August 22, 2007 by Andy.

Well folks…here is the skinny on the other half of awesomeness.

I left UB the day after ariving to set out on a 3 day flying excursion to reach the homeland. My flight schedule consisted of the following:

1. International flight on Air China from Chengis Kahn airport in UB to Beijing, China (approx. 2.5 hours);

2. Domestic flight from Beijing, China to Shanghi (approx. 3 hours) (had to fly to the other airport in Shanghi because my original flight no longer existed);

3. Bus across Shanghi to Pudong airport (approx. 1.5 hours);
Side note and this is a very sad tale. While making a phone call in Pudong Airport my back pack was stolen…yes it was stolen…it had my laptop in it…sad…my laptop had all of our pics on it…more sad. (I hope that Ryan does not kill me…but if he does it is probably justified.) I also slept in Pudong airport that night on a bench.

4. International Flight on Virgin Atlantic to London Heathrow (approx. 11 hours) (brilliant flight and brillaint airline…they gave me socks for goodness sake);

5. International Flight from Heathrow to JFK in New York (approx. 6 hours) (slept in JFK…the bench in Shanghi was more comfortable);

6. Domestic Flight from JFK to DFW on American (approx. 3 hours) (turbulence a plenty, but it was relatively soothing after 10,000 miles in the shockless charriot);

7. Domestic Flight from Love Field in Dallas (after lunch with my family) to Lubbock (approx. 1 hour);

8. Shower and sleep.

After 3 days of flying and traveling 3/4 the way around the world, I can say that every minute of the trip was worth it. Now you have had a taste of awesomeness.

The loss of the pictures was very unfortunate, and those are the only things that I cannot replace, but all that really means is that I will have to work twice as hard to describe the beauty and awe that some of these places inspired. I guess it means that we will have to do it all over again. Here’s to being awesome.

Andy Out.

P.S. Ryan send me an address to mail the keys…i found them in the pocket of my jeans that were in my bag.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

August 19, 2007 by dunny.

Life in Ulaanbaatar recallibrates your awesome scale.

We woke up yesterday and sent Andy off, then Anth from the Pandas, the Yaksi Taxi chicks, and me grabbed some Mongol grub and went off to the black market.  If you’ve never seen a Central Asian black market you’ve never really experienced organized chaos.  I have no idea where they get the goods but it’s basically a long line of huts that all have the same shit and will bargain to the bitter end to eek out one more dollar.  Anth’s bag got picked.  The Yaksi’s got their bags slashed open.  We were poked and prodded and pushed and yelled at for the whole 3 hours.  The only way we figured we would triumph was to just be cocky annoying white devils and act like we owned the joint.

So we bought pink suits.

The Rally “black tie” never saw such glorious assholes.  The site for the nightclub is http://www.mongolia-nightclub.com and I think they have pics of the party.

Managed to find Gans and Enkhe last night.  It’s amazing how every moment in this town is OK.  Everybody knows everybody.  There’s no planning or worry, they just knew the Rally party was happening and wandered in to see if I’d showed up yet.  They wanted to do lunch today to make some countryside plans and Gans just said “Dave’s place around noon.  It’s Mongolia so it’s probably between 11 and 1.  We don’t have solid time here.”

Oh, and whoever sees Andy first tell him to mail the Chariot keys back here so I can sell her instead of leaving her in the middle of Sukhbaatar Square to be molested.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

August 19, 2007 by dunny.

Alright folks, unfortunately we haven’t had any internet (or phone, shelter, good food, or civilization) in the last week so this will be a long post.  But holy shit it will be awesome.

Last yall heard we were in Almaty and that time’s were good.  Here’s what really happened…

We were stuck in stop-and-go traffic, which the Chariot has never enjoyed, trying to get to the center of the city.  Carl Tuvan of the Hobos needed to stay overnight and sort out his Russian visa then fly to Semey where we would pick him up.  The Chariot was a little pissed about this delay though.

She was running out of gas and starting to overheat.  She finally decided she’d had enough and blew the reserve tank off the radiator completely off and started smoking.  Then the alternator started to die and the battery juice ran low.  It was like the last stand of the Chariot of Awesome and we were just into Kazakhstan.

Well we decided to just milk her along until something died and fix it.  We managed to drive her through a good portion of the desert and crash on the side of the road with optimism peaked.  Got a jump from the Hobos in the morning and kept on truckin.  This is where the adventure started.

Basically we couldn’t stop driving or she stalled and needed another jump.  Starting the night before we had been changing drivers while going 40mph down crap roads in pure darkness…not because it’s a good/stupid stunt but we thought we had to.  We inched along like this until we were about 100 miles south of Semey in the middle of absolutely nothing when the alternator bit the dust.  Dead.

We weighed options for a while (scrap the car and catch a bus, look for abandoned cars to gank an alternator, trade it for donkeys, etc).  Finally I took off with the Hobos to test out the nearest town while Andy took off the dead alternator and lubed it up for one possible final push.  This was kind of similar to the water pump in that we knew exactly what was wrond and how to fix it, but much much worse in that we didn’t have a replacement and there was no semblance of civilizations for miles.

Great.  We got one more jump and just booked it.  Keep in minds the roads in Kazakhstan are like a pice of Swiss cheese and we couldn’t ever take gas off (brake or clutch and it stalled immediately).  So there we were going 50 in constant life-before-your-eyes style with moments or airborn glory and skid-outs and heart attacks.  We still stalled 7 times.  It was raining and none of the accessories worked b/c the battery had no charge, so I had to manually wipe the windshield with the spare wiper blade as I drove.  I had to pass a truck on the shoulder and ended up in the grass for about a half km.  Somehow we got her to a town and pulled into a gas station.

There we found a kid who spoke a little English who found a guy who took us to his random friend’s shack right there in the middle of nothing.  We pulled up and stalled in the back yard of a chubby Kazakh named Donabek, who was busy rebuilding his humble home with his family.  He had a huge smile and and equally huge gut.  We liked him immediately (we kind of had to b/c we were separated from the Hobos at this point and completely relying on the man).

We pointed to the alternator.  He took it off, fished out a file and some wrenches, then went into his shed and pulled out an alternator brush from a motorcycle engine that was the same model as ours.  Luck?  Nah, just awesome.  Together the 3 of us rebuilt that alternator and got the Chariot humming like new.  We gave the family some gifts and were off.  What a difference 4 hours can make.

And Master Theobald, you have some competition.

Right, so we decided to get to Semey and make a gameplan, but the last stretch of road was still like driving on a cheese grater, so finally we just crashed on the side of the road again.  We woke up a few hours later about 10 feet from the Semey welcome sign

We filled up and decided to rally on to the homeland.  It took about 5 hours to get through the Kazakh-Russia border.  All the legends of bribe-seeked Russian border guards never took form and we slipped right on through.  We pushed on to Barnaul, exchanged some cash, and talked to a few truckers to find out the route to the Mongol border crossing (about 3500 km away!!).  So we were off, first for Irkutsk and Lake Baikal, with no map or compass or convoy.

The first half of the drive through Russia was pretty sweet…nice highways, no traffic, Chariot running well.  A couple days of drive, cook on the side of the road, sleep on the side of the road, drive, drive, honk, drive had us pretty confident.  We pulled over at sunset one night (forgive me for not knowing days, they all ran together after a while) to cook and a trucker pulled up to see if we needed help.  Great guy…ended up giving us biscuits with fresh Siberian honey and some tea…but then he broke the news that soon we’d come to a 200km stretch with “road no exist.”

My friends, that is a complete understatement.  The M53 motorway through Siberia is the worst road on the planet.  There were potholes bigger than the car and 5 feet deep.  There would be good pavement spots for about a half km, then there would be a hole the size of Rhode Island.  Plus, it was pouring rain.  The Chariot really came into her own over the next few days…popping into 4 wheel drive and following a truck in pitch blackness in a thunderstorm through mud as high as our tires, all while trying to avoid debilitating holes.  It took 2 solid days to drive this stretch and get to Irkutsk and we took about 12 gigantic wallops in potholes.

We got to Baikal at night and had a look…it’s beatiful but we had no time to stop.  We were working our way through town and by stroke of awesome ran into a couple other Rally teams (Bad Idea from New Jersey/California and Prancing Pandas from UK/South Africa).  They had come down from Scandanavia and were pushing for the border that night.  Hello 3rd convoy, the best yet.

We drove through the night and were approaching the Mongol border at sunrise.  The scenery was brilliant.  It was really amazing.  The Chariot had started making some noise that night but we were so close we didn’t care.  Then, with the border in sight, something exploded.  OUR DRIVE SHAFT SHEARED COMPLETELY OFF.  It spun the broken piece around so hard that it cut through the floorboard.  Had I had my left foot on the clutch and not propped up on the seat, it might have been cut off.  We were smoking.  We almost killed the Panda with metal parts flying out from under the car.  The Chariot was dying.

She was taking us to Monoglia though, dammit.

We tied to the Panda which pulled us the last few km to the border, where we pushed her up to the Russian gates.  Here, we spent the next 6 hours sitting and waiting for “many many documents” that the Russians insisted we had to have.  They prepared whole packets of papers with cover sheets and everything that, after all that time, we just handed back to them and drove through.  Well, we pushed the car through.  But still.

On to the Mongol border.  They knew we were in the Mongol Rally.  They had a list of cars with all of us on it.  They saw our papers.  Seems pretty straightforward that we could skip on through and head to UB, huh?

We were there for 30 hours.  First, they decided they’d close customs early so we’d have to stay the night.  We all took turns arguing or yelling or laughing or making fun and finally just walked into town for a hotel and a bar (we could go into Mongolia, just the cars couldn’t).  We turned it into a killer party, though, so no worries there.  Just another border adventure…the 20th so far, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

We woke up and after 5 hours of document processing were through.  We found a tow for the Chariot and jumped in with the other cars (Andy in the Panda, me in the Micra).  It was a 300km drive full of drinking and screaming and 70mph hand-offs and even and off-road demolition derby in which both cars lost their doors, headlights, and a semblance of quality.  Andy jumped out at one point and rode a bull.  Well, he jumped on and fell off.  Then he chased another one around for 10 minutes and jumped on, but the bastard just sat there.  It was awesome, to say the least.

So, where are we now?  Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  The Chariot is resting at the finish line.  We made it.  Andy went to the airport this morning for his trip home, and I’m headed off to the countryside in a couple days with a Discovery Channel cameraman.

What, yall expect anything less?  Here’s to being awesome.

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

P.S.  Andy will put up his recap at some point, and I will keep blogging.  The drive may be over, but the adventure is definitely not.  Mongolia, here comes awesome.

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

August 11, 2007 by dunny.

In the 3 days since you heard from us last we have crossed two countries, one of which is by far the most amazing place we’ve been so far.  We’re in Almaty, Kazakhstan…here’s how…

We left Bukhara shortly after the last post and set a goal on getting here as fast as the Chariot would go.  We made it up somewhere near Tashkent and stayed a night then kept moving…stopped in for breakfast and thought we’d found a Junior Awesomeite (a 12 year old boy who spoke great English and gave us tours of the restaurant and fish tanks and told us all the waitresses were in love with us).  He translated the orders and made things as easy on us as it’s been since we left Baku.  Then when we were leaving he asked for $10 for the “memory.”  We said no, so he asked for sunglasses.  I drew him a picture instead.  So he stole my tennis ball.  Little grifter.

We managed to cross the Uzbek-Kyrgyz (Osh, Kyrgyzstan) border late that night and were just going to try and make it as far as we could on our way to Bishkek.  The border guard had told us the road we wanted was good but had “one problem.”  Well about 50 km from the border we found the problem.  The road disappeard.  Completely.  So we turned around and wandered through southwest Kyrgyzstan fighting extreme sleep deprivation and a lack of roads or people to ask and finally ended up at a different Uzbek-Kyrgyz border crossing. 

Wolfgang from the Hobos went up to ask directions and as he made his way to the door a rabid dog went apeshit on him and he tuck-tailed and ran as fast as a fart in a frying pan.  Good wake up call I guess.  It turns out that the guard was napping…he woke up and basically told us that when that road had disappeared we needed to keep driving on the rock-track until it picked back up.  So we did.

When it finally did pick back up we managed to get lost again so we decided to pull over and catch some sleep there on the side of the road (2nd time in 2 nights).  Now, the Chariot has a lot of magic, but sleeping room it does not.  My legs fell asleep somewhere around 4:30 so I climbed out on the hood to stretch out and fell back to sleep.  As the sun was coming up, I was in a nice slumber until I heard a little whistle and a tap on the shoulder.  Ever seen Deliverance?

I rolled over and sat up and looked out at about 40 Kyrgyz locals (most on foot, some on donkey-pulled carts) staring at me with wide-eyed bewilderment.  I said hello.  They kept staring.  One of the donkeys started hee-hawing.  One of the kids hissed at me.  So I climbed back in the car and told Andy we might ought to get a move on.  Then we went back to sleep, using the tapping at the windows for meditative purposes.

Anyways, whenever we all got up we finally found the right road and started our journey to the mountains.  Along the way we stopped at the base of a giant lake near Toktogul and basically found the Barton Springs of Kyrgyzstan.  Cold river water running past nice rock shores, so we swam and were wet for the first time in 4 days.  Competely awesome…worth every baby leech we had to pick off.

We made our way into the mountains and discovered what has to be one of the most pristine, gorgeous lands in the world.  Rolling green mountainsides with nomad yurts and animals scattered all throughout…a sky so big it felt like another planet…cool winds for the first time in weeks…a clear sunset at our backs…

It’s my biggest regret we didn’t have time to stop.  I can’t describe the feeling of peace and tranquility in that countryside, it left us all so moved we almost said “Hell with it” and camped there.  Had to keep moving though…

We made our way back down the mountains through old Soviet tunnels and winding roads and more psychotic Central-Asian mountain drivers and on to Bishkek.  We got pulled over by some locals who were having a bachelor party and talked with them for a while, then they dragged us off to a grocery-store parking lot and drank vodka with us.  Sweet.

We made it to the Kyrgyz-Kazakh border around 3am and it was like walking into a rave.  There were huge arches and roughly 800,000 people milling back and forth…apparently it’s an open border and people go to and from Bishkek and the neighboring Kazakh border town on the weekends…we were stars to say the least.  All in all though, the last 2 borders have taken a combined 2 hours with no fees and lots of help.  Eat me Turkmenbashi.

Headed north today and trying to get to Barnaul, Russia as fast as possible.  If you have a minute do some research on Kygyrzstan…it really was the most surprising gem of this entire journey, one that left us all begging to come back some day.  As with every story from this trip, we only have time to write the most essential details, so ask us about it when you see us.

Also, be sure to scroll down a couple posts…we got hold of Andy’s Turkey recap and posted retroactively.  That, and keep puttin up awesome folks.

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

P.S.  They wrote about us in the main Turkmenistan newspaper.  No names or anything, but I’m not sure what level of celebrity that puts us at…here’s the link…

http://www.turkmenistan.ru/?page_id=3&lang_id=en&elem_id=10725&type=event&sort=date_desc

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

August 8, 2007 by dunny.

Last you heard from us we were in Istanbul, Turkey.  Right now we’re in Bukhara, Uzbekistan.  I’ll try my best to be short and sweet about the miracles and disasters in between.

We woke up in Istanbul and made our way around the city, hit the black market and such, then jumped in the car determined to make Baku, Azerbaijan in one go.  Andy wrote a killer blog about this stint but we couldn’t get internet access to post it, so as soon as I get Jane Barker to email it to me, we’ll get it up.  Suffice it to say the drive took 44 hours.

That put us in Baku.  We had rolled through Georgia and been completely awe-stricken by Tblisi, and then traversed Azerbaijan, which is by far the dirtiest and most corrupt place we’ve been.  We were stopped repeatedly for fake violations and asked straight-up for bribe money (talked our way out of some, compromised with others, hated all).  We got into town and found Jane’s apartment and called her, then waited on the corner until she could take us to park and pass out.

The plan was to wait on Driving Miss Daisy and Wrong Way Round who were supposed to go through Turkmenistan with us.  They were more than a day behind, though (we can’t all drive for 44 hours solid).  So we were stuck for the time being at Jane’s place, much to the dismay of her roommate Caitlin.  They were very welcoming the first night, but as we were waiting for our convoy and trying to catch up on sleep over the next 2 days, our welcome ran out (somewhat our fault for getting so used to foreign hospitality).  Many thanks to Jane for being awesome, you rock!  And many thanks to Caitlin for being nice the first night that I unfortunately have to take back for the lectures on manners and repeated inquiries to “What have you accomplished today?”  But hey, we don’t hold any grudges.  It’s not her fault the bug up her ass has a stick up its ass.

Feeling the pressure to get moving, I ran down to an internet cafe one night to try and find other teams in Baku and found out there were about 10 teams down at the docks waiting on the ferry.  So we were off.

Down at the docks, we were trying to buy ferry tickets but ended up last in line.  The guy told us there was room for the car but no room for any more people, which makes complete sense in Azerbaijan logic I guess.  We talked him into it though, and along with all the other teams spent the night in the parking lot within the DMZ drinking 6 bottles of vodka we bought for a total of $10.  Some slept in cars, I slept on the hood of the Chariot, and Andy passed out on the concrete with no pillow.

Up the next morning for all the customs, which I handled since Andy was still running around hammered.  We got on the boat and were put in one of the crew member’s cabins with the guys driving the ice-cream truck.  The ferry left around 11am and got to Turmenbashi at 2am…but another ship there forced us to anchor a few miles off-shore until about noon.  Then we stood around on the boat waiting to get our passports back until 3pm.

Now comes the time when I tell the tale of something far beyond cultural clashes.  The customs office in Turkmenbashi is an alternate reality altogether.  The ten teams pulled up and sat waiting for about 4 hours.  When they finally started processing our papers, the adventure began.  I’ll try my best to get everything in the right order…

First you go to a lady to pay for your visa and the car entry ($64 per visa and $150 or so for the car).  She fills out a series of carbon-copy forms without using the carbon-copy and makes you sign each one.  This takes roughly 1 hour per person.  You then take those forms to register the car, where a man fills out a form in block letters and draws your route on a map.  Then you go to three guys who write the same details about you and your car down in different logbooks…one of the guys asks you if you like Turkmenistan music, then asks you if you like sex, then shows you tiger beastiality.  After that you go to another room where a guy wakes up from his nap and writes down the same details again.  Then you go to another building and pay a Chinese woman $1.  Then you go to another room in another building and pay a guy and try not to make eye contact with the two guys laying on the bed smoking opium and holding hands.  Then you go back to the first building and pay Miss No-Carbon-Copy again.  Then you get your visa.  Then you have to find the “Little Man” to open the gate for you, but he says you’re missing a form.  You go back and buy this form only to discover you already had it.  You show him and he runs in and argues with the officials for a while, then finally you’re out the gate.

All told, it took 12 hours for all of us to get through customs, and that involved absolutely no checking of car contents.

I should mention that we were only allowed to enter Turkmenistan with a guide, and since our convoy was way behind we teamed up with some others who went through the same company: Hobo Logistics (Canada), Team Shadowboat (Maryland), and Team Saskatchawan (Canada).  Our guide was a Turkmen fella named Jabbar, who spoke 5 languages and was previously a doctor (translators make more money though in Turkmenistan).  We crashed that night in Turkmenbashi and drove the next day to Ashgabat, the capital.

Surprisingly enough, Turkmenistan was an absolutely amazing country.  I’ll leave all the researchable details for yall (or ask me later), but Ashgabat was like Vegas with a curfew.  Everything closes at 11pm except for a couple discoes.  In fact, you can’t drive anywhere outside the cities after 11 or its assumed you’re up to something and you’ll get arrested.  So we kept our desert driving to the daytime and spent the nights in Ashgabat at the discoes (stories from these will be shared later).  We saw the biggest market in Central Asia, a couple historical sights (old cities destroyed by Genghis that they have just begun excavating), and more oddities than I can list.  I wish we could have sat and posted while we were there, but internet has only been allowed in Turkmenistan for less than a year, so it’s pretty hard to find.

We left the country yesterday (after more completely random forms and payments) and made it to Bukhara last night.  We’re now in convoy with Hobo Logistics only (they text in progress to the Mongol Rally website if we can’t get internet for a while).  We did a little car maintenance this morning and plan to head to Tashkent today.  We’re basically trying to work our way through Uzbekistan, possibly Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia over the next 6 days so we can hit Tsagaanuur, Monglia on the 14th and have 5 days to cross the Gobi Desert.  We’ll update if possible, but I have no idea when or if internet will be available.

Thanks to those who expressed concern for where the hell we were.  As always though, it’s not to worry.  SkipLizard moves on (with new Sultans of Awesome, the Hobo Logistics team, who were 4 but are now 3 since one was called back home).  Pics and stories to come of Wolfgang, Wiederman, Carl Tuvan, and the departed Aiden.

Keep puttin up awesome

Skip, out. (SkipLizard Homepage)

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

August 2, 2007 by Andy.

<> 

Well you have heard from Ryan, and now it is my turn to give you a little insight about this little adventue…this is a long one so you might want to take your shoes and socks off, get a nice cold glass of iced tea, put your reading glassses on and settle in for a tale of two wandering souls in search of the almighty paradise called Mongolia.

First let me tell you about the drive that Ryan refuses to speak of, and there is a good reason for that I might add. We were driving from Varna, Bulgaria, to Istanbul, Turkey, which on the map was only a 6 hour drive…something that we welcomed with open arms after having been on previous drives 12+ hours. Anyway, the map did not mention that there was a huge mountain range between Bulgaria and Turkey…and when i say huge i mean like 75 kilometeres of mountain driving. Ryan took this leg, and proceeded to scare the absolute shit out of me by driving what seemed like a million miles per hour all over this mountain. (It was really only like 35 or 40, but it seemed like a million.) It was also dark, without any signs, and no other cars were on the road at all. Oh yeah, and the road had not been maintianed so it was like playing “avoid the pothole that will snap your car in half.” Sounds like fun I know, but I really don’t reccomend it to anyone. We finally arrived in Turkey a little shaken and emotionally drained (mountain speed driving seems to do that to a person).

Fast forward a little…(Ryan already told you about some of Istanbul). We woke up the next day at 2pm, we had arrived in Istanbul at 5:30am, in search of a place to purchase some much need goods. We went to the 6 story mall where we found nothing that we needed and were unable to bargain with any of the shop owners. What did we do you ask…we then headed to the Grand Bazzar, a place where we knew that we could haggle over prices. We emerged victoriously and then made the decision to head straight to Baku, Azerbaijan traveling along the coast of Turkey. So after taking pictures with the Hilton staff and our car we set out. Let me tell you, Turkey is by far and away the most beautiful and interesting country that we have been to…hands down.

Traveling the Turkish countryside we drove through the night taking 4 hour driving shifts, and during our drive some of the most wonderful and unexpected things happened. Most importantly…EVERY STEREOTYPE THAT AMERICANS COULD HAVE OR COULD THINK OF HAVING ABOUT THE TURKISH PEOPLE OR MUSLIMS WAS SHATTERED.

We were driving throught the city of Lapzon around 11:00am when a little red car passed us honking and waving. Naturally we waved back because people tend to honk at us a lot. The car then slowed down after a minute or two and let us catch up with it. They motioned for us to pull over and made some type of hand gesture. We did and immediately one of the passengers jumped out and came over to our car. He said, “my family is going out for some breakfast and we were wondering if you would like to join us?” How do you say no to that…you don’t…that is one of the main things that I have learned on this trip is that you never refuse a gift; mainly because it is offensive, and also because if someone offers you something then they are offering with the most sincere of intentions. They led us to a eatery where we met the entire family, all 12 of them. We sat down and immediately started eating and talking, through the translation of the eldest son Erdin (truly sorry if I mispelled the name). We had a cultural exchange of the highest degree, and the main point that they wanted to show us, even before they found out that we were Americans, was that the Turkish and Muslims do not want to harm anyone…if anything it is the complete opposite, and because they were interested in Ryan and I, and we looked tired and hungry they took us in and fed us. “Actions speak louder than words.”

After we finished the meal they sent us packing with food to eat on the road and some pictures with the entire family around our car. We then stopped at the next gas station that we saw, in Rize, Turkey to fill up. Immediately a group of men came around the car and started to ask us questions about the nature of our journey. When they found out that we were Americans they immediately invited us to sit down and have tea with them. This turned out to be the most enlighteneing conversation that we have had on this entire journey. It was about politics and why America does the things that it does, and being unable to answer for the mistakes of Mr. Bush I had to tell them that we the people are not out for the same things that our leadership is. They understood this…once again “actions speak louder than words.” They also explained Islam to us, and then gave us a gift of Rize tea (apparently some of the best tea in the world) and asked for one thing in exchange…that we go home and tell everyone “that the Muslim people do not want to hurt anyone, and all they want is peace.” Having actually experienced this twice in the last hour I was on the verge of tears and felt that at the very least I could explain this to all that would listen. This is the reason for our journey, and there was so much more that happened but I cannot possibly write it all down…ask me about it next time you see me.

Back on the road again, we hit the Georgia border…not the one to the nort of Florida. The duties of the navigator took on a slightly different role from those previously held. Because we had no map the navigator was reduced to saying “cow, chicken, pig, horse, goat, dog, or person” every time one was standing in the road. This was a little different from telling the driver which road to take and saying stop when there was a red light and go when it turned green. There were a lot of animals to say the least. We drove for a long time and finally reached Tbilisi (the capital of Georgia). But we got lost in Tbilisi and spent an hour looking for the road to Baku. After a heated discussion we finally were able to find the way out.

We eventually reached the AZ border and were held for over an hour, but after some schmoozing and pleading they let us pass into what would become that “what in the hell did we get ourselves into moment.” The moment that we all had been waiting for…i know it.

The landscape became barren and the roads disappeared as if they were paved a long time ago, but never maintianed. :Pause…(Internal thought)…: The road to the capital city, Baku, was being repaved or at least the portions that had been previously paved were being repaved. Imagine shrinking yourself down by a lot and then getting a tiny car and driving over a cheese grader for about 4 hours…i just hope our car is still not upset at us. We were stopped by the police twice at checkpoints along the way. This is where a civilized country and a non-civilized country differentiate. The police made up charges and proceeded to foce us to give them money. Life lessons…dont ever trust anyone with gold teeth, and especially dont ever trust a police officer with gold teeth…which by the way is all of those in Baku. It is so bad, as we later found out, that it is not same for women to be out past dark–not because of the citizens, but because of the police. Imagine corruption that runs that deep. They can and will stop you for any reason, true or untrue, and make you pay them money or try and take your things (my camera, Ryan’s sunglasses), and if you don’t pay then you go to jail…Nice system Azerbiajan, I see some awards for most improved country comming your way soon.

Besides that all is well, and we are awaiting the arrival of our convoy so that we can board the ferry to cross the Caspain. At that point blog entries may become a little more scarce due to the maybe non-existent availability of technology. Nonetheless, if we have to write our posts by hand and send them back to the US by carrier-pigeon then it will be done…awesomeness says so.

Andy Out

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »