Well folks, the rally is underway. We’re held up at the moment in the town of Strakonice, Czech Republic, so it’s a good time to upload some content and update you a bit. Let me say that very little has gone according to plan thus far. It’s pretty clear that this is just way the rally works.

A quick update on our current situation. We started the rally with a real bang today. Among the first teams to leave the Czechout party, we were leading the charge to Austria when Ian steered Jon Hay into the back of a stopped car as he turned into the small town of Strelske Hostice, which is now in contention with Leeds for the top of our shitlist. Don’t worry, everybody is fine.  In rural C.R. not a soul speaks english. And none of the ralliers could speak Czech. You can imagine the mayhem and confusion which ensued as we tried to sort out the situation.  Unfortunately Jon Hay cracked her radiator and lost all of her cool(ant). We had to wait over 5 hours for a tow, and have once again fallen to the back of the pack. But fortunately we found a local mechanic, Petr (awesome guy), who understood our situation and was willing to do the bare minimum amount of repair work to get her back in action. So he’s swapping out radiators and pounding her into form as we speak. We’ll be back on the road tomorrow. The one real casualty is the air conditioning, which Petr had to remove in order to get at the radiator.. This should add an interesting twist to Uzbekistan. It definitely adds a healthy dose of rally character to Jon Hay.

We’ll try to post a more complete rundown of events thus far when we wake tomorrow morning. Stay tuned.

Jon Hay hitching a ride.

.