James Stephenson, Author at Adventures of Penny

James Stephenson has been contributed to a whooping 69 articles.

21st Feb – Man down! I repeat, we have a man down!

MEDIC!! We need a medic over here!

Today I got maliciously attacked by a wild Brazilian animal. This wild animal came right up out of no where and attacked me, in doing so killing itself.

I got stung by a bee in the palm of my hand! 🙁 It is a mighty inconvenience for a short while.

On to something less dramatic, today was full of interesting stories. Starting off with Penny Vs Stanley, James Vs Scott, Vauxhall Vs Buick, Australians Vs British, 1923 vs 1937, 4cylinders vs 8 cyclinders. To explain more thoroughly: We pulled out the hotel at the same time as Scott and Paddy in Stanely the buick and came to the first set of red lights on a long empty stretch of road. What else was there to do other than drag race? It would have been remiss of us both to NOT drag race even. Both of us smoking up the rear’s as we slammed through and into second gear, third gear, then blasting past the next intersection at quarter mile in under 10 seconds. lol just kidding, no burnouts. Vauxhall Vs Buick was fairly evenly matched until the speed limit of 80 where we backed off. Nothing outrageous to report, just some good ol’ fashion skylarking.

Timed section number 1. was amazing. 60 odd k’s on smooth, wet, hard packed clay gravel roads, with 2 inches of mud on top. The difference between the level of traction the front wheels had compared to the back wheels was staggering. Not a single car overtook us in the 34 minutes it took, as we were going like stink! It was the best day’s driving thus far! I live for those kind of roads. Still first in class and pending results tonight, probably tied equal first overall based on points.

WE SAW A TOUCAN. A wild one! I thought that was pretty cool. Animal count is now at:

-3 toucans, a boat load of caiman (crocs), a few capybara http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capybara, Lizards (one alive, one squashed). And a bee (first alive, then dead)

We drove out of the rural farming area of Brazil and entered an area called the Pantanal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantanal) which is the worlds largest tropical wetland. Pretty cool, check out wiki. Very very thick vegetation and pretty flat, but the tree’s and shrubberies etc are not very tall, just thick and low.

We even had enough spare time on our way to the hotel Stanley and Penny went on a bit of a date and deviated into the Pantanal for about 35k’s of dirt to see some more awesome animals and wetlands. Totally worth it.

In trusty goPro fashion, battery ran out half way through second timed section. Classic goPro’s….

Edit: I forgot the crux of todays adventure! Most days, the good sirs of Chris Evans and Mark Seymour get blasted by our exhaust note as we hurtle past their Model A at a swift rate of knots. This is always good banter topics ad spurs some great Aus v Brits humor. This quickly escalades to name calling and cursing, then goes straight to uproarious laughter and me saying “TALLY HO PIP PIP GOV’NA” and They will reply, “C YA LATER MAYYYYTTTEE. DINGO STOLE ME BABEHH.” anyywaaayyy, the story must go on. We pulled over for some lunch or an oil change or something because we had a heap of time. Fast forward down the road and these blokes are on the side of the road all hot and sweaty in a spot of bother. Swearing and saying stuff in their British tongue which makes no sense. We catch a few words of ‘hole in radiator’ and end up helping them push some plastic metal around the crack and give them some water to re-fill. Now they are forever in a debt to a Vauxhall driver. At dinner we swapped crude remarks about each others cricket teams and the world is back to normal =D

James

PENNY IN SOUTH AMERICA February 21, 2013

20th Feb – Me No Hablo Portuguese

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Yesterday was our first rest day. It was an AWESOME rest day. I got to sleep in a bit, have a lazy slow breakfast. We all then piled onto a coach mid-morning and did our tour of the Iguacu Falls. After a short tour guide information speech we had a short walk through the tropical forests and queued up like an exemplary British man for our town to get on a RIB boat for a boat trip under the falls. I don’t really know how to describe it other than the pictures I took. We actually drove underneath the falls and even the people that spent 8 Reals (4dollars) on a glad-wrap poncho got more wet than if they fell into a pool. The interesting part was on the way back to the mooring from the falls, one of the engines on the twin 250 honda boat had some horrible clunks and then died….. with no desire to work again. So we plodded back, like a broken down vintage rally car…. awwwwkkwwwaaarrddd.

What else can you do at Iguacu Falls which is worth it you ask? Well, you can do the helicopter fly over it! Why yes thankyou, I think I will!
WORTH EVERY CENT. Even though it was 10 dollars a minute and the flight lasted 12 minutes. It was so cool, you seriously got some perspective of the amount of water flowing over it, and the river system that feeds it.

Unfortunately I don’t have any interesting stories from todays drive that could even begin to match the Cow Incident of the other day. It was just a transit day. For some reason the road we were driving on was scheduled to close at 9:30am and that was 300k’s into

our route so we turned Penny’s heart on and drove out at 4:50 this morning to avoid a huge detour. A policeman stopped us just at sunrise on the road and started saying something in Portuguese, we said something like “me no hablo Portuguese” or something butchered from a Spanish/Portuguese mix, but all was well and he merely waved us on. I didn’t think he saw me undertake a truck a few kilometers back on a hard shoulder 🙂

More large scale farming through rural Brazil today. LArge scale as llaaaarrrgggeeee scale, huge acreage for sugar cane, and this other plant thing dad called cassava? A primary source of making ethanol in the 90’s? I don’t know…. Every now and then you would see a huge processing factory or drying sheds for all the crops, or even a meat works for the cattle. If you are lucky the giant doors would be open and you would snap a peak at hundreds of cow hides hanging up on hooks like clothes on a line. Ready to be made into shoes, or bags, or something cool like a wallet. 😛

Until tomorrow

James

P.S. Still placing first in class and three way tied for first overall! Huzzah!!! =D

PENNY IN SOUTH AMERICA February 19, 2013

18th Feb – Amnesia alert.

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It’s always nice having breakfast and getting all of your gear organised and the cacophony of engines and exhausts just radiates through hotel foyers and parking areas. It’s an orchestra of brilliance.

Pulled out of Curitiba very early this morning with 730 kays laying down in front of us – our longest day on the rally in distance terms. Maybe not time-wise. We had a driving time of 11 hours 15 minutes today and I had thought of so many interesting things to talk and ramble on about here, but now after a giant buffet dinner and countless return trips to the desert bar, my brain has been turned into an oversized perfetta rolls (porfitta?) and I have forgotten everything.

I do remember how bloody cold it was at 6:30am after how hot it was yesterday. We were hoping the sun would warm things quick smart before Dad and I had to don some jumpers. We even had to turn off our air conditioning.

David and Karen Ayre in the Itala didn’t get in to the hotel until after 2 in the morning with continued engine issues. Not sure what is wrong but they are somewhat making some ground back…. somewhat.

Today’s driving was entirely in ‘rural’ Brazil which had either 2 kind of farms. A 2 acre tobacco farm and a few other beans and pea crop running along a fenceline. Or, thousands and thousands of acres of some leafy green plant (I’m not a botanist or horticulturalist to even begin to guess) with central silo’s and processing plants. No irrigation in sight, alllllll dry land faming with some beautiful rich and red dirt. The kind of dirt you could think you could almost grow a baby in it it is so nice. The downside of nice nutrient rich soil is that when it gets wet, it sticks together and turns a slightly bumpy dirty road into a slightly bumpy road which has traction similar to an ice rink. And I can tell you one thing ladies and gents, our car is many things, but she is not a zamboni machine.

Penny did have a bit of a temper tantrum today. Bad Girl. We heard a very loud PSSSSSTTT of rushing air. WTF IS THAT SOUND? I proclaimed. I immediately realised that our rear right tyre was flat and had rolled the tyre off the rim. I managed to maneuver a 2.5tonne, 3 wheeled, 105km/h car pretty well to a stop on the side of the road and NOT end up upside down in a gutter, like 2 trucks we passed in the hilly bits of today. Changed the tyre, pushed on to the time section. Lucky we had an hour and a half to wait before our scheduled time at the test so we re-tubed our broken tyre and did a full maintenance service in our down time. This subsequently got Dad and I absolutely filthy dirty and greasy from our ‘mens work’ and we certainly looked a bit out of place in the foyer of the Iguaca Resort, with hanging chandeliers and polished marble floors. Sorry about the grease and mud trails guys. Our bad.

A Rest day at Iguazu falls (Foz do Iguacu) today and the rally has included a boat ride underneath the falls. Something tells me we will be getting very wet 🙂 I could tell you the facts about the falls, like the 270 odd discrete waterfalls or the so many millions of liters of flow and all the subsidiary river systems, but you can just check out wiki and get something much more accurate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguacu_Falls

James

edit: I FORGOT ABOUT THE COW INCIDENT. On the time trial section through the muddy farm tracks, we came barreling around the outside of a long sweeping corner overtaking a mercedes 280 and all of a sudden there was a huge Jersey cow (who actually knows what kind of cow it was, not me. black and white anyway) in the MIDDLE of the road. This monster of a mammal could not have been any more in the middle of the road. Dad yells “COW” like I didn’t see it. Hard on the anchors (in Penny does not stop very fast), fish tailing under brakes, cow goes to the right, I go to the left, cow goes to the left, I go to the right. Still hurtling along I needed to make a decision and Dad calls RIGHT, it seemed the best option I will admit. Now I don’t know whether it was my 7th sense kicking in, or just super reflexes but I went left which at the time did not have the best likely outcome, and missed the cow doing about 50kph by about 30cm (1Foot for you imperial blokes). It was a close call for us having beef for dinner, or the cow having human for dinner. Go us!

PENNY IN SOUTH AMERICA February 18, 2013

17th Feb – insert quirky title here

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Landed safe and sound once again in the city of Curitiba after our first nights stop in Maresais. Not all can be said for all the cars though. The attrition rate is somewhat, undesirable. The Jag of Mark Robinson left us on a truck to Sao Paulo to get some work done. Lloyd and Traecy’s Sunbeam is getting seriosuly hot with a suspected water pump problem, very sick. And David and Karen Ayre’s Itala is having some rare issues, the Itala is usually such a strong performer. Dad spent until about 1am last night (from 5pm) with David helping him pull apart his engine to get to the cam shaft and investigate a horrible noise. When we left this this morning everything seemed ok but the Itala was spotted driving in the wrong direction, maybe to go back to a flat spot to do more open heart surgery. They still haven’t shown their faces in the Raddison hotel thus far.

Dad was a bit tired today and had to have a bit of a nap. Tired fella

Some beautiful driving today, along the coast and making our way through some undulating hills on some nice roads. Hang a right hander and suddenly we headed up a plateau and left the coast behind us. Nice! We got our first taste of some nice hill climbs. Not overly steep but today brought us some very long climbs. We monstered them in the Vuaxhall with us only doing the overtaking, gossip around the foyer suggests a few of the group were teetering on the ‘bit too hot’ side of things. It is sooooo tropical here, everything is greener than you could imagine being green. Banana trees all over the place.

When I was a bit younger than I am now, I use to think that Eucalyptus trees only ever existed in my home continent, then I saw them in North America. Then I saw them in Asia. Then I saw them in Africa. Now I saw them in South America. Apparently, I was late to the party and they are not only in Auz, but all around the world. Well I never! I was wrong.

Brazil has been awesome and strange. First the awesome. As a Strayan (The A and a few other vowels are optional for us Auzzies) we love the beach, but apparantly not as much as a Brazilian. The amount of people that are on the beaches that only have a tiny little town next to them is ASTONISHING. A spare bit of sand is sought after more than gold. No one wears shirts. It’s pretty cool. Damn our sun and it’s ability to thrust skin cancers on our delicate skins! The strange part is one of the most peculiar things I have seen around the world. So the fact is about 20% of the population live in the slums of the country called Favela’s. No tax, no building deeds, no ownership, stolen power, all that kind of stuff. I have seen some slums from top to bottom Africa and poverty in China but never have I seen a Favela where every lean-to or piece of tin metal acting as shelter has a satellite dish within arms reach. These guys living in the Favela’s of Brazil have instant access to the newest season of Big Brother, or Master Chef, but at the same time have to worry about their neighbour who might want a new addition to his house, at the cost of yours. Odd.

Tomorrow is Iguacu Falls day! yay. Then a rest day. I want to do a helicopter flight over the falls. Huzzah.

p.s. Best news yet: After yesterdays regularity section Mr James and Max Stephenson in the 1923 Vauxhall are currently placed 1st with total penalties at 14seconds. Lets hope we can keep it up! Tomorrow will tell.

James