Given that we are now on the road you correctly assume that I did end up purchasing a car. After seeing so many terrible cars (yes, all of those “walk away” moments actually happened) I finally hit gold when I went to TCC Car Company in Enfield, north London. The owner, Peter, was a champ and gave us a 250 pound discount and weathered my suspicion of him with grace. I’d 100% recommend to any future purchasers.
After buying the car I took it to a friend’s usual mechanic for an independent review at Lordship Lane Tyres. The Geoff and the guys there gave it a full bill of health (minus needing a service and brakes) and didn’t charge us a cent but instead asked we made a donation on their behalf. We later went back to them to get four new mud/snow tyres for the off-road component of the rally and an extra rim so we could carry two spares. They also helped us drill through our bonnet so we can attach Adventurists logo “diplomatic flags”. They didn’t charge us labour for any of it.
In summary, people have been incredibly helpful and lovely.
The only issues with the car after I drove it around for a few weeks included the radio cutting out every 30 seconds for a second, a broken AUX input and a bit of a wobble at 140km/h… Obviously as an essential, the stereo got replaced, can’t say the same about fixing the wobble.
As Jeremy has mentioned, in my personal style I’ve procrastinated and am now far behind on blog updates so instead I’ve summarised what I remember of the last few weeks in London before the second coming of Jesus-eremy
Other notable events included:
- I tried to design a logo for the team. I got this far:
- Glastonbury with a group of work friends. What a huge privilege and massive bucket list item. Big thanks to Jamie for sorting us out and setting up camp. The Foos headlining was mindblowing, the sheer mass of people, size and lineup they pull is incredible, enough said.
- SMACC: had a work conference the next day in Berlin. Whilst educational, social and great fun, I’ve now realised that I am too old to pull an all nighter at Glastonbury, get straight on the coach to London, clean everything till midnight, then leave at 3:30am to catch a plane to a conference starting that day, then virtually do the same thing on the way home.
- Much stress over getting visas, managed to get Mongolia, Uzbekistan and for bonus prizes, Iran in London after belatedly realising I did need a visa to enter Iran…
- Met a lovely trio at the Uzbekistan Embassy who gave me cash to donate to Cool Earth.
- Ordered stickers and flags for our car
- Mass purchase of items off Amazon including
- New stereo
- Cigarette lighter to 240 volt inverter
- USB car chargers
- Recovery tracks for mud
- Cheap guitar
- GoPro accessories to fit to car
- Selfie stick
- First aid kit
- Petrol powered camping stove
- Camping pots and pans
As Jeremy boarded the plane it became a general feeling of why did we leave this so late?