of trying to get you to understand, speak a few little phrases so they think you're making an effort, and shout names of Dostoyevsky books at them. They love it.

Now,onwards to Kazakhstan - the land of deserts and probably very little Internet access. So ta ta for now.

Team Wiki Wiki :)

When it (Uk)raines, it pours...

Shit. Has. Hit. The. Fan.

But now everything's cool again.

We're now in Odessa in Southern Ukraine on the coast of the Black Sea. Since leaving the EU and stepping into this country our journey's thus far have seemd like a pleasant jaunt more than a proper adventure. No more though. This is our third day in the Ukraine and the first without incident (so far).

The first day: Ten minutes after the (two hour) border crossing we somehow lost the folder that had all of our passports and documents in it. Annoying seeing as we never keep them all together usually - we only did so for the border. Don't ask how this happened - we're not sure but probably something to do with the folder being on top of the cfar and us driving away... its not important really. Point is we immediately shit ourselves (though Jimmy found this all pervesely hillarious). We spent about an hour and a half frantically scouring the stretch of road said incident occured on but to no avial. We asked the border guards. No luck. We drove into town, found what we thought was a polcie station but was actually the regional treasury office where a security guard called the police for us. This is how we managed to wangle the reigional secretary of state for the treasury as aour translator!

Not quite Czech'd out...

... as, two days after the party we're still in the Czech Republic. To be fair though, we're in Prague and it is a pretty cool place. Last night we found ourselves in some surreal underground club with deco seemingly inspired by a mixture of industrialism, the Terminator franchise and hallucinogens. Said club had many quaint and charming little nuances such as sex in the corner, cocaine on counter-tops and blood all over one of the toilets. Safe to say it had a certain Je ne sais quoi...

Going a little further back the Czechout Party was pretty good. We started the day with some casual in-car croquet followed by heavy drinking and then a party. The castle itself was quite beautiful, and unlike British ones not full of 'safety' rails that we all know are there to stop anyone having fun - fun which was aided greatly by the imbibing of many beers and a little absinthe (which was nasty - somewhere between petrol and liquorice). Oh, and the free meat was very welcome indeed. Much meat. Free meat. Good meat. The only semi-downside was the weird American who started arguing with us about anything and everything whose standard response was 'I'll stab you in the face' and whose preferred greeting was 'fuck off'. The phrase 'fuck-you-die' has now been added to Team Wiki Wiki's repetoire of favourite phrases.

From here we're going to head down to Odessa in the Ukraine. We'll try to check in when we can but the Internet may well become more sparse. We could shortcut through Moldova and get there quicker but the tales of seperatist rebels have somewhat put a dampner on that particular route.

We'll be back soon and hopefully upload a video or two, perhaps one of car-croquet. In the mean-time we'll try our best not to die too much :)

Lovc,
Team Wiki Wiki

Seicentos are not for sleeping...

Hello all,

We're just checking in after a frantic search for petrol led us off the motorway into a random German city we don't know the name of. Anyway, last night proved to be possibly the most uncomfortable of our lives when we decided to sleep in what was half way between a lay-by and a residential street in Belgium. A thoroughly unexciting place. It transpires that whoever designed the interior of a Seicento did not do so with the weary rallier in mind...

Its been surprisingly eventful for so early in the rally - an American team totalled their Ford Ka before we got past the campsite, an old man and a slightly less old man gave us Max Power car stickers and advice on the intricacies of Russian transport police. We've pushed quite far already and we're looking forward to Czechout.

And a word of assurance for the parents - sleep patterns have been erratic but the driving has not. Driving on the right seems to be going okay...

Speak soon,
Love Team Wiki Wiki :)

The brakes broke...

... but not in the way they're meant to. As in broken. As in, air in the system and the brake fluid nuts are too old and damaged to undo without risking breaking them. Oh well, mechanic's coming tomorrow. C'est la vie. We've got all the lights working and new brake shoes on the rear wheels. Handbrake's tightened up a few notches too, which is good as before my driveway posed a significant challenge to the beast.

On another note we had our little quiz last night. Thanks to everyone who came, and shame on those who promised to but didn't! Shame! Overall we raised about £140 and it was a decent laugh too. We finally got the little steed named too - the winning entry was 'The Custardmobile' from Ellie Aston, allegedly Andrew's wife (and Facebook never lies).

Anywho, must go and panic some more about our impending doom. One week to go though!

Toodles,
Chris

The Beast Awakens!

'And lo, the Seicento did burst forth from the gates of Chris' garage; the engine screaming fury - a peal of thunder; and into the world came a steed coloured a yellow more ferocious than the sun's - the yellow of lightning, or a slightly jaundiced tiger. The heavens wept, and God did tremble.'
-Revelations 4:21*

As of 11:00am this morning the mighty Seicento is officially insured in mine and Jimmy's names. This is momentous news as it means that I've had a chance to drive the thing and see just how dodgy it really is. The brakes are somewhat impotent, the handbrake needs to be pulled skywards with a force greater than the engine's total output to get the thing to stand still on even the slightest incline and it took me about ten minutes to figure out how to turn off the rear windscreen wipers.The last of these things may admittedly be a fault with me rather than the car but nonetheless... this is going to be fun!

When I say this is going to be fun I say it completely sans sarcasm - the spirit of the Mongol Rally is to drive something 'unfit to do your shopping in' and with the introduction of the ten-year-young rule I was worried our car might turn out to be somewhat good. No such misfortune - the Rally spirit will be kept intact even if we won't be.

In other news it's less than two weeks to launch and we still have a decent amount of things left to do. Still, a team did everything in less than a fortnight one year so we should be fine. What's closer than even this impending deadline though is the quiz we'll be hosting at Hemel School this Friday to raise some monies for the lovely charities. We'd really appreciate any support and it would be great if people could get a team of 5-10 together and come down. Its £4 each but that doesn't matter because no one is reading this anyway. We'll also be drawing the car's name out of a hat so that should be fun. Oh well. Hopefully see you there. Please.

Much Wiki Wiki love,
Chris


*Not really.