No time to post during the past few days. Too much driving! The past 3 days we have driven through Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, France, and Spain. Details and photos to follow.

Tonight we sleep in Granada, Spain and then tomorrow we leave Europe and cross into Africa. Wish us luck; we don't know where we're sleeping tomorrow. But we DO know it will be near the set of the original The Hills Have Eyes... Sooo.. Yea. Wish us luck.

Day 6

Budapest, Hungary

Today was surprisingly productive.  All 4 of us were just waiting for something to explode or go wrong in some horrible way, but everywhere we went, people helped us more than we could have ever expected.  We had to go to one of the rally's sponsors today to load our GPS with the routes and maps.  We sheepishly asked if they knew of any good mechanics in town and it just so happened the woman we were talking to owned a Land Rover herself and sent us over to her mechanic who seemed to work out of his house:

Yet another photo of The Disco with its hood up.  Apparently our coolant was just leaking. Stupid easy fix.

We decided to try our luck even further and we asked the same people if they knew where we could get help installing our CB radio (because of course, we hadn't done that yet either). They gave us another address and we went on our way to another random person's house in another random residential neighborhood. But not without stopping at a cowboy-esque steak house along the way.

That's right, they had kangaroo steak.

We're getting quite a different tour of Europe than usual. Mostly people's garages.

Finally got some proper sightseeing in this evening.

Let's see how much sleep we can all get tonight.  The rally begins at 8am tomorrow and we're all very pumped.  Clint keeps repeating that Miss Hungary 2005 will be handing out some sort of paperwork. Sweet. I'm more excited about shaking the hand of the mayor of some random little city outside Budapest who will be hosting a "grand tea party" for all of us at their local gas station. Should be interesting.

Watch the start live (apparently) from http://www.BudapestBamako.org/

We're #94 and are called the California Dirt Shrews. Clint picked the name...

Day 5

Frankfurt, Germany

Left Mainz today and headed over the the airport in Frankfurt to pick up the rest of our team: Helen and Mark. We then had to immediately start driving to Hungary in order to give us a day before the start of the race.

 After passing out for a couple of hours in the back of the car, Helen volunteered to take over the driving for a short bit to get a feel for it.  She then managed to randomly get us into a parking lot of a closed down amusement park.

It's only been a few days with the Land Rover and it's already developed several issues. First, it's too tall to fit in any parking garage, then the battery died, then the bolts fell out of the brakes, then all of a sudden on our drive to Budapest today, it seemed to start overheating.

...over and over and over again.

None of us could figure it out. Then again, none of know too much about cars either. Maybe we should have thought about that before coming here. Too late now! As I was dozing off in the backseat, I finally heard Clint yell something along the lines of "I see a leak!" I'm starting to believe that there IS a higher power out there and it has a really stupid sense of humor.

Didn't really help much, either, that we kept stopping in human-centipede territory to check the car.  Can you see the road in this photo? Neither could we.

Flew through Austria without any trace of us ever having been there and arrived in Budapest around 4am to find several other participants' vehicles parked on the street, including a hearst! Time to set our alarms for just a few hours later.
 We have to fix the car.

Day 4

Mainz, Germany

Woke up to find the Rhine outside our window.

 

Workin' on my food picture-taking skills while enjoying some lovely salmon.

Altogether, a pretty unproductive day in Mainz. Bought some propane and canned food for the camping portion of the trip and repacked our car about a hundred times.

Day 3

What about driving on the right side of a standard Land Rover on the right side of the road while tired?



Took our car on a train under the English Channel. Reminded me of Star Wars.

How many of you can say you've peed under the English Channel?

France

Oh hey, what's up France?

Brussels, Belgium

Some amazing architecture here as well.

Wish we could stop to figure out what the hell it is...

But don't worry, we had plenty of time to stop for some authentic Belgian TexMex!

Mainz, Germany

One million miles later.

One hour later.

Day 2



London, England

We had big plans for this day: go to mechanic, pick up tire, pick up some gas cans/water jugs, etc.  And of course, on the way to the mechanic, our brakes seem to stop working....?!? Clint tried to weave through traffic and make use of the useless emergency brake, but we had to make due with a different and closer shop.

After leaving this problem of a vehicle in the hands of a seemingly capable mechanic and just walking away, we couldn't help but feeling like the trip had just come to a sudden and expensive end.  Clint and I grabbed the nearest train and set off for a day of unplanned, anxiety-filled sightseeing.  Including:

...a proper view of Big Ben,

...chicken curry in an Indian restaurant that, of which, we were the only customers since last year probably,



...some random (but awesome) architecture,

...a trip to the Tate Modern art museum,

which included:

good art

...and better art. (better click these ones for more detail)

...and finally our day ended with half-assed visit to Buckingham Palace.

After phoning the mechanic, we found out our problem was not so problematic after all; the bolts had gone missing in our front brake...

Cheap fix, the trip can continue.

Day 1

San Francisco, CA

SFO. Left cell phone at this location, but that's ok, who needs a phone?

London, England

First real meal in a day and a half. Fairly stoked.

 Confusing tube/train rides.

A man named Peter, who unexplainably thought Clint's name was Colleen and continued to call him that,  picked us up at a train station and brought us to the Land Rover. He and his buddies were supposed to be going on this trip but ran out of funds.  Fortunately, he was just as excited about the trip as we were and did most of the work for us, plus some.

Peter took us out to teach Colleen and I how to drive on the right side of the car and the left side of the road.

Oh look, there's Big Ben. The only familiar thing we've seen in a few hours since our GPS died...