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Success! Everybody woke up early, and got their things packed up! Joe and Tim headed off really early in the morning, heading toward the next town to repair their tires. Since they could only go about 10 mph on their leaking tires, and had to fill one up every twenty minutes or so, they figured we would catch up before long. This was a risky assumption for the group we were with. The Germans needed to reattach the skid plate underneath their car, and one of the welds had snapped. Andrew and I sat down in the Skoda, waiting for them to finish, and we both eventually fell asleep. By the time we were woken up to leave, over two hours had passed. So much for everybody getting up early.

We drove on until we reached the next town, but by the time we reached it, we were alone. We had decided to take a side road to avoid the washboard, but about 5 minutes down the road, our path suddenly collapsed into a ditch. We were forced to turn around, which included Andrew and I pushing the car out of the sand. We figured everybody was way ahead of us, but as it turned out, they had turned around when they didn't see us. While we were on the lower road coming out, they passed us going backward. At the town we got a mobile signal, and we finally figured out what happened. There were no tire shops at the town, so we assumed Joe and Tim had gone on.

When we arrived at the next town, there was some sort of demonstration going on in a small parade ground. We would have loved to see it, but with all the time we had wasted thus far, we all knew we had to go on. The Spaniards looked for a tire shop in this town, but the people said there wasn't one. This really made us worry about Joe and Tim, who had obviously continued down the road on their bad tires. We drove the rest of the day without running into them, wondering how we hadn't caught up with them on their bad tires. We were making excellent time, and thought that we would actually make it into Altai that night. Then 2drew had his first mechanical problem. While driving over the top of a shrub, he managed to catch his sump-guard and rip it off. While we were stopped we saw some guys in a landrover that had blown both of their rear shocks, and were driving as carefully as possible. Every bump they hit bounced on the axle, and they knew the car wouldn't take it for long. They told us that they had seen Joe and Tim earlier that day, and that they had managed to get their tires fixed in one of the towns.

We're not sure which town they did this, but good news for them. We eventually got the sump-guard back on the Skoda, despite 2drew's passive aggressive remarks, and continued toward Altai. We were fighting sunset, but we still thought we could make it into the city before dark. Then somebody's tire blew. We quickly changed it over, then continued on the path toward the city. We made it about 100 yards down the road when somebody's roof rack started to fall off. An hour ticked by, and the sun was quickly setting. The roads are risky enough to drive on in broad daylight, so attempting them at night was out of the question. We found ourselves a small river valley and set up camp for the night. We had barely covered any distance, and we had lost Joe and Tim. We did, however, have another brilliant sky hanging above our heads that night. http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... The next morning we woke everybody up early, then told them that we were going to go into town immediately, take care of getting groceries, and catch Joe and Tim before they left town. It was frustrating leaving because Juan and Nuria had to talk in their tent for 45 minutes before they got up. Andrew and I grew up camping with boy scouts where you have everything packed, breakfast cooked and eaten, and everybody on the road in 45 minutes. It took these people hours to get ready, and only Karsten seemed to be annoyed with these habits. Perhaps it was the impatience of youth on our part, as our traveling companions are all in their thirties.

We made it to the town and drove around searching for Joe and Tim. Although Altai is one of the largest cities in Mongolia, searching through the whole thing does not take long. We made it to a hotel and saw some ralliers if they had seen the Rubik's Cube, and we were told that they had left about an hour before we got there. We were devastated. We had been with these guys for weeks, and they finally left us. I don't blame them; it was rather frustrating to constantly be waiting on people, but at the same time I felt obligated to stay with them because of all the help and time they gave us. There would be other times when somebody would try to separate, but it I generally felt that I was the only one with whom it did not sit well. Juan was definitely offended by Joe just taking off, for the reasons stated above, but Andrew and I knew that Joe was impatient. That's why we tried to catch him before he left.

Eventually the others made it to Altai, but then they had to do the repairs on their cars. The cars were working fine, but Juan always wanted every tiny thing to work properly, even if it wasn't a vital part of car. We had finished all of our tasks by the time they entered the city, so we found ourselves waiting on our friends once again. We went to the little marketplace and ate some awful goat dumplings with an incredibly gamey flavor. These were by far the worst we had eaten so far, and my stomach hurt for most of the day. After a couple hours, everybody was finally ready to depart again, so we headed down the road.

Once again we had wasted over half a day, and we had not covered much ground. On top of that, Andrew and I had no spent several days in a car without once touching the wheel, and we were getting restless and tired of our driver. That's when we decided to start messing with 2drew. We actually spent the next several hours trying to get under his skin because we were tired of the uncalled-for negativity. The least we could do was give him a reason to get upset. We also strapped belts to the doors of the car, and Andrew went for a ride on the hood. Soon it was getting late, and the Germans' entire roof rack came flying off their car. We wouldn't be going any further that day.

The next morning we came across a small village full of children. They all lined up at the cars, hands outstretched, looking for gifts. We had nothing in our car, save the ratty barbie we had found on the side of the road, but we enjoyed watching the kids clamor for the doll. The Germans had a lot of sweets, and the Spaniards had inflatable beach balls and pens that doubled as bubble blowers. We got the roof racks bolted onto the roofs and tires repaired at the only building in the village, then had a delicious brunch. We managed to make it away from the village by 10, and it looked like a promising day of travel for us, but then we saw a broken down car in the middle of the road. http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... While we generally stop to help anybody in need, this car was significant because it was the "sister ship" of Juan and Nuria. They had some disagreements and had decided to split up at one point, but promised to help if they ever saw them stranded. After checking everything with the car, as well as trying to reset the fuel pump, they still couldn't get the car to start. There was really nothing we could do at this point, but Juan and Nuria felt too guilty to just say "see you later", while their former teammates waited for the Germans in a firetruck. 2drew managed to do the hard work of asking if they would be offended if we left, seeing as there was nothing more to do, and they said it was fine. We told our friends that it was fine to leave, but they still lingered, so 2drew just told us to get in the car and drive off.

We didn't have much choice, but this was not the way I wanted to depart from our friends. 2drew drove really slowly, expecting them to be along any minute, but they weren't. Then he just decided that this was our chance to leave. We drove for a bit, but then the engine started overheating (karma?). The reason was because there was such a strong back wind, and we were driving so slow, the intake wasn't bringing in enough air. 2drew insisted it was because of the skull on the front preventing air getting in (despite the massive eye sockets). Andrew tried to explain that it couldn't possibly be the reason, but the response was, "well it's an effing factor, and it's coming off!" Such is what happens when things aren't 2drew's idea... When the car was still overheating a bit later, Andrew said, "wow, we're still overheating. It must be because the horse skull is still on the roof." Oh passive aggression, how I love you so.

We eventually solved the heating problem by driving faster and blowing the heaters through the vent. After awhile we got to a massive river that was flowing faster than any we had seen to that point. A local told me that further down the river was less than knee-height, so we trekked down stream to see what we could find. An Irishman named Martin and I waded into the river to try and find the best route across. We finally found a spot that didn't have a muddy bottom, and that didn't come up to high. We then stood in the river and directed the flow of traffic across, for the path was rather narrow. When it was 2drew's turn to go, he once again started too fast. I was frantically waving my arms for him to slow down, but sure enough, the wave came over the top of the hood, and this time the car stalled mid-river. We then had to push the car the rest of the way across the river.

When we opened the hood, this time the air filter was completely soaked. It looked like this might be the end of the Skoda, but we we reached up into the air intake, the pipe was dry. We luckily had an extra air filter, but the engine still wouldn't start. We figured the spark plugs were wet, so we pushed the car around to face the sun, then sprayed copious amounts of WD-40 into them. While we waited for the plugs to dry, I headed back out into the river to direct the rest of the cars across. Eventually Juan, Nuria, Karsten, and Robert all showed up, as there was about an 8 person bottleneck by the time we found the best spot to cross. I apologized for the way we had left earlier, then helped direct their cars across as well. By the time they had both made it, we had just managed to get the car the turn over. I feel I should mention that the only person that stalled the car out of ten crossing cars was our fearless driver who refused to let us take the wheel.

After this we hit large stretches of sandy roads that our broken CV boots certainly loved. There were multiple paths to choose from, and we chose one of our own. Soon though, we had lost everybody, so we ended up cutting across the scrub desert to find the parallel road. We had lost our companions again, and we were afraid that they were making a point in trying to lose us after we had ditched them that day. We were trucking along when 2drew got his first flat tire. This wouldn't have been so much of an issue had the trunk door not quit working the day before, so now we had to pull all of our stuff out of the car over the backseat to reach our spare. We saw the Spaniards and Germans on the parallel road, and 2drew was screaming at them to keep going, and that it was only a flat. I have no idea why he refused to have some help, but soon not only had those two teams come over, we had the Irishmen and some Brits stop as well.

We got everything fixed up, and we made it to the next city just before nightfall. Our companions wanted a hotel, so we camped just outside the city with some other teams we had met along the way. We discussed paragliding with our new Irish friends, and they told us of a place in UB where we could go paragliding for next to nothing. The next morning we got our tire fixed, and a tube put inside. We wasted some more time waiting on our friends, but by then we were used to it. We got a bit more food, then headed out of town.

Once again the roads were something to be reckoned with. There were also about 8 branching roads to choose from. At one point the Spaniards turned around, and so we followed them. The next thing we knew they had turned around again, but were driving on a road higher than us, and did not see us. Andrew and I each suggested good, easy places to turn around, but since they weren't 2drew's idea, he kept driving the opposite direction til he saw one he liked. Then he got stuck in the sand. This meant that Andrew and I got to push him out. Sadly, this wouldn't be the only time that day with this same scenario.

At this point we had lost everybody. We drove along on narrow dirt tracks, not really sure if we were even on the right road. After an hour we suddenly saw the German team, and they asked us where the Spaniards were. We hadn't seen either of them in a long time, so we turned around and waited. Apparently the two cars had taken diverging paths that they assumed would converge on the other side of this small mountain, but it never happened. We said we would wait where we were in case the Spaniards came back, and then the Germans backtracked all the way to the city to see if they could send a SMS. After 1 1/2 hours we got sick of waiting, wondering if the Germans even knew which road to take. We continued on, thinking we were alone. Eventually we blew a tire again, and out of nowhere the Germans reappeared. We kept on driving, and after a particularly horrific stretch of road, we finally found some pavement. What a Godsend. We made it into town right at sundown, and then we ran into Juan and Nuria! We found a hotel for the night, got some dinner, and went to bed. http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... The next morning we grabbed a quick breakfast and started driving, feeling much more confident about being able to finally finish our journey. We had been told that once we hit the town we were in we would have several hundred km of tarmac, followed by 60 km of awful road, and then be able to ride out the rest of the journey on tarmac again. We were so excited when we saw our first road sign for Ulaan Baatar along the highway. At one point we saw some of our friends stopped on the side of the road, but when we brought this to 2drew's attention, his response was "The Germans will stop." A short while later we saw another team we knew pulled over on the road, and once again 2drew just kept going. Who was this guy? The spirit of the rally alone makes everybody stop when they see somebody in trouble, and regardless of the help he has received, he still refuses. It was incredibly aggravating, but since we had so much food, and weren't going to camp anymore, we decided to pull over and make a massive lunch. At least our friends could catch up to us.

The lunch ended up being fantastic. Andrew made some curry potatoes, 2drew fried some eggs, Juan made rice and vegetables, and some Italians made some excellent pasta. We ended up having about six or seven teams stop and enjoy this fabulous meal with us, and even one Mongolian man on his horse who was out tending his goat herd. We managed to finish off nearly all our food, and thoroughly enjoyed our two hour lunch. 2drew started getting really impatient again while everybody was cleaning up, and soon started the car. Finally our friends told him to calm down and wait ten more minutes for everybody to finish, and we would go together.

Before long we hit the awful roads again, but it was comforting knowing they wouldn't last for long. By the time we hit the tarmac, we knew that UB was just around the corner. I can't explain the elation as we came over a ridge and saw the capital sitting just below us. Our friends were a little ways behind us, getting caught up on the bad roads, but we couldn't wait at this point, and pushed on into the city. We had directions to the finish line, but due to road construction, they didn't do us much good. We tried to use the map they gave us, but it wasn't very complete, and soon we were completely lost. Eventually Andrew was able to pull up a map on his phone, and we finally made it to the finish line!!! http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... We were absolutely elated when we finished. Joe was there waiting for us, joyful that we made it that night, as we was leaving the next morning. Tim was excited because when he went to the consulate they told him that his bag had been located, and that people were going to deliver it to UB within the next two days! We had some celebratory drinks and set off our confetti cannon courtesy of Team Batlimo. Then we went inside to sign the finishing board where we were awarded finishing spot number 255! Out of 500 team slots, about 400 teams started, and many dropped out along the way, so we were definitely towards the end. The first teams finished about 2 weeks before us, but I am much prouder of our 255 finish than I would be of number 1. I have 2 extra weeks worth of adventures to tell that those people that rushed through couldn't possibly understand. After this, our friends went off to find a hotel, but Andrew and I went with Joe to go stay at "The Cheapest Guesthouse" which only cost 5 dollars a night. We met Betsy, our lovely host, then headed out to celebrate the end of a journey.

The next several days in UB were interesting ones. Everything we had planned on doing in the city didn't work out, but that isn't to say we had no fun. We really wanted to shoot rocket launchers, but the company had made so much money over the past several weeks, that they all went on holiday and closed shop. Then there was the paragliding. Martin and Frank, the Irishmen, went to go check out the facilities and equipment for the trip they wanted to do. After visiting, however, they realized that the equipment was pretty suspect, and they didn't feel comfortable using any of it. So there was our two main things shot down the drain.

The Adventurists did throw us a huge party on Saturday night. It was a 6 week finishing party, and it was the first time they've ever thrown it, as there were not enough people finishing that late every other year. They brought in a live Mongolian band, all wearing furs and playing traditional instruments. They also had a contortionist who could bend her body in all sorts of ways you would never believe possible. At one point she even flipped her legs all the way over her head like a scorpion and held all of her body weight by biting down on a wooden bar that stuck out of her table. It was incredibly. The party lasted on into the night, including a large bout of people attempting to drink beer by holding it at arms length over their heads. Emotions were high, as we had all been dealing with the same issues for 6 weeks, and we were all running into people we had met along the way. We even saw the guys with the bouncy castle that we had met in Georgia.

Over the next couple of days, Andrew and I went about taking care of how we were going to get home. We became friends with Betsy, who was like a walking Google for UB. She knew everyone and their brother, including politicians, and people in the US embassy. She took time out one evening to show us pictures of her family, and always offered us advice on where we could find things in the city. If she didn't know, then she was immediately on the phone asking somebody. We were so fond of her that we took her out to dinner one night at the restaurant of her choice.

One day Andrew and I decided to make a trip into the black market with some of our friends. It was quite an interesting experience, packed to the brim with people, and side-stepping around large puddles from the previous day's rain. Andrew and I ended up buying traditional Mongolian dress, and were amazed at how cheap things were. Some people tried to obviously rip us off, but we managed to make it through without spending too much. I bought a full-length nomadic robe, and a hat in the style of the last great Mongolian King. Andrew went a different route, buying just a jacket, a fur hat, and amazing leather boots. We had been warned about pickpockets, and I even caught a guy trying to stick his hand into my pocket. There was nothing in the pocket , but that didn't stop be from yelling at him before we headed out.

On our final day, Andrew and I went to visit the Christina Noble Children's Foundation and their ger village on the outside of town. We had given money to Mercy Corps Mongolia, but this was another of the charities sponsored by the rally. It was such a beautiful experience getting to see what this foundation is doing for the children of Mongolia. UB has a huge problem with homeless children. This is due to not only abandonment of children when they can no longer be cared for, but also children escaping home because of physical and sexual abuse. During the winter, the children sleep in the sewer systems because sleeping next to the hot water pipes is the only way to stay warm. The foundation takes a medical van around to all these kids four times a week to provide free medical care to whoever needs it. They also provide camping gear for the children who spend the summers down by the river when the weather is warmer.

The ger village was another thing all together. They provide a home for 60 children, as well as sending them to school. They provide music classes for traditional Mongolian instruments, because they believe in preserving the culture. They also house a kindergarten on their property. Every day the foundation provides a hot lunch for over 150 children from the surrounding neighborhoods, and this is often the only hot meal that any of these kids will get the entire day.

Then there are the heart breaking stories of some of these kids. Many have legs that are completely bowed due to rickets, which is caused by malnutrition. These children will get this fixed, but it requires their legs to be broken then put in braces until they heal. It is incredibly painful, and it is two years of pain, as they can only do one leg each year. On top of this, you have the two sisters aged 4 and 7 whose mother was a full time prostitute that plied her trade in front of them until she could no longer take care of them. These kids have been seen showing the other children sexual positions that not a single one understands. The worst of all, though, are the children who are under ten years old and are victims of sexual abuse. The life that these kids have at the ger village is unbelievable, and they are incredibly lucky. You can see the happiness on every single child's face that lives in the community.

Since the foundation doesn't have the facilities to house every child in the capital, they also run a sponsorship program for other poor families. In general, this helps ensure that the children of the house can afford books and uniforms for school, but also provides the family with money. Each week the child's family is given a small amount of cash, which has proven to be the most useful way that direct aid can be given. The sponsorship program helps many families remain healthy, as well as keeping their children off the streets. Sadly, only one American sponsors any children in Mongolia, but we promised to try and let people know about the wonderful things the foundation does. Please go to CNCF.org for more information.

After our moving experience at the foundation, it was time to pack up the last of our stuff and head out the door. We had a long journey ahead of us, and it was strange to think we were finally going back. But going back is never simple, and we had a 60 hour journey waiting for us. This included a three hour flight to Seoul, a 17 hour layover, a 13 hour flight to Las Vegas, 20 hours in vegas, three hours to Minneapolis, an hour there, and another hour and 1/2 to KC. Daunting to say the least, but look what we had just accomplished. Betsy was sad to see us go, and she cooked us up a delicious meal of potatoes, rice, and horse! Oh my, the horse was absolutely delicious! I knew that we shouldn't give up on it after our first experience. We couldn't believe how wonderful it was. After filling ourselves up, we got in a cab and headed to the airport. http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... The flights weren't terrible, and we entertained many people by wearing our traditional dress all the way home. In Korea, we decided to leave to airport and go explore the city a little bit. We called our friend Junho who was with the bouncy castle team, because he was visiting his mother in Seoul. He met with us in the afternoon, and then we proceeded to eat about 3 meals over the next several hours, punctuated by frequent rounds of celebratory/farewell beers. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, and made it back to the airport just in time to get on our plane. Then it was off to Las Vegas!

Even though it was our cheapest option, it was a terrible idea to route our flight through Vegas. To go from the third world to an unreal world was way too much to process. Neither of us were in any sort of mood to party or gamble, or really do the usual "Vegas thing." We had a cheap hotel room in Excaliber, and our flight didn't leave til the next morning. We walked down the street and got some delicious In n Out burgers, then wandered around town a bit. We met a guy trying to sell us his rap album, and we ended up getting it from him for some left over Czech and Kazakh money. He loved it because of all the zeros on the bills. Next we met up with some of his friends and spent the rest of the evening drinking beers, talking about music, and listening to every single one of them freestyle at some point. Not the usual Vegas experience, but it made me much more comfortable than the rest of the scene. It was more similar to what I had been doing--meeting locals and seeing what they had to say about life.

The next morning came, and we hopped on another plane, knowing we still had most of a day before we'd make it back home. We got to Minneapolis, and sure enough, our plane was having electrical issues, and we were delayed. Luckily it only took 30 minutes for them to switch planes for us, and soon we were finally on our way back to Kansas. We were greeted at the gate by Andrew's girlfriend and my parents, as well as smiles at our ridiculous outfits. We were finally back down in Kansas City, and the journey officially over. Our loop around the world was officially complete, and we had 24 countries under our belt in a two month period. Now it's back to adjusting to life in a familiar, yet somehow foreign world, waiting until the next adventure beckons.

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Although we no longer had our car, we were still incredibly excited about what was in store for us. We unloaded all our useful stuff into the other cars, packed up 2drew's car, then headed on our way. It took a whole 10 minutes for us to pass the point we had made it to the previous day, and then the adventure continued. Off to the sides you could see massive herds of goats, and often you had to honk to clear them from the road. You also had Mongolians riding their small, but powerful horses along the herds, keeping an eye on them.

The scenery was absolutely incredible. We went from seeing scrubby desert to green riverbeds in a matter of minutes at various points. On either side were snow-capped mountains, and amazing blue skies. The roads were another matter. Mind you, we are taking the main roads that connect one place in this country to another, and they are all made of dirt. In most places they are incredibly wash-boarded, and the poor Skoda couldn't handle the wash-board at any speed. 2drew was the slowest driver I've ever been with, and we were constantly lagging behind, but he was intent on babying his car, even though it had not had a problem yet. Large rocks littered the road, and in many places jagged ones poked out of the road, just waiting to puncture tires. 30mph was a blessing when we could manage, but we averaged less I'm sure.

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At one point it started raining while we were in a green valley, and our four cars (Joe, us, Germans, Spaniards) pulled up to a Ger. Inside was a French family, two parents and their 17 year old daughter, who had been horseback riding around Mongolia. We spoke with them for a bit, and had a bit of tea with the Ger family who had about 6 young kids. Mongolian tea is...interesting...they put yak milk in it, and instead of sugar, they use salt. If you think of it as a broth, it is much more palatable. At one point the Ger Grandpa pulled out his little bottle of snuff and offered it around. About 5 of us took a little, and soon we were all laughing as our heads were suddenly blasted with a rush. 2 or three of us started sneezing uncontrollably, and the people in Ger laughed and laughed at us. The feeling lasted a few minutes, but we can definitely chalk that up to a new life experience.

Soon we were back on the road, and we saw a jeep from Mongol Charity Rallies (a similar rally to our own) stopped in the road. It was being driven by two Mongolian guys, and they were out of petrol. The Spaniards gave them some, and we soon learned why there were Mongolians driving the rally car: the gearbox had been destroyed, and the jeep only worked in reverse. The rally team had paid these two guys to drive the car from Olgii to UB, and these guys were more than willing. One guy operated the pedals, while the other one stood and looked out the back, reaching back and steering. Surprisingly, they were going quite fast, and made much better time than we did.

A short distance later we came upon our first river crossing. We waited for a van to go through to see the best point to cross, and we found one that wasn't too shallow. The seisciento went first (Rubiks Cube), and they successfully made it while we all cheered. Next came us in the Skoda. I told 2drew that he needed to make sure to have enough momentum to push the wave out in front of the car, but I suppose I should have been more specific, saying not to let the wave come up over the hood. We made it out the other side, but soon the car started sputtering, and then died. The Germans immediately told him, "you were going too fast!" This, however, was not the best thing to tell our passive-aggressive companion. His response was, "I was going to go slow, but somebody told me to go fast." Well, I guess it was all my fault then, but we were lucky, and there was no water inside the air-intake. The spark plugs were a bit wet, but within a couple minutes they had dried sufficiently for the car to start again.

The journey continued, the road winding its way through barren rocky cliffs, with a thin, grassy riverbed nestled in the valley below. The cars ahead of us were having a blast, flying through the curves and along the road, and soon we were left driving alone at our grandma pace. Andrew asked if 2drew wanted to switch out driving, but he responded, "No, I'm really enjoying this," which completely contradicted his pace, facial expression, and complaints about the road conditions. He obviously had problems with our driving the car, and we hoped it wasn't because of the state our car was in when we let it go. We weren't driving the car inappropriately, it just gave us problem after problem. After driving alone for awhile, the Spaniards finally turned around to see if we had broken down. They told us how they had no problems so far, and that it would be fine to drive faster. As if to prove 2drew correct, though, the Twingo blew a tire about 5 minutes later. As with most mechanical problems on the rally, it was somebody from another car that fixed the problem. Within minutes, the Germans had their jack out, had replaced the tire, and hammered out the rim. In the brief wait, Andrew had managed to find a wonderful horse skull on the side of the road, and before long had it zip-tied to the front of the Skoda. This was, of course, after protest from 2drew, saying that the skull would scratch the hood. It did, but it's a rally car!

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We got the cars back in working order and set back out on the road. This time I jumped into the Rubiks Cube and went for the ride of my life. Joe drove with the heart of a maniac, purposely smashing into every large puddle we could find, and flying around the curves. It was such a relief after the painful hours of crawling along in 2drew's Skoda. Joe insisted that his little .899 was a beast, and I truly think that it is. We didn't go too far before we stopped again, and about eight rally cars bottle-necked in a pass next to a couple restaurants. Sadly, the Twingo had hit a rock at some point, and coolant was pouring onto the ground. All the people hopped up to help, and somebody had some sort of bonding liquid to plug the hole. We had to wait for it to set, so we all went to eat. The house had about 5 or 6 kids running around, which I've found to be quite common. I think part of it has to do with their being nothing better to do than to have kids, but I also heard that the government is encouraging people to have children because the population is so small. Mongolia actually has the lowest population density of any country in the world. Something like 1.2 people per square mile.

The lunch was a delicious meal of dumplings, but they hand-made all of them while we waited, so by the time the meal was complete, we were running out of daylight. We drove a bit farther up the road, and discovered a small grassy area next to a river where six teams were already set up. We were even able to find wood to make a fire, so we all set up camp, cooked our various meals, and sat down by a nice roaring fire. We were all pretty exhausted by this time, so many of us went to bed quite early. I was excited because it was the first night I would have a sleeping bag again. I went to bed with a lot of my warm clothes still on, and actually woke up sweating! Oh, how wonderful it was to be warm again!

We were awake quite early, and ready to hit the road soon after. Andrew and I are both Eagle Scouts, and we grew up camping; we definitely know how to break down camp early and get moving. The story was a bit different with our Spanish and German friends, particularly the Spaniards, where everything is "manana." Stereotypical? Sure. But it fit so well with our lovely friends Juan and Nuria. We decided to hit the road before them while they cooked up a breakfast, as we needed to run some errands in town, and they said they only needed to get some petrol. We ran our errands, then saw our friends in town while they went to repair a tire. We were quickly done, yet found ourselves waiting for another couple hours. We met an amazing American girl while we cooked lunch on the roadside. She said she was doing research on weather patterns and water conservation, and she took us to the market for some fresh fruit while telling us about all the time she's spent in Mongolia. We got back to our car to meet the Spaniards, and even after all this time they still weren't ready; they needed to eat lunch.

We couldn't believe it. They were the ones that had almost nothing to do, and we had waited for hours. We said that since 2drew was so slow in the car, that we'd go on ahead, and that they would probably catch up to us. Joe and Tim joined us, and soon we were back on the road. While filling up at the petrol station we ran into our old friends Mike and Graham from Georgia. We were incredibly excited to see them, and they told us about driving back several hours to scour the Mongol Rally graveyard for tires for their friends. Their friends had blown three tires within about 15 minutes, and were waiting up the road toward Altai for the tires to be delivered.

We started driving for awhile, with me in the car with Tim, and Joe riding in the Skoda. Tim was blazing through the roads, just like Joe the day before, although his driving skills I don't think were quite up to standard. Even so, he was fine, and the problems he had actually didn't have so much to do with his driving, as they did the roads in Mongolia. We had been driving maybe an hour and a half when Tim kicked up a large rock underneath the car. He shut off the car, and we got out to make sure nothing was leaking from the car. When we got back in the car, the engine shuddered a few times, then died. Then we couldn't get it to turn over at all. Out of impatience, Joe had filled the car with 80 octane, and we were pretty worried that his had wrecked the car. Andrew and I were pulling apart the fuel injector and putting 95 directly into the engine, but nothing we could do got it to work. We had even sent 2drew ahead to get some octane booster from the people waiting on the Mongol Kings, but their can had spilled all over the car, so we were out of luck.

We had been there for about 2 hours at that point, and finally the Spaniards and Germans showed up. We then continued our work. We started clamping off the fuel lines, and we were trying to disconnect the lines from the engine, in order to bleed the system. We managed to do that, but there was still no luck, and we realized the fuel pump was not working. We were baffled at this point, and then a Mongolian truck pulled up, and the driver was completely hammered. He was swerving everywhere, and nearly ran into Tim. He didn't help us in any way, but he did manage to make a mess of all our tools, as well as being a general nuisance. After all this work, we were no closer to a starting car, when suddenly Juan found a switch underneath the dash. This switch resets the computer, which had turned off the fuel pump because of the impact of the rock. Most cars have this safety feature so that in car wrecks, the fuel pump isn't flowing more fuel in case of a fire. We flipped the switch, and sure enough the car started. More hours just wasted.

We drove about 30 minutes more when Tim blew a tire. I hopped out and fixed it in a matter of minutes, but looking at the other tires showed a grim prospect. They guys had no more spares on rims, one rear tire was cracked, the other had a bubble, and the front tire we didn't replace had such a bent rim that air was leaking. Joe realized that he would have to baby the car, going about 10 mph until we reached the next tiny town on the map. We just had to hope that they had a place to repair tires there. The sun was going down, so we went ahead to find a suitable camping spot. Before we got there, the metal guard underneath the German's car broke a weld, and it began dragging on the ground. We only traveled a small distance, and it was nighttime once again. We had wasted nearly an entire day, with almost no ground covered. We set up camp on the side of the road, cooked our meals, then went off to bed. This time Andrew said he would wake everybody up early, and make sure they got up. Hopefully we would be able to make more distance the next day...

Look for the final blogs about the end of the adventure this week. Also, check out Shutterfly for more of our pictures from the whole journey. Just go to www.teamflatlanders.com and click the Shutterfly link underneath the LJworld Blogs link. The journey has nearly come to an end!

---Team Flatlanders

Despite all the adventures and hardships of the rally up to this point, it quickly became apparent that the real adventure began at the Mongolian border. As we were crossing the large stretch of No-Man's Land, I joked about how it would be really funny if the pavement suddenly ended as soon as we crossed onto the Mongolian side. It wasn't a joke... We were thrown head-on into rutted dirt road with large rocks sticking up everywhere. The previous night, one team rolled their Jimmy on these roads when one of their rear tires blew. One of the guys had been leaning out of the window filming, and had just sat back down when they rolled, and he was thrown from the vehicle. Luckily he only suffered a concussion and some cuts and grazes, and made it out without any broken bones. The driver came out relatively unscathed. It's always frightening to see one of your fellow ralliers (or anybody) get hurt, because their is this bond of camaraderie based around how we're all in this thing together. I didn't know those guys personally, but I later met the driver, who actually gave me his sleeping bag to use since they weren't going to continue. Sadly, these wouldn't be the only people we would encounter who had serious accidents along the way in Mongolia. There have been people in the past rallies who had car accidents, but they were rare. With the vast numbers of teams this year, though, the chances of them occurring definitely raised.

We got to the Mongolian border around noon, and we could see a parking lot full of rally cars on the other side. It was noon, so the border people were taking their 2 hour lunch break, and we had to sit outside the border for a couple hours. There were two little kids that were running around the cars (about 7 had piled up), and they would peak their curious faces into the windows to see what cool gadgets we all had. A herd of goats passed the cars, and some of them began trying to eat the bumper off of one of the Italian cars. Eventually we were let in, and we were given the information that once again, The Adventurists had screwed up. We were stamped into the country, and then they took our car documents, but we weren't allowed into the country. We were told that The Adventurists hadn't paid enough money to process the rest of the cars through the border. The Adventurists told us they were on it, and that they would sort things out that day, but once again the Finance Minister went missing, and it was his signature that we were waiting on. All of us were facing another freezing night on the border, and there were now about 35 teams piled up.

We managed to book a night in a lady's Ger, but when we went to go eat a delicious meal of meat dumplings, we were told that she had promised the beds to a team that had been there the night before. To rectify things, however, she took us to her house and put us up in one of the sections of the house. Andrew and I slept on a little pull-out futon, 2drew (Skoda driver) slept on a little mattress on the floor, and Joe used a camping pad on the floor. When we sat down to eat, we pulled out a bottle of vodka, and the grandmother at the Ger started drinking with us. We were told not to give her vodka by another rallier, because the night before she had been so drunk that she was all over one of the rally guys and embarrassing the family. We tried to hide the vodka every time we took a shot, but sometimes it was unavoidable. Apparently she accidentally gave her 2 year-old gandson some vodka from somebody else's glass at one point, and he started marching around with his arm in a salute. When it was time for the tyke to go to bed, his mother told us it was time for us to go to bed as well. We learned that we had displaced him from his bed, so he had to sleep on a rug in the kitchen. We felt bad for a moment, but the lovely warm house and protection from the freezing night was more than enough to make us forget.

The next day we walked back to the border station to see if they would let us drive our vehicles. At this point they told us they were waiting for a signature from the head customs official, and now they couldn't find him. We weren't sure what the issue was, but we were afraid that the border people were holding us there because we were throwing so much money into their economy (everyone that worked at the border lived in the little town). To waste some time, Joe and I first went and had a lovely lunch of dumplings, then decided to climb the mountain that overlooked the parking lot. We asked if Andrew wanted to join us, but apparently him and 2drew were the little dots of people that we had seen at the top of the mountain earlier that day. We were joined by some Brits and an amazing German named Karsten and his Czech teammate Robert (who would later save us countless times along the way) and hiked our way up the, well, more of a massive hill than a mountain. It nearly killed all of us to hike; after 5+ weeks of sitting in the same position in cars, all of us are probably in the worst shape of our lives.

The top of the hill was definitely worth it. In all directions you could see snow-capped mountains off in the distance. In the valleys you could see little Ger villages dotting the landscape. Karsten brought out his hipflask and shot glasses that attach to his belt, and we celebrated our climb to the top. It was clear that none of the cars were going to be moving, so we wasted more time using camera tricks of Joe's to take pictures of us doing ridiculous things, such as jumping off "cliffs." After that we played a game involving us trying to throw rocks at a piece of metal lying on the ground from a distance. We played Brits vs. Yanks vs. Germans, and Joe and I put them all away. At this point we noticed a massive crowd of people hurrying towards the border building, and we thought that they were finally going to let us go.

We rushed down the mountain to be greeted by actual guards, as opposed to just border people, and they didn't look happy at all. Two of them were going around trying to confiscate cameras, so I quickly hid mine away in a car. Two rally cars were parked in front of the border gates, and next thing I knew, one of the drivers was being led away. There were about 8 guards around, and they all had their batons drawn. Apparently the ralliers decided to form a sit-in to try and force the issue of letting us through. In my opinion, and a shared opinion by many inside, this was pointless because they were only going to upset the lowest people on a totem pole, and if they let us through, they would just get in trouble by their superiors. We figured this would more than likely just make them hold onto our documents longer once they finally went through. After awhile about 40 people came out of the customs office, their sit-in over. After an hour or so, we finally got through to the adventurists, and we were able to start the process of finally leaving the border. I don't know if the sit-in worked in any way, but I guarantee that every person that participated will say it was their sit-in that finally let us go.

Our teams (Andrew/Me, Joe/Tim, 2drew) were one of the last to be processed, and we decided to grab a bite to eat before heading on our way. We followed the main road for awhile until it finally stopped a chained gate. There was a road going around, but we started heading back thinking we had missed the turn-off (as one of the routes through Mongolia is literally impossible without a 4x4). We turned around and headed back about 10 minutes until we realized that the road we had seen was definitely not a main road, but at this point a Mongolian said he was going to Olgii, and would show us the way if we gave him a ride. We started driving, but then our exhaust fell on the ground and began dragging, so I hopped out and tried to fix it. Nearly every bolt holding it to the underside of the vehicle was gone, and there was one screw about to come off that held half of the thing together. I managed to rig it up, and we started on our way again.

Before we actually started on the road to Olgii the Mongolian took us to his family's house for some tea and biscuits. We met both of his parents, his brother, and many of their friends. It turns out that the house has hosted over 100 ralliers over the years for tea once they have crossed the border. After our visit, we hopped back in the cars, and then headed on our way towards Olgii. At this point it was getting dark, and by the time we reached the base of a rather large mountain, it was completely black out. Joe stopped his car with concern that it was having problems, and that there was no power, but I told him it was because of the altitude. We were more than a mile up at the border, and we were going nearly straight up a large mountain. A 2.0l car will noticeably struggle at these altitudes in Colorado, for example, and Joe was driving a .899l car. We started up the mountain, and neither Joe's car or my car had it in it to keep going. To make matters worse, neither of our cars had rear brakes left, so there was no way to stop on the mountain without turning the cars perpendicular to the road.

At this point a jeep came up behind us, and another jeep came down from the front. The one from the top of the mountain turned out to be the brother of the Mongolian we were giving a lift to. He had a friend in the jeep with him, and the back was full of giant barrels of diesel fuel that they were importing from Russia. The jeep behind had about four people in it, and we figured they were friends of these guys as well, as they hopped out of the car to help too. The brother in the jeep came out like he was on speed. He was incredibly intense, and all too eager to help. We had a climbing rope we had taken from the Batlimo, and we attached it to our tow hook, and then jeep towed us up the mountain for the spots that our engine couldn't handle.

2drew was already up the mountain, but he had broken the 1.2l rule, so he didn't have an issue. I was out of the car to make it lighter, and then the guys from the back jeep started helping Joe and Tim walk their bags up the mountain to make their car lighter. They were out of the jeep, but the jeep had gone to the top of the mountain to wait. We were just going to take it to 2drew's car, but for some reason he turned on his car and drove away. We got about halfway up the mountain when the jeep circled back to pick up the rubiks cube, so I grabbed the two big bags and lugged them the rest of the way up the mountain alone. When I got to the top, I began hearing somebody blowing a whistle in the near distance, and it gave me a very strange feeling. I asked our friend about it, and he started walking me up the mountain. He said the jeep wasn't a problem, and then showed me this massive pile of rocks which is a tribute to Chinggis Khaan. You are supposed to walked three times clockwise around the pile, and then make an offering (usually another rock) for good luck.

I must mention at this point that Chinggis Khaan is pretty much revered as a god in this country. The western conception is of a brutal warlord who was commonly called "The Scourge of God." The Mongolians remember him for far different reasons. It is true that he was a brutal warlord, but he also brought more power and wealth to the Mongolians than they ever had, and have had since. On top of that, he also developed the concept of diplomatic immunity. Up until this point, foreign diplomats were generally used as hostages, but the "Great Khaan" developed the idea of their immunity in foreign lands. The Mongolians also didn't see him as being overly brutal. When he would reach new lands, he would tell the people there that they could either surrender and be integrated into the empire, or stand and fight. If they were to be integrated into the empire, they would receive tax benefits and retain some of their autonomy, but if they fought, then most times they were brutally slaughtered. Chinggis Khaan was also well known for his lawmaking, and even more so because he invented the written form of the Mongolian language. It's impossible to deny that the man was a brutal warlord, but every great civilization at the time was build upon warfare. It is just interesting how much the western conception of a this man has overshadowed all the great things he accomplished in his life.

So anyway, we all finally got towed up the mountain, and then we pulled out the vodka and some beers and marched around the rock pile and all celebrated that our cars made it. He drank with all our new friends, then hopped back in the cars to make it down the other side of the mountain to Olgii. One jeep headed left along the mountain ridge, and the one with our friend's brother led the way for us. The roads were deeply rutted, and the going was incredibly treacherous. Luckily we were able to follow the jeep for easiest route, but that wasn't easy in any way. Finally, about 40km from Olgii we made it back onto a tarmaced road. We were still going incredibly slow, and wondering why this was the case when our question was suddenly answered by massive cows crossing the road in front of us. Shortly we arrived at our friend's sister's house, and he was going to put us up for the night. It was at this point the Tim started freaking out because his small backpack was missing. the contents included 400 dollars, his passport, 200 dollars in presents for his mom and family, a 400 dollar camera lens, sunglasses, and all the memory cards for his camera; photography was the main incentive to go on this trip, as Tim is a photographer and artist.

The Mongolians were incredibly worried about the passport, and they told us to hurry back up the mountain to see if we had set it outside the car when we had taken bags up the mountain. Neither Joe's or my car would make it, and 2drew was exhausted from being the only driver of his car, and he wasn't comfortable letting anybody else drive it because his CV joints were bad. We ended up paying the Mongolians to drive us back up in the Jeep, but first they had to unload their barrels of diesel fuel. They finally got these unloaded, and Joe, Tim, and I hopped in the car to go search for this bag. Joe and I were trying to rationalize what could have happened, and the more we talked, the more felt like the other jeep had been incredibly suspicious. The ride up the mountain seemed to take infinitely longer than getting down, even though we were tearing through the terrain in this guy's jeep. We got to the top of the mountain and used the jeep lights to look for a bag, but we couldn't find one. Then we headed back down the mountain to where the cars got stuck and looked there. It was at this point that I experienced one of the strangest nights on the rally.

It was our friend's brother that had come with us, and he started getting on the phone, and he was soon very suspicious of the other jeep. He spoke almost no English, and Joe only had his limited Russian to go on, but we soon got the idea that this other jeep was actually not their friends. We rode to the top of the mountain, and the brother crouched in the dirt to see the direction of the tire treads from where we had last seen the jeep. Next thing we know we are tearing through the Mongolian mountain tops in the middle of the night without any moonlight to help show the way. We drove for hours on a bounty hunt for the Ger where the guy with the other jeep sleeps. Finally we pulled up at one, and the brother immediately got out and began pounding on the door of the Ger. Somebody finally came out, and the brother dragged him into the car and told him to take us to where the guy was sleeping. We were apparently at his Ger, but he was sleeping at another one.

We arrived at the other Ger after a bit, and once again he began pounding on the door, and pulled the guys out and began questioning them. By the way, the stars on top of that mountain were some of the most amazing I have ever seen in my life, with multiple sightings of shooting stars. They opened the jeep and talked for a long time, and after awhile, the brother finally decided that they didn't have the bag, and said they were good guys. The driver of our jeep had apparently not slept in 2 days, and couldn't drive us all the way back to Olgii, but the guys at the Ger said we could sleep there. Next thing I know we're being led into one of the two Gers at this place, and the guy points to one of the beds and tells Joe and I to lay down. We hop in immediately and he pulls a blanket over us. I slept on a metal bar of the bed frame all night, and Joe sank into the middle of the saggy springs of this tiny bed. Tim slept on the floor, and the owner of the Ger literally tucked him in. After only a few hours, the sun came up, and the animals began making noises, from the goats, to the lambs, to the cows, and sleep was then impossible. The owner came in and told us to get up, and Joe and I obediently hopped out of bed and put our shoes on. Joe and I reckon we have never gotten into, and out of bed so quickly in our whole lives.

We drove our jeep back to the top of the mountain where we had last seen the "shady" jeep, and that's when we found one of Tim's gloves on the ground. It was precisely where the other jeep had been parked last night. Ironically, we not only slept in the Ger of the thief, but he even tucked Tim in. The brother told us he would notify the police, and they would send somebody up there, but we were pretty sure that we would never see that bag again. Tim was devastated, and was even considering just flying to UB to get a temporary passport as fast as possible so he could leave. We went back to the house and woke up Andrew and 2drew, who had no idea where we were for the entire night. We related our story of midnight mountainside bounty hunting, and then sat down for a meal. We spent some time with our hosts, then decided to head on.

In the city we ran into Karsten and Robert, as well as two Spaniards, Juan and Nuria, who they had been traveling with since Iran. We all filled up with petrol, and then headed out on the road towards Khovd. I was in the lead, and misunderstood the directions from our hosts who came to see us off, and took the wrong side road. It was a brutally rutted road with massive rocks everywhere. I had been driving about 5 minutes when slammed into a rock which shook the whole car. We drove for a bit more, then stopped when we saw another rally car stopped on the side of the road who were having overheating problems. Our exhaust had come off again, but when I went to get under the car, I saw oil spewing from our oil sump from a massive hole. Disgusted, I slammed my gloves on the ground and told Andrew we had to turn around. Luckily, the Germans had a tow-bar, and they agreed to drag us into town to a mechanic. They had metal-bonding putty, but we would have to drain the sump and clean it with petrol before we could use it.

The Spaniards followed us into town, using our oil trail as a guide. Eventually 2drew and Joe noticed we were gone, and they also turned back. We dropped the car off at the mechanic, and then went to lunch. We came back from lunch a couple hours later, and they had done no work because they didn't have the right tools. This ended up being a whole day process, and they also were going to fix our exhaust. They managed to finally fix the sump and connect the exhaust, but the repairs from Kazakhstan were now defunct again. We said it was fine, but our Transmission leak from a week before was now worse. They were going to check the levels and top it up, but for some reason our lovely French car manufacturers decided to put a square screw on the transmission. This requires a special tool that doesn't come in any standard tool kit, unless the kit is massive. We spent the next several hours watching the mechanics pound bolts into squares, just trying to make one fit. We were never able to get it off, no matter what we attempted. At this point it was nearly dark, so we went for dinner, where I had my first encounter with eating horse! It actually wasn't that good, but I think I'd try it again and hope that it was just the way it was prepared... We checked into a hotel, and decided to head on to Khovd the next day.

The next morning, Andrew and I discussed what to do about the car. Andrew was tired of fixing it every 5 days, and decided to call the Adventurists to come pick it up. I felt uneasy, because our main worry was the transmission/gearbox, and it had lasted this long with a leak. On top of that, our friends had waited an entire day with us, and then we were going to give up the car without trying to drive it further. Andrew finally agreed to drive it around the block once to warm up transmission fluid, to see if we had any left (by checking the leak). When Andrew pulled back into the parking lot, the car was making an awful metal grinding noise. The hub bearing we had fixed about 5 days before had snapped again. Apparently driving on a bad bearing for 12000 miles has pretty disastrous effects on a car. That was the end of it. At the end of its life with us, we had managed to take the Saxo over 12100 miles, farther than any other rally car would travel by at least 2000 miles, barring the people that are driving their cars back to England. When the guy came to take the car away, he couldn't even shift it into 1st gear. So at the end of its life, the Sax had a whole list of ailments: no working exhaust, broken transmission, broken gearbox, no rear brakes, no rear window, and a snapped hub bearing. We said our goodbyes, and then hopped into the Skoda that would be our new home with 2drew for the rest of the Mongol rally. It was bittersweet; we weren't going to make it to Ulaan Baatar with "The Enterprise", but we would no longer have to fix it every five days.

As this entry has gotten extraordinarily long, I will talk about the rest of Mongolia in another entry. Thanks for staying tuned.

---Team Flatlanders---

First off, we finally uploaded some photos on shutterfly!!!! Go to our website teamflatlanders.com and just click the link and you can see all the shenanigans we've got on film so far.

This draft was actually started in Russia, so I'll finish this one, and then you'll get the Mongolia story shortly after.

It's amazing to me how quickly fortunes and moods can change on this journey. Just a few days ago spirits were riding high (despite the theft), and now it seems we're barely plodding along. We got great news from our Danish friends, who I think deserve a bit of mentioning. Soren is a special effects worker in Denmark who specializes in working with explosives. If you're familiar with dynamite surfing, that's some of his work. He also specializes in picking up women online, and actually has to give a speech to a convention on the topic when he gets home. Kim is somewhat more reserved, but is an incredibly nice guy who currently lives in Sweden. I've learned from him that drugs should not be used to quit other drugs...he chose smoking a few years ago to quit something worse, and he was up to 3 1/2 packs a day before he finally managed to throw away the cigarettes. Wonderful people, but there's a little insight into the drivers of the Batlimo.

So their good news was that the Russian embassy granted them a 6 day transit visa, and that we would be able to get them to Lake Bikal (with a few days of all-night driving), and then to Mongolia before Kim had to be back at work. We were absolutely elated at the news, and after eating a light meal, headed out on the road around sunset to try and make it to the Russian border. I rode in the Rubix cube with Tim, and we cruised along into the night. I managed to get a little rest, and switched to driving around midnight. The cube is a tiny little fiat seiscento with a .899 engine, but it is worlds better than our saxo. For one, it has great working brakes (I believe we have no back brakes anymore, and one of our rotors is scarred up). It's also nearly silent, unlike the roar of our mufflerless exhaust that rings in your ears. It also has power steering! Wow. So we drove until about 330, then stopped to sleep. We'd obviously gone past some time zones, because the sun was coming up, but it was freezing. I laid out in the back of the limo with most of my cold weather gear on, and we slept into the morning.

I woke up feeling awful. The combination of lack of sleep for two days, a hangover, and a small amount of suspect food the day before led to horrible times for me. I spent most of the day sleeping, just trying to block out the pain in my stomach, while Andrew trucked onwards toward the Russian border. In the late afternoon we stopped at a little restaurant in some small city in Kazakhstan near the border, and I believe the only reason we stopped was because the waitress was beautiful. It has been so long since any of the 6 of us have been in real contact with women that just getting to lay our eyes on one for a brief period is a wonderful respite. We're surrounded by smelly men all day long. I ate a bit of food, which made me feel a little better, but I was still in bad shape. it looked like we were finally going to hit the road, but as I walked to the car, some Russians came in asking if we wanted vodka. I sat down in the car for a nap, thinking they'd be along soon, but apparently they drank for about 2 hours.

The drinking consisted of anywhere from 6-9 shots of vodka with these Russians, and it was only Soren, Joe, and Andrew partaking. At one point the Russians brought out a special delicacy for the guys, fermented horse milk. It was a think yellowish white, with yellow chunks floating at the top. Soren barely had it to his lips before he spit it back in his cup, ran to the bathroom, and vomited sashlik all over the sink. The Russians laughed and laughed about this, because apparently drinking this stuff makes you big and strong. Joe and Andrew managed to chug theirs all the ways down, but they were the only ones (other than the Russians of course). By the time they all got to the car they were completely inebriated.

As soon as we got to the border crossing, the drunk boys fell asleep in the cars while we waited. We didn't wait long, though, and then they had to do the crossing wasted. Joe was in the worst shape, and since the car is also registered to him, he had to go through all the customs stuff. This made things incredibly entertaining, especially since he had a neck pillow shaped like a pink pig that he refused to take off. He took the hat off the first guard, pulled out money, and asked if he could buy it from him, but the response was, "hey, give that back!" Once inside the border, all the guards were wearing doctors masks because of swine flu. At this point Joe kept pointing to his pillow and saying, "swine flu! Swine flu!" He then asked if the female guard wanted to kiss the pig. We jumped through most of the hoops, then had to wait in line to get our passports stamped. There was a whole tour bus waiting to cross the border, and Joe had them all rolling when he pointed at one blonde girl who resembled Lady Gaga and kept announcing to everybody that Lady Gaga was there. He also started singing "show me that smile again" to the border guard, who sheepishly pulled her mask down and gave him a rosy-cheeked smile. We were all in stitches, and I think only Joe can get away with this behavior.

The Russian border wasn't too difficult, and we camped in a field shortly after crossing. We awoke in the morning and began driving east, hoping to cover as much distance as possible. We ended up driving into the night, and when I took over for Andrew, the car was really starting to sound awful, and we spent hours driving around Novosibirsk trying to figure out how to get out of the city. At sunrise I pulled over to fill the tank with gas, and when I started the car, I started hearing the unmistakable sound of crunching metal. Andrew was in Joe's car up ahead, and the drive up to them was painful. We pulled the car over before the wheel fell off and tried to figure out what to do. Joe ended up calling his friend George from Georgia (the country) so that he could call people in Novosibirsk which was over 100 km away from where we were. He eventually got a tow truck to be sent out, and we were hoping to find a scrap yard to get rid of the car responsibly, so that I could come back to Russia at some point in the future. What we really wanted to do was blow the car up, but that would prove tricky with customs.

We had really resigned ourselves at this point that the car was not going to make it, and we began unpacking all of our things, and putting them into the Bat Limo to get the rest of the way to Ulaan Baatar. We were upset about our car, but we knew we were going to ride in executive class in the back of the limo with two fantastic people. We got towed 120 km to a Peugeot dealer in Novosibirsk for less than 100 dollars, and the day suddenly got worse. We found out that we would be charge around 5000 dollars if we didn't take the car out of Russia. The dealership told us that a new part would take a week to come from Moscow, and that they could put a different part onto the car, but that it would only be safe to be towed, not driven. Then we got an email from The Adventurists telling us that although they had promised that there would be no problems getting the Bat Limo into Mongolia, and that they really wanted to see it in UB, there was now no way that it could get in. The email said, "we know you put a lot of time, effort, and money into this, so we apologize." They couldn't even give the courtesy of a phone call, or an offer to reimburse them for at least their entry fee. Then those guys had the problem of having less than 72 hours to drive all the way across Russia into the Ukraine. They would have to go non-stop to get out before their visas expired. We later found out that they made it, being stopped by police 12 times, and one finally wrote them an official letter saying the car had been thoroughly searched for drugs and weapons, and to let them go. They never found their compound bow apparently...

We were incredibly disheartened by all this news, and glumly made our way through traffic to find a hotel, thinking we would only get the basic repair on the car, and then attempt to tow it to the first emergency drop-off point 100 miles over the Mongolian border. We decided to go out to eat before showering, and met two beautiful Russian girls who showed us where we could get some Sashlik (shish kebab). We jokingly told them to join us, and they ended up agreeing, and sat with us the rest of the night. We communicated between their limited English and our even more limited Russian by drawing pictures and laughing a lot. For some reason they kept us company, even though we were all filthy and drinking away our sorrows, and they weren't drinkers themselves. We ended up meeting a guy in the bar that had done the rally 2 years ago, and he was visiting his russian girlfriend. We shared stories of his engine falling out of his old car twice and landing on the axle, and then he had his girlfriend write us two very nice notes in proper Russian. The first was for the police, saying "we are university students with no money, so please do not expect bribes. We are on a charity rally, so would you like to donate to our charity?" This would get us out of any trouble by the sheer audacity, and the other note said, "we are on a rally and need this car to be repaired in any way. We do not car how it is done, just make it work again." With our new notes, and the complete confidence of a past rallier, we figured we might actually have a chance to make it all the way to UB. We said our goodnights to our Russian friends, then headed back to the hotel for some much-needed showers.

The next day we headed down to the dealership to see if they had done any repairs on our car. We got even better news than that. It turned out that the owner of the dealership was learning English and thought it would be a huge game to help out the English-speakers. He was jet-setting to Moscow for 12 hours, and he was going to search out the spare part that we needed to fix our hub-bearing, then fly it back at 6 in the morning. We were elated...the car might actually make it. We had to spend another night in Novosibirsk, so we headed back to the hotel.

In the parking lot of the hotel we saw another rally car, and it turned out that his three teammates ran out of time and had to fly home, and that he was determined to make it all the way. His name was Andrew, from Seattle. We told him he was welcome to convoy with us, but that we had to get our car repaired the next day. We decided to celebrate with a nice meal and vodka, and on the way to the store we met a bunch of locals who were already drinking. We had a few drinks with them, but the three Russian guys that were there got so unbelievably intoxicated it was embarrassing. It was amazing to see the rate at which they would chug a bottle, but the end result was depressing. We took a picture of one guy falling on the ground, but one of the guys told us no pictures because they were "Russian Mafia." Who knows if they were, but we were finally able to ditch them to hang out with the lovely other people that we met, including a charming girl with brilliant English named Olga.

We went to a bar to meet some of her friends and stayed there and chatted for awhile. After a bit we headed off to another bar, and Tim texted the girls we had met from the night before. We had a few more drinks, and eventually Tim and I left with the two girls from the previous night, and Joe and Andrew left with the girls we had met that night. Tim and I headed off to a dance club and "cut shapes" into the wee hours with the two girls, having an absolutely brilliant time. Andrew and Joe ended up having dance parties in the middle of the street all over town with the other girls, blasting Michael Jackson out of one of the girls' car. We all had wonderful evenings dancing with new friends, then headed back to the hotel to get some sleep, so that we could continue the journey the next morning.

Andrew from the Seattle, driving a Skoda, followed us down to the dealership to pick up the car. We were elated to see the car in the lot, working again, but we found out that we no longer had rear brakes, and that we had a leak in the transmission. We were told just to drive slow, and that the leak wouldn't be a huge issue since we were just going to drop the car off in Mongolia. We all hit the road and drove through the night. At one point we all got stopped by the police, and we got to witness Joe's favorite tactic for dealing with authority, tickling. I was in the car behind him and all I saw was an arm reach out the window. I could barely contain myself, as I knew what was about to happen, and sure enough, Joe started tickling the cop's fat stomach which made all three of the officers at the checkpoint crack up. The reasoning behind this behavior is that with such a huge language barrier, we all basically revert back to children, and so Joe treats the police in this manner. It is amazing to see what Joe can get away with. We camped in a field that night, then headed the rest of the way to the Russian/Mongolian border. We originally thought that the distance should be around 150 miles from Novosibirsk, but this turned out to be 600... We finally arrived at the Russian border on Monday evening around 4, and got in a massive line behind around 25 other rally cars. We had a great time meeting new teams, and reuniting with old friends, and the vodka and beer flowed like wine. People ripped up fence posts and made a huge fire, which was necessary because it was the absolute coldest night that I experienced on the whole trip. Even though I put on every last bit of clothing I spent the entire night shivering, as I no longer had a sleeping bag. I maybe got about an hour of sleep in the whole night, and I welcomed the morning, rested or not. Around 9:30 the Russian border reopened, and we began our next great adventure of crossing Mongolia from the western side.

Tomorrow should be the next installment of our journey, so thanks again for reading. I'll try and add pictures tomorrow as well, so stay tuned.

---Team Flatlanders---

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Once again unable to upload pictures, so I'll try and include a couple here.

As we drove up to the border of Azerbaijan in Georgia, the road sign hanging above the highway said it all: Good Luck. The Georgian border guards were incredibly friendly, writing on the pink polka dots pasted all over the Mongol Kings' car. The border into Azerbaijan was a different story however. We made the mistake of pulling out musical instruments at the border, Andrew a harmonica, and our friend Graham a ukelele. Graham played a little Tears in Heaven for the guards, and the next thing we knew he was pulled into the small blacked out room in the first shack at the border. The guards kept trying to make us give the instruments to them, but we weren't having it. After about 30 minutes Graham finally reappeared, saying that the head customs guy took him into his private office and just kept telling him to keep playing anytime he stopped. I must note that Graham cannot actually play the ukelele, he had merely just learned a couple cords and could fumble through two songs.

Once again Andrew had to go through the pedestrian line while I took care of the car stuff. I had to go into the office with another Mike, a tall Brit, and then be processed through. The customs guy made Mike arm wrestle him, but the guard cheated by grabbing onto the desk for extra leverage. Mike then pointed at me and signaled that I should arm wrestle, but the guard took one look at me and laughed. Shortly after, another guard came in, and the first guy made him sit down to arm wrestle me, and I actually beat this guy, which only made me have to wrestle the first one later on. I sat in this office for 2 hours waiting for him to process Mike, and then myself, meanwhile being extorted for 40 dollars each. Everytime a Georgian or Azerbaijan guy came in, he would stop doing my paperwork and process them through, and then get back to me. He finally got it all done, then sent me next door where I had to pay another 10 dollars to sign my name. I was finally through when the guards at the gate took my passport and said I had to walk up the road to another building and get some other sort of paperwork.

I came out to see Graham and Andrew waiting in the rain, wondering what they were doing to me, and what had happened to Mike, as they hadn't seen him in an hour. Apparently during this wait Andrew was playing harmonica, again having about the same skills as Graham on the uke, but everytime he would stop, they would yell at him to keep playing. I walked up the road to this other building where I was surrounded by the menacing crackle of crappy electrical wires overhead. Once in the building it wasn't long before someone came and took my papers, and I finally saw Mike again. He had waited for an hour for somebody to take his stuff, and was just finishing up when I arrived. To get these processed I was once again extorted for money, this time 30 dollars. We finally got all the papers needed, were able to get our cars out of the border crossing, and started into Azerbaijan.

We had run into another team at the border after I had waited for 2 hours, and I guess the guard was tired of screwing with us, because they got right on through. We got a text from another team saying if we were headed to Kazakhstan, then we needed to get to the ferry right away. The new team we met said they would drive all night into Baku with us (it was already nearly midnight), and Mongol Kings decided to find a hotel somewhere, as they were going Turkmenistan. One of the guys from the other team hopped in my car, and Andrew into theirs, and then we started our 14 hour journey across the country (250 miles). These were the worst roads I had ever come across in my life. It was incredibly frustrating because you would see a beautifully tarmaced road next to you, while you were driving on terrible dirt ones. At one point some large dogs ran in front of the car, and I swerved harder than I ever have to avoid them, nearly taking out a car in the process...but I missed them. The roads were terrible, and I had already had my fill of the country after the border crossing.

Once in Baku we met some nice people, and I must say that the people in general are incredibly friendly, but all officials are worse than dogs. Speaking of dogs, that's basically what we were to them: dogs with money. We got to the port and met over 25 teams waiting for ferries that nobody could tells whether they'd come. One team had been there for a week at that point, and other people had been there anywhere from 3-5 days. Everybody had tents set up in the port, and the customs people treated us like dirt. A ferry had left for Turkmenistan a couple days before, and we heard rumors of them being stuck on a boat for over 30 hours in the port since the Azeris were trying to extort them for another 500 dollars just to get off the boat they had already paid for. Luckily Andrew and I only had to wait one night in the port, and were able to get out before our Visas expired.

I was awoken after my night in the port to a puppy biting me and wanting to play about 7 in the morning. I had been out drinking til 5:30 with this Pakistani bar owner, and I wasn't too pleased. Then it started raining on me (my tent doesn't work on concrete). I had a few fitful hours in the car, then woke up to find some internet. We weren't gone long before we got a call that we could finally buy tickets for the kazakh ferry, so we all rushed back to the port to take care of it. Regretfully, the guy that had waited there longest was a 70 year old know it all who has traveled to over 100 countries and apparently has pockets lined with gold. He straight up refused to bargain with the thieves in the port, and paid whatever they asked for, just because he wanted to get on the boat. He missed the memo in the adventurist handbook about not letting people extort you or paying large bribes because it screws every single person behind you. What cost teams in the past about 100 dollars total for a ferry crossing, cost us 470. If anyone tried to bargain, they would just point at what the first guy paid.

Once we finally got on the ferry, it was obvious that absolutely everybody had a bitter taste in their mouths after their Azerbaijan experience. That's when we decided to make it hell on the ferry for all the people that worked there. There were about 10 teams on the ferry with us, and we had a party on the roof, blasting Michael Jackson into the wee hours of the morning. Every drawer in the rooms became ashtrays (although we weren't the first people to have done this), a mirror was removed and horrible things written behind it, and a portrait of their dead president, Hadar, who is revered as a god, got swaffled. Swaffling is a Dutch term, and if you're really curious, I would look it up. Nobody would tell us anything on the boat, and it looked like we might be stuck outside the port for possibly 24 hours, since the boats don't dock until new cargo is ready to be loaded, and everybody started getting drunk. Next thing we know the fat cleaning women started screaming at us to get out of the rooms. Literally screaming. There was absolutely no friendliness coming out of them, and one even tried to steal our Danish friend Kim's computer. I have a number words I could use to describe Azerbaijan, but I don't think any of them are appropriate.

Once we finally got off the boat in Actau, we had even more adventures with new customs people. We were bussed to one room and processed through, then the drivers had to go back to retrieve the cars. The guards kept telling us to wait and come back in 30 minutes, or ten minutes, or twenty....then all of a sudden trains started loading cargo onto the boat. Our cars were in the lowest hatch of the ferry, under a panel that lifts from the floor, and they were putting cargo on top of the cars. The guards finally asked what we wanted, and we said that our cars were under there. We then had to wait while the trains unloaded the cargo they just put on, so that we could get the cars out. I guess they just forgot to tell people that our cars were under there, but I have no idea. Then the azeri boat workers had the gall to tell us to hurry up and get our cars out once we were finally able to get to them.
http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... At this point the Kazakh people wouldn't let us go through customs for several hours because the worker had gone home, and they also wouldn't let us back on the other side of the gate into the customs office where the non-drivers were. We had to take their sleeping bags to them so that they could sleep in the customs station, and then I slept on the ground near the ferry, next to the car. The next morning it took us close to 12 hours to process all our cars through. It was awful. In general, the guards were much friendlier than Azerbaijan, with the exception of the last customs people that whistled and snapped at us like we were dogs. The whole time we had to get one paper from one building, make copies, walk across the compound to another unmarked building, make copies of the old paper work which now had a new stamp, walk across the compound to a different unmarked building, get a new stamp, make copies of that, then onto another unmarked building..... Then once we finally made it to the last office, they processed about half of us, then decided to take an hour lunch break, so we had to wait again.

When we finally got out we stopped for beers and burgers at a restaurant called Guns 'n Roses. We deserved it after our last experiences. We filled up and headed out for our first journey into Kazakhstan. It was a beautiful desert scene with lovely mixtures of browns and whites, and mesas all over the place. We had 6 cars in our convoy, and everybody was in high spirits. One of the cars we are with is a Volvo Limo that has been turned into the bat mobile. Andrew put on a batman mask and cape and road around on the roof for awhile, and we all were treated to views of camels walking along the roads. We also passed some cemeteries, and interestingly enough, the buildings in these places are usually nicer than the buildings people are living in. Another side note: Kazakhs don't look like Borat, they actually have very Asian looking features.

We camped in a field that night, and woke up early the next morning for the worst roads we've ever encoutered in our life. They can't really be called roads, and you are often dodging potholes the size of the car. We blasted apart our gearbox, but fixed it pretty quickly, but then the bat limo blew a tire and the Rubix Cube car and our car stopped to help them. It turned out the Volvo dealer sold them spare rims that didn't fit the car, so we spent the rest of the day going about 10 mph trying to get to the next town which was close to 150 miles away. The bat limo rattled a whole lot and lost its brakes because of the ill-fitting wheel, but we actually couldn't have gone much faster on those roads in general. At this point we lost half the convoy, and it was just down to three of us. Three teams plus a Dutch hitchhiker that is. He's been hitching for months now, and is on his way to China. He's a super nerd who is starting to get annoying, but he's nice enough. We've been calling him Galaxy (as in Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy), and I don't think anybody actually knows his name. http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... Now we've been spending the last week driving through the Kazak desert, which is actually remarkably like Kansas. Everything is flat, there are lots of wheat fields and sunflowers, and the roads are straight and endless. We've had our share of adventures, and our car has taken a beating. One night people in a city kept running to our car to talk, and we told them we needed fuel and vodka. Next thing we know cars are leading us to a store for vodka, then onto a petrol station where they insisted on buying us fuel. Then they took us to a parking area on the highway, pulled a picnic table out, and we all sat down for Vodka. Love the hospitality. In terms of the car, our muffler snapped off, our exhaust came apart completely at the engine, Joe of team Rubikcrew carelessly through a rock and shattered our whole back window, and our transmission fluid is leaking. We taped a tarp up in the back window which has held up so far, but yesterday our alternator failed. We had to be towed into town by a trucker, and we eventually got ourselves to a mechanic/boxer who fixed our stuff for 17 dollars, even though it took him 3 hours. He took apart the exhaust and took out the bolt I sheared off, and welded a new piece on and fixed it up. He also gave us new connectors for the alternator, so we're all sorted. On a sad note though, somebody sliced through our tarp last night and stole our sleeping bags and tent. We figured we had taken out the valuables somebody would want, but some explitive took our sleeping gear. Joe feels terrible, but I'm not upset at him, just at the fact that somebody would steal our sleeping stuff. Alas, what can you do? Right now we're figuring out logistics for the upcoming week or so, trying to figure out how we're going to get the Bat Limo into Mongolia, now that their time is running out. Who knows when the next update will come, but thanks for staying tuned.

---Team Flatlanders---

Last I wrote, I was sitting with our new friends in Istanbul. After we left we took a walk around the Blue Mosque, but didn't go inside, as we were not dressed properly. We found a street full of auto parts stores, and were very tempted to get a multi-tone horn for the car. They love them here. As we were walking back towards our car, Cem, our rug dealer friend, pulled us into his family's store at the corner of the bazaar. We met his cousin Ishmail, and then he sat us down for a lesson on rugs. It was basically his sales spiel, but he was only giving it to us because we were genuinely interested in learning about the rugs; he knew that we weren't going to be buying any.

It was fascinating learning about the different rugs, and how and why some have greater value than others. He showed us a new rug that is used with chemical dyes, and the colors looked faded, yet when he pulled out a rug over 100 years old, the colors were vibrant, and there were infinite numbers of different shades of each color, as the dying process using plant dyes created different hues in the fibers. He told us how village rugs are more unique because of how a woman's emotions go into it, and how these could take years to make, and were often to pay for her own dowrie. A commercial rug could take as long as 5 months to make, and the ones that come from the cities have more uniform patterns. He said in order to buy a rug, it should speak to you immediately, and be an "optical symphony." It was really quite fascinating, and we got great footage from the shop. We said our goodbyes and headed on down the road to get out of Istanbul and cross over into Asia.

The traffic was insane, as usual, and I passed the time making faces with the googly-eyes that Andrew had been playing with the day before. It really is a lot of fun, and the reactions are priceless. We drove on into the night, and at one point were on a mountain in the clouds with only a few feet of visibility in front of the car. We pressed on into close to 3, then parked our car at a petrol station and had a lovely sleep in the car. When we awoke we discovered English friends from the previous day had also chosen that exact station for their sleep, and so we pressed on up to the Black Sea coast in Samsun with them. They took their van to a Diahatsu dealer for their radiator troubles, and many Turks gathered around the car for about 5 minutes, revving the engine over and over, then got bored and went off to look at some of the other cars. We left our friends there and pressed on up the coast.

We stopped at a small restaurant for a delicious meal just off the highway. The owner handrolled out all the dough, and cooked it in a wood stove, and it was filled with meat, cheese, and onions. Absolutly wonderfly. The man spoke no English at all, but he sat at our table and we tried to communicate with our english/turkish book for nearly two hours. He was all smiles, and his food was wonderful. We rolled into Trabzon that night looking for the only hostel in town. We pulled off on a road, and instantly somebody stopped to ask if we were lost. We gave him the address we needed, and he said his name was Ali, and to follow him. We found the hostel, but it is closed when the students are gone, but we said we didn't mind sleeping in the car, so he took us over to his brother's trucking company where the truckers leave their vehicles, and said we could sleep there. He said there was a 24 hour petrol station a block away, and that we could probably shower, so he led us up there and talked to the guys inside. Next thing we know he opens up a back room with prayer rugs on the floor, and says that we can sleep inside the prayer room for the night. When we went to sleep there was one set of prayer beads on the floor, but when we woke up there were two, so we aren't sure if somebody came into pray while we slept.

We started walking towards town that morning to find internet, and Ali's friend from the night before pulled over in front of us and asked if we wanted to eat...well, gestured really. We hopped in his car, and he took us to a little truck stop that I would have had no idea was a restaurant. We had a feast of bread, eggs, sausage, cheeses, and olives, and ate with all the truckers from the shipping company. We didn't have to pay for any of it. I love how wonderful the Turkish people are. No matter where we meet them, they go out of their way to make us guests.

We decided to press on into Georgia that evening, and we passed miles of stopped truckers trying to get past customs, but we got right to the border. Other ralliers had been through recently, and we didn't have too many troubles. The Georgia border was full of beurocracy that made no sense to me, but Andrew had to get out of the car and go through the pedestrian line, and i had to go through the car line. Three different people had to look in my passport and different points before I could go through, and one lady was not pleased at all when I laughed after she said, "there is no room for my stamp." He said, "ha. ha. ha." I couldn't help it; I had just watched her pass 8 empty boxes.

We drove into Georgia, and on the highways we had to go through a cow-slalom many teams, as they just cross the road when they like. Once again, there are very few rules for driving. We finally got our first taste of rain on the trip, and we decided to stop driving before it got too late, because the country is beautiful, and we didn't want to miss it. We stopped at a large petrol station, and were going to ask if we could sleep in our cars, but then realized there was a hotel sign on the building. He said 20 dollars for a room, and we figured at least we have a bed. We started drinking with the attendant in the parking lot, and then a man got pulled over by the police in front of us, and staggered out of his car. He was enormous, with a huge gut, and the cops pulled his car into the station and told him to sleep it off. He pulled out of a bottle of "Georgian Viagra", which was a bathtub honey-vodka that makes you go blind. When we were cheersing, he said, "I LOVE GEORGIA, I LOVE AMERICA, I LOVE FREEEEDOM!!!!" We got drunk in the parking lot and danced, and then the attendant called down the women in the hotel, and we realized we had pulled into a whorehouse. He pulled the girls over, and was saying something to them, and the one named Sofia was blushing when she came up to me. I didn't know whores blushed. The man kept pulling Andrew and I aside and trying to get us to sleep with them, but we weren't having it.

We finally went to bed, but then at 6 am the man woke us up saying, "the sun is up, you leave now." So much for a good night's sleep. The bathroom was disgusting, and the smell from the toilet filled the whole hallway. When we went in there, we saw a birdsnest sitting on the window sill, and there were two baby birds twitching on the floor. It was quite horrifying. We left, and pressed on through some gorgeous mountains. Once again I was weaving around cows in the middle of the main highway, and after a couple hours, I pulled over to the side of the road for a nap. We awoke when some other ralliers pulled up next to us, and we decided to follow them to Tblisi. Tblisi is a beautiful city, and everybody is incredibly friendly. After all my experiences, I've decided that CNN can never be trusted about international affairs, and that all the fear that Americans have about foreign countries is completely unfounded. We met up with 5 other rally teams and spent the evening swapping stories and sharing beers. We are headed onto Azerbaijan today, and there is apparently a rally camp around the customs station in Baku where everybody is waiting for a ferry. We only have a 3 day visa, so let's hope we don't wait too long. We are heading into no-man's land, so we'll see when we can update again. Stay tuned.

---Team Flatlanders---

http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... I am absolutely spitting right now. I just wrote for the last hour and half to try and update the last week, writing pages and pages, and the computer froze right before I finished it. I don't really have the time anymore to fully update it, but I will give a brief description i suppose. This is not a rally for only guys, but there are maybe 15 women compared to hundreds of men. Next, we have not been able to upload pictures on any computers that we've been able to find. We've mostly been camping in small eastern european towns, but everytime we find a computer, the pictures don't work. Papa Keno's should have a large map up on their wall, and if we can send a few pictures in email, he should be updating our route as we've gone along and have them on his wall.

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The starting line was wild, with everybody in high spirits. Everybody and all their families wanted pictures of us in our outfits, so the flatlanders will be viewed all around the world. We rolled up blasting Born in the USA which the Spaniards got a kick out of. They also loved how our car is painted like a giant Spanish flag. Everybody you meet on the rally is instantly a best friend because they are already as crazy as we are. Some of the vehicles were ridiculous. One team had a bracket mounted to their car and were carving up a cured ham leg for everybody. Another team had an ambulance which had a huge sound system, a guitar, amp, and 240 red bulls. All their windows had huge decals of pictures of them looking out of the windows. http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... ![Image](http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... We drove to the border of Italy the first night and slept in a parking lot by a toll booth. The Italian coast road consisted of bridges and tunnels in succesion with little villages nestled in the valleys by the coast. We took a beautiful mountain road that made a 1 hour drive take 4 hours since we could only go 25 mph around hairpain curves. we found a man's wallet with 300 euro, a 1200 euro check, pictures of his family, and his drivers and taxi license. We took it to a police station in the mountains, and we got a message a few days ago thanking us for returning it, and now we have a place to stay in Genova if we ever come back. We drove to Kremsmunster that night and stayed in the oldest Monastary in Austria. Our friends from team Hivazur were staying there, as one guy had studied in the monastary for a year when he was 12. He gave us a room to ourselves and said if anybody asks, just tell them that our families had been friends for years. I'm glad that it didn't come to that, because we would have felt bad lying to monks. One of his friends gave us lots of beer, salad, bread, cheese, and excellent sausage that his great aunt makes.

The party in Czech was crazy with hundreds of drunk men and only 10 females to curb any sort of drunk behavior. We saw ridiculous vehicles including a large pink ice cream truck, and a fire truck covered in red fur. People were dressed as knights, and moonmen, and everybody got rip-roaring drunk. Sadly some people broke the head off a 500 year old statue, and then somebody stole the head so it can never be repaired. Some people also drew penises on the sides of all the 4x4s. They may be against the rally, but people can get shot for driving in the middle east with things like that on their cars, and many teams had to spray paint over the damage in strange colors.

We met a team consisting of a guy from barcelona named Pablo, and an over-sexed Canadian woman named Wendy with a Swiss passport, who had lived in Spain for 20 years. She is filthy, crazy, loves to party, and is exactly the type of person we love being around. Pablo has never traveled, and one night we heard him playing an Indiana Jones video game in his tent. He's in for a shock on this trip I'm sure. Our first night we rolled into Klagenfurt too late for anything to be open, and we met an incredibly nice couple from Canada who went out of their way to drive us to different guest houses to find a bed for the night. The man, Bernhard, had grown up in Klagenfurt, and he met his wife Gail in India, and they live in Alberta now. They are busy setting up a nature retreat near a lake in Alberta at the moment.

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We ended up in a weinerschnitzel place and a Turkish guy named Ataman was working. We joked about sleeping on his floor, and after thinking about it for a second, he said, "well my wife is on holiday, and i have a big room, so yes!" He closed the shop at 2, took us to his house where we met his son, then headed back to the shop til 4. We awoke to him apologizing for only have some groceries to feed us, since his wife normally does the cooking. We had bread, ham, cheeses, eggs, olives, an d tea, and he had the nerve to apologize. On top of that, he had been in the hospital that night because neo-nazis had come to the shop at 330 and beat him up because he is Muslim. The man is a king.

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From there we drove down to Croatia through Slovenia. We stopped in the most beautiful national park i've ever been in, Plitvice, which consists of crystal clear green, grey, and turqouise lakes that cascade into each other. We then drove down the coast and camped by the sea, where i had my first experience swimming in the Adriatic. It was the clearest and calmest sea I'd ever seen, and the water is so salty that you float right on the top. It had been a few days already, and we needed to cover more ground, so we drove through croatia, bosnia, croatia again, and into Montenegro. The road in Montenegro was gorgeous with massive mountians falling right into the bay. We camped again and then did a massive 24+ hour drive so we could get to Turkey, since our visa starts in azcerbaijan on the 31st and we only have 3 days to leave their country.

We went through montenegro into Albania for some of the craziest driving i've ever experienced. They have only been driving for 10 years, since only government officials were allowed to drive up until then. There are no lanes, no rules, and traffic signals mean absolutley nothing. We came off a mountain that had no guardrails, nearly hit a donkey, and saw an Italian rally team that is doing the whole trip on Vespas. They are planning on a mid-september finish, and they are our new heros. They treated us to a beer, and then we kept going. We drove to the border where we were charged a 2 euro "american tax", then into macedonia. At the border of macedonia we were hassled when trying to leave because we had no green card for the car, and after stamping us through and we stopped to talk to pablo and wendy about the green card, the guard came up and said we had 5 seconds to get to the other border before there was a problem. We rolled in Greece, and then i slept for about 5 hours while andrew hallucinated with lack of sleep until the sun came up. We departed our friends, and then I drove us into Turkey.

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We met another team at the border of turkey and rolled into Instanbul with them where we're at now. We wish we could stay longer, but Turkey is huge, and we need to make some more ground to get to Georgia. A guy at a shop set us up with a place to stay right next to where we parked, and we found 6 other rally teams on the street where we are, right near the Blue Mosque. The first guy gave us tea, then asked us if we know a good killer, because a guy who walked by isn't living by the code of merchants here, and he said that he needs to be killed. Strange. But the guy we were talking to was incredibly nice. Then Andrew and I became friends with some antique dealers who also own a restaurant and spent the whole night talking to them. They came us tea, and a dessert, and Andrew talked to them about cameras. They are fantastic people, and they are actually letting me us their computer right now.

I really wish that my entry i wrote the first time was still with us, because it was much more detailed, and probalby more entertaining. I'm keeping a detalied journal, so perhaps I will just have to write a book when I get back. Anybody know any good publishers? As always, thanks for staying tuned, and hopefully we will find internet more often, but then again, as we get into Georgia, Azcerbaijan, and Khazakstan, we will probably be running into the same problems, so we will do the best we can.

---Team Flatlanders---

Well, I believe this entry will be rather short, but then again I tend to get rather long-winded when I begin writing about life here. We left San Sebastian on Sunday to head down to Barcelona to do our final preparations for this wonderful trip. We said our see-you-laters to our wonderful companion Tasman, who wanted to spend a few more days on the beaches in San Seb before heading off to Switzerland to meet his sister for a music festival. It was a great run with that crazy Aussie, and hopefully we´ll see him again before all of this is said and done. The trip down from San Sebastian was rather long, ten hours I believe. Andrew started off for the first hour or so, but the road started making him sleepy, so I took over to slam out the rest of it. He was able to stay awake to keep me company, so at least we were being as safe as possible. We decided to go straight through the Pyranees instead of going around on the main motorway which doubles as a tollroad. The drive was absolutely spectacular, and I don´t think either of us regret the decision in any way.

We got stuck in traffic in Barcelona as we rolled into town that night, and I think it was because the Wailers were playing in Mataro. There was also a big carnival going on in one small town. By the time we made it out of all the traffic, it was too late for us to check into our campsite, so we made due with parking the car near the beach, and then walking far away from all the loud music coming from the beach bars. We laid down in the shadow of the rocks so that we would be less noticable to passers-by, and stuck it out for the night. I froze. A mist set in during the night and made everything damp, and I didn´t have my sleepingbag with me. We were also accosted by ants most of the night. I woke up face-down to see them running everywhere, and when I told Andrew about the ants he exclaimed, "Good! I thought I was going crazy last night imagining bugs running all over me!" It was a strange feeling for sure. We got up and walked back down the beach to our car to a lot of strange stares from all the old people who apparently frequent the beach starting before 9.

We made it to our campsite and set up shop and have been spending the last 5 days just north of Barcelona in El Masnou. We tried to get our suspension issues taken care of, but nobody could see us in enough time to promise that the car would be ready by tomorrow. Alas, we´ll just try not to lose a wheel on the way to the Czech Republic. We did get a spare key made, but even that was a hastle of getting keys cut and not having the electronic codes for the keys and yadda yadda yadda. All of this stuff is very difficult when you don´t speak Spanish very well, but I managed alright. We spent a couple days just walking around the city and seeing the beautiful sites. La Sagrada Familia is a stunning sight to see, and I´m certainly glad we were able to have a look. Other than that we´ve been taking it easy on the beach and at camp in anticipation of the big day tomorrow.

At 1030 everybody meets near the big statue of Columbus in Port Vell, and the other 99 teams have a little party before we leave with music and food and a lot of staring at the ridiculous vehicles that will be accompanying us to Mongolia this year. We are one of 3 US teams leaving from Barcelona, and with a lovely little megaphone we picked up from Ash, we will proudly be blasting "Born In the USA" as we rock up to the starting point. Special thanks go out to The Boss. At 12 the festivities start, and then at 2 we set out on the long road to Klenova Castle for Czechout! Basically a massive party for all the rally-goers with free food and Hendrick´s Gin providing "enough gin and tonic to cure the world of malaria." There are bands from all over the world coming out, and it´s our opportunity to meet the other teams to find out who will be caravaning with us as we cross the more remote areas of our journey. Thanks to all who are keeping up with us, and I will have to apologize now because updates will surely be less frequent. We have no idea where the next few weeks will take us, and that´s what makes it all so exciting. So stay tuned, and be well.

---Team Flatlanders---

It's been a crazy last few days, but we managed to make it out (relatively) unscathed. We decided to head up to Pamplona in order to see the running of the bulls. We stopped in Zaragoza for a night on the way for a bit of cheap camping so that we could break up the long drive. We kept telling ourselves that we'd stop and eat at the next town, and then found ourselves in Zaragoza just before midnight with only a few fries in our bellies from hours before. It's a university city, but I assume school is out because the town was pretty dead. Every place was closed, and we only managed to snack on a little piece of spanish omelette that we found in a bar. The next day we woke up and drove up to Pamplona to a campsite in a small town outside the city that offered shuttles in and out in the mornings. Once again we didn't really eat much except for a terrible burger at an astronomical price that they were selling at the campsite bar. I suppose it was better than buying the 9 euro frozen pizza though... We spent the evening with some beers and cheap port (classy) and talked to people about tips for running with the bulls. With the lack of food over the past few days, the beer went a lot further than we thought, and Tasman decided it would be more fun to wrestle than sleep. Andrew attempted to put him out with a sleeper hold, and he thought he had succeded, but when he let go Tasman was even more ballistic. We did manage to finally get him to calm down, and then it was only a few hours before we had to catch our 6 am shuttle into the city.

Pamplona was a wreck. (So were we...still drunk I'd even say.) I've never seen such a blatant disregard for your surroundings as I did there. The streets were full of broken glass, and there were hundreds of people who obviously had been drinking all night, but were ready to run with some bulls right on their heels. The streets stank of urine and vomit, but I guess that just means that it was a great party? The bull running was absolutely intense. We all decided that we would run, and lined up just before "dead man's corner." Aptly named because it is the only 90 degree turn on the whole run and the bulls often slide out and smash into the wall as they come around. You don't want to get stuck on the outside of that turn. The street was packed and the police were all too willing to kick people out for pissing on the buildings in the daylight. They actually kicked people out for many reasons, some of which included having a backpack or even a camera in your hand. Once you do start running though, the police will bash you with their batons to get back on the street because you decided that you were going to run, and tradition says you sure as hell better do the whole thing. Tradition also says that you have to wear all white with a red scarf and red belt, and almost everybody does this which is a great touch. Some people want to stand out on the videos though, and they kind of ruin the effect by wearing their favorite football jerseys. Another bit of this ol' tradition is that women don't run, but since Spain is part of the EU and there are equal rights laws in place, they can't deny women the chance. The spaniards will merely just spit on the girls and grab their asses as they run by. Perhaps the most interesting part of the whole thing, however, was how everybody was happy and nevervously laughing, but then you see everybody's face change to complete terror.

They shoot rockets into the air to let you know that the bulls have been released, then 6 bulls come tearing down the road with a flood of people in front. One guy fell right in front of me and kept getting knocked back down, then a bull tread about 6 inches from his head. I hadn't started running because of the guy that fell right in front of me, and I was backed up against the building. This is where I lost Tasman and Andrew. I finally started running only to get ripped back by the throat from a cop as they closed the gate at deadman's corner. Then they set off more rockets and the next six bulls came tearing down the streets. I ran around the corner to find Andrew walking around in a daze in the middle of the street. I yelled to him, and as he turned I saw that he had no glasses and that blood was pouring down his face from a mean gash above his eye. I grabbed him and told him to light a fire under his ass because the bulls were right behind us. We ran with them to the stadium, but they had passed us and the cops shut the gates before we could run in. Then they were all too happy to start shoving us again. We went back to see if Andrew's glasses were salvagable, but we only found one arm and one lens. All we can figure is that he got hit by a stray elbow and that they just happened to find the sweetspot.

Apparently the scene in the stadium was chaos. Tas made it in and took some videos of people getting destroyed by bulls. They released a bunch of calves and they just smash people left and right. Then they let in this massive bull who just started picking people off who weren't even aware of its presence; they were all too worried about getting smashed by a calf. If you are about to be hit by a bull though, you have to just let it hit you. If you try and grab the horns and direct the bull away then the spanish people will pick you out and thoroughly beat you. After all these festivities were over people went directly back to the bars to pick up the drinking where they had left off. We hopped back on our bus to our campsite and packed up to head up to San Sebastian. Andrew went to the first aid building and the guy kept telling him "you need hospital!", but a few steri-strips were all he really needed. The gash is healing over quite nicely now, and now Andrew will have a scar to match the other eye which happened during a tv stand incident in a hotel room. I guess his eyes just split easily. Last time he said he was going to sew his eye up with a needle and thread before his friends stopped him, so I think the steri-strip route was probably a good call. We gave a couple aussies a lift into town because they had missed their bus, and then we picked up Taz's friend Ash who he hadn't seen in years.

We got on the highway up to San Seb, but this time we were determined to eat seeing as we hadn't had a real meal in three days. We picked a random little mountain town that had one restaurant, then managed to muddle our way through ordering. The waitress spoke no English, so she got another woman who spoke a few words to come help. Andrew and I could pick up some of Spanish, such as salad or ham, but we had no idea what we were really ordering. I finally just asked what her favorite was, and that we'd all have that. She said it was "cow. Moo moo". The meal was good, not too expensive, and then we headed off to beautiful San Sebastian on the northern coast of Spain.

The weather has been absolutlely gorgeous, and Taz and I have spent the last three days on the beach. Andrew only spent time on the beach today because his head-wound if finally healed enough for him to go into the water. Between these three days I've seen more breasts than you could shake a stick at, and I'm fairly certain that you could shake a stick at an astronomical number of breasts. We've been camping up on a mountain top just outside the city that has beautiful ocean views. It gets a little chilly at night, but I can't complain. I sleep better in the cold anyway. Last night we went out in the city and I had a rather strange night. It didn't help that I was thoroughly smashed, but I did find out that my Spanish skills are decent enough when necessary. We had met some English girls at the campsite the night before and one of them turned 20 last night and was out of her mind drunk. It got to the point where she was puking, unable to walk or sit up, and was generally unresponsive. Her friends were too drunk to take care of her, and she very likely had alcohol poisoning. They phoned up an ambulance and thats where my Spanish skills came into play. I had to tell the medics that she couldn't walk, that it was her birthday and she drank way too much, and that she hadn't taken any drugs. I also told them that one of her friends would ride in the ambulance with her. Then her friend got out of the ambulence and I had to go in and talk to the medics again. They just said that she needed to sleep and to get a taxi, and that we should just carry her to a cab. We did that and I was able to tell the people in the cab lines that she needed a cab now and to just let her go home, only to discover that I was speaking spanish to a bunch of aussies who didn't know what the hell I was saying to them. I hardly knew this girl, but it's such an awful feeling to have to see anybody get set into an ambulence, regardless of who they are. Andrew asked why I even bothered to deal with the situation to begin with (because i got a big stiff drink afterwards and then turned into a broken record about the whole thing the rest of the night), but I'm not going to just ignore a situtation where somebody needs help, and the people around her are unable to do it. Indifference is something I find way too many are guilty of because it's so easy to do, but I think it also happens to be one of the most disgusting flaws of society. I'm not saying Andrew was indifferent either; he actually had no idea I was outside dealing with all this stuff while he and our friends were in the bar.

But enough of the preachiness. We ended up walking home from the bars last night and we discovered just how long our 15 minute busride up the mountain actually takes on foot. We all went home at different times because Taz and I wanted to go to the beach, and Andrew wanted to sleep, so he started hoofing it up the mountain. Taz and I found a large group of American kids drinking some sort of awful liquor which ended up making me absolutely blind drunk. I think this kids were about 16 and were over here for some sort of soccer tournament. I guess the girls did all right and lost in the semi-finals, but the guys lost every game in an epic fashion. Something around 8-0 on average I'd say. Taz then decided to walk home while I was still chatting (rambling), but he got a cab halfway up the mountain I guess. This is where it gets rather fuzzy for me, but I believe I slept on the beach for a bit (this was the initial plan so that I could catch the first bus), but then I realized I had no money left. I then marched up the mountain at 7 am which took me a good hour and a half and finally made it off to sweet, sweet sleep.

Tomorrow we head back down to Barcelona to do the last repairs on our car. We're probably going to need to replace the cb joint on the front tires, and we need to get a new key made since we lost the spare. The rally begins in 7 days, and I'm itchin' to start. So once again, thanks for keeping up with the crazy adventures, and keep checking back to see what other strange messes we've gotten ourselves into. We also finally got our pictures linked up to our website, so you can now see for yourselves some of these excellent places we've made it to. We should be uploading more in the next few days, so be sure and come back.

---Team Flatlanders---

It's been a week since we left Glasgow, and we've spent entirely too much of that week in the car. I suppose we have to get used to it though. One thing I forgot to mention before we left is that we did finally get our last sponsorship package, and believe it or not, no porn! I was shocked. Apparently since the package didn't have "no commercial value" written on it, even though it was listed as a gift, customs decided to put a huge tax on it. They also charged us as if the value of the package were in pounds, even though they were in dollars. Then the shipping company which had to pay the tax charged us for that, and then double what they paid for their own fees. We tried to get the money back, but we're not in a position where we can jump through the eight hoops they put before us, so those were the most expensive tshirts and stickers i've ever seen.
http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... Our journey began with us trekking down to Stonehenge for a big basket of disappointment. It's just not that impressive. And they want 8 pounds just to get into the gate, so that you can walk on the pathways well away from the stones themselves. We opted out of that fee, and instead stood outside the fence to take our pictures. We were shocked by the people that paid to get in; they were literally five feet in front of us, but with a fence in between. From there we hopped back into the car and trekked to London where Andrew put on a display of some of the most intense driving I've ever been a part of. We drove all through central London during rush hour (and had to pay a "congestion fee"). We wanted to meet up with Andrew's Nigerian friend, but alas, he was busy, and so we shoved on out after resting in a Tesco parking lot for a couple hours (we had been driving for 10). After that we made it to Dover where we jumped on our Ferry across the channel at 2 AM.
http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... After our lovely ferry ride, I jumped in the car to drive for a good 10 hours I believe. I woke up Taz and Andrew in Brugges where we parked next to a Delorian! That stop was worth it for that reason alone. We walked around the city in the wee hours of the morning and got some paninis before setting out on the long road to Amsterdam. I woke the guys up there, and we opted out of staying in the city, and instead went to Noordwijk which is just south and on the coast. We had quite a refreshing swim in the sea to wash away the stink from our journey, and spent much of our time on the beach. We managed to meet up with two of Andrew's friends in the Dam, and spent a couple days looking at the sites. On our way to meet up with them though, our gearbox managed to explode on us, and we were unable to get into 1st or 2nd gear. We got the car to a parking space and put it up on jack stands to discover that somebody had jerry-rigged our gear box before we got there. It was being held in place by zip ties, and one had snapped. There was also a ball bearing that was replaced by a piece of hose. Andrew managed to fix it up with Duct Tape and zip ties, and now she's working good as new. She handled another thousand mile journey! But in terms of the Dam, I believe it's the only place in the world where I can stand window shopping. In reality the atmosphere of the city is rather ridiculous, but I believe it is for that reason that people should make a stop. We decided to camp on our third night, and it was nice being away from the rush of the city and outside. When we left the next morning we headed down south towards Dijon. We stopped in some random Dutch town along the way and we happened upon an enormous Michael Jackson statue in a McDonalds parking lot. At first we were amazed at the speed in which the Dutch could make an effigy, but apparently MJ just played a show in that city at some point and they decided they needed a massive statue to dedicate the experience. We then made a stop in Luxembourg to have a quick beer (just one, and small), then I hopped in the driver's seat.

We decided that none of us had any real pressing business in France, so we decided to just drive straight through the night onto Barcelona. This began a 12 hour drive of mine while the other two slept for the majority of it. I'm not quite sure how I can manage 12 hours straight in a car, but I made it safely. We made it down to Lyon on a toll road, and since it cost us 27 euros just to drive on the main motorway, we decided to take the smaller route parallel. It was free, but it took us about twice as long. I managed to get us to Montpellier, then finally handed over the keys so that Taz could have his first shot at driving on the right hand side of the road. I slept for several hours, then woke up somewhere on the Spanish coast.

The side highways that go through the small towns on the coast were quite interesting. All along the road there were prostitutes sitting in chairs to give the drivers a nice respite on long journeys. They were literally lining the highway, with teams of two or three every couple miles. We stopped in a small town outside Barcelona called Mataro, and decided to camp one more time. We paid more than I believe you should pay to camp, but it was still cheaper than a hostel. They also had a pool and showers! Bonus! We packed up this morning and now we're getting ready to head off toward Pamplona; Andrew wants to do a little bull-running. I'd say he has a death-wish, but we're already going on the Mongol Rally. The car is holding up decently well. It's gone through puberty though. Apparently our exhaust is starting to come apart. No big deal...it's only need legally, not functionally. We're probably going to have to replace the front strut though. It makes a rather menacing noise when we accelerate around corners, so let's just hope our wheels don't pop off in a roundabout. We'll try to update a little more frequently, but I can't make promises. Our twitter hasn't been operating properly, so about 6 posts never made it to the public. Alas, what can one do in this technology-driven age? Thanks for staying tuned, and as always, look out for more on our next exploits.

---Team Flatlanders---