A long tiring day…

This post will be up later once we are reconnected with that most important part of modern life – the World Wide Web.

Last night as we met for dinner we received the news the road for today had a lot of road works taking place on the section from 100k to 150k and it is closed every day from 8.00am till 6.00pm. The decision was made to start early at 3.00am and get past that section before it was closed.

Maurie and I left at 2.00am as we are a lot slower at climbing hills than the others and wanted the head start. The first 93k was great going but a lot of climbing so we had that knocked over by 3.45am.

At that time we drove off the good stuff onto the road-works and hit the most horrendous bump on a bridge and Penny ground to a stop. I checked all the usual wires that fall off under the dash on some big bumps and it was not that simple. On opening the bonnet to check the distributor wire my heart sank to the very bottom when I found the carburettor bowl which was very close to the chassis had been broken.

Penny is fitted with an SU and the things that raced through my mind were; I haven’t seen any aluminium welders in the towns; I won’t get parts for an SU in China; how do I get back to fix this?; how do I then catch up if I can get it fixed; and is our trip really over at this point with 12,000k to go.?

My head cleared after a bit and I remembered Frank had an electric drill, I saw a bit of copper pipe on the fuel tank breather I could use to spigot it together; I remembered I had some quick metal to join and seal it; I could remove a spacer between the carb and the manifold to stop it happening again; I had the shorter bolts for the job once the spacer was removed; and hey presto the plan of action was formulated.

Just as all of this came together in our heads the rest of the group arrived to the bad news. A quick discussion was held and we decided to tow Penny through the 50k of road-work with Reg’s Landcruiser, so we got past the road block section before 8.00.

We also needed to do some recon work to find our way on to the road to our night stop. This was soon sorted and Penny was hitched up and we were off with Garry just ahead of Reg looking for the bad bumps and calling them back on the China two-ways wwe got on China Day one.

This tow process was through road-works and bad road over one of our highest passes in China at 4,560 metres. The road was that bad at one time, that Peter in his Peugeot needed a tow up a slippery hill.  By 8.30am we where through the bad stuff and on newly formed and sealed road so at I think about 9am we pulled up for breakfast and to effect repairs on Penny.

I must give special thanks to Mitchell who has smaller hands than me and was such a godsend as some of the bolts that are very difficult with my big paws and usually done by James or Julie for me.

Everyone waited while the repairs were done and all were very pleased when she burst in to life about an hour later. I was especially pleased and happy with the repair, and I’m certain that the repair will get me to the end and beyond.

At this point we were still about 150k from a bed for the night. We all set off with light hearts and great expectations for about 30k until we came upon the road closed for the final coat of hot mixing that section. One option was that we could pay the farmer beside the road 100 yuan each and drive through his place but this was against Alim’s policy as we would be doing it all the way to Town. After some negation we were let through when one machine was moved ahead enough for us to squeeze through the gap.  Off we charged again with great gusto till me met the next hot mix crew working, but this one was just finishing up so the delay was just enough time to eat some fried rice I had saved from last nights dinner.

On the last uneventful run into Shiqu I was getting sleepy so Maurie drove the 40k to the out side of town on which he coped very well with the transition to a 90 year old car. I took over again at the outside of town as he didn’t feel he was ready for that mayhem yet.

Our arrival in town was far from uneventful as we found the hotel we had been booked into had closed for some reason. After some hunting around Alim found us a hotel with shared facilities which everyone was happy with due to the fatigue of the long day.

We had been at greater elevation than 3,900 metres since 5 this morning and our hotel tonight is at 4,200 metres; 13,800 feet in some people’s numbers; so we need to do everything that bit slower.

At 6.30pm we all met in the hotel lobby and headed off for dinner. Some nights we all eat together at a place that Alim chooses or we break up into small groups and walk the streets and find small eat places or street vendors. Tonight we all ate in the one little shop and everything was cooked once we arrived which we were very happy about.