Jul 18

Day 1

by in The Trip

The adventure started after we did our leaving lap of the goodwood race track. On competition we had to pull over to inspect our fan belt… as its making a peculiar noise. Not really what you want happening 1 mile into a 10,000 mile trip! It only happens when we turn the car on, we cant hear it when we’re cruising the motorway, so figure it’s not a big deal. We’ve decided to let nature take its course. We’ve got a spare in the glove box, just no idea how to fit it.

After a lengthy and nerve racking drive as Andy drove us to Dover (Andy attempted blind folded driving), we boarded the ferry. We met some awesome guys on the rally and exchanged details so we can meet up with them in Georgia. We also met a Finish teenager who’s travelling all around Europe and more… completely by herself, with nothing more than a backpack. Adventurer!

People laughed as our car drove off the ferry due to its horrible dying noise…. but we had the last laugh as we bombed it past many of them on the motorway.

Once we reached france, our plan was to just blitz it to the Nurenburgring to thrash the car around a race track before we head off to prague for the 2nd launch party! So we loaded up the coordinates in the TomTom and hit the road! Armed with energy drinks we drove way into the night with a couple of close encounters :-/ One involving partly mounting the side of the motorway, another involving clipping a tree. It was after the latter we decided it would be safer to stop and continue the journey the following day.

It was around 4am, we’d been driving for a further 7 hours since we got off the ferry. We pulled up next to a motel which wanted 60 euro for a single bed!!! Screw that, so we decided to sleep in the car… like posh hobo’s. So we hopped in our sleeping bags, found a dark spot and laid back to sleep. Most uncomfortable experience ever. Only took 30 minutes of tossing and turning before Rus marched into the Motel and got the room. Me and andy snuck in afterwards and managed to get a perfect 2 hours sleep…. before Rus’s iphone which is completely broken due to rain at launch party…. decided it will turn on on its own every 9 minutes for a very loud alarm. This continued until lunch time the following day.

Luckily, as you may know I sleep through absolutely anything. So I was only woken 3 times from this continuous alarm!

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