James Stephenson

Bahahahah! So just came back from dinner and this story MUST be shared.

What do you get when you cross a 1923 vauxhall carrying 6 people (2 on each running board), a bunch of bored coppers in the middle of Clan William, South Africa and a 100meter journey at 15kph after dinner?

A 4000 rand fine for dangerous driving, a journey to the local watch house, a threat to be locked up untill monday for the judge to sort me out, and a bloody good story!!

Now we are coming to an end of this adventure, and alot of positions are more or less locked in place, a few of the other competitors that love Penny so much wanted to go for a little drive in/on her. And because tonights accomidation was spread all over town with a central bowls club dinner, a few of them had booked in (earlier in the night) a lift back to thier motel on the running boards! Fine, no problems, they have a rollbar to hold on to, i was doing less than 20kph and it was at maximum a 150meter journey. So Grant and simon, and Paul Carter and John Balyss and David (from the landy) all pile on and off i set. blub blub blub blub down the road. Then i turn down the main road (empty, this town has maybe 1000 inhabitants MAX) and what happens to be on the corner? The bloody cop shop, with 3 cop cars parked on the side and 8 bored coppers leaning on them. To be fair, any other country in africa you see people truck surfing (standing/sitting on top of the cab on a prime mover lorrie/semi). So they pull me over and blah blah blah lecture me about safety and then crack out, “Well, i should arrest you now and keep you untill monday to be sorted out with the local judge.” Where as at this point in time retort, “No sir, i can’t do that sir, we’re leaving tomorrow sir, i realise it was a silly thing to do sir, i’ll never do it again sir.” And he took very kindly to my – brown noseing – and then just gave me a fine. Yes i made sure i got a receipt. And i think i’ll frame it!!

THEN he refused to beleive that the car was a real car for the roads, and refused to believe it was registered untill i could fine rego papers (back in my hotel) so he took my license and i had to get rego papers and come back meet him at the cop shop and pay the fine blah blah blah. Good sir Grant Tromans helped me out for the fine as it was his idea for the bus ride after dinner.

James ‘hardcore’ Stephenson

The rally is devided into two groups the last 2 days; the fella’s that want to try and steal 30 seconds off the person in front of them and drive like maniacs, and the people that know there is no way to catch anyone and just drive with the intention of making it. And me? well because we are in our own race, and these Namibian/RSA roads are completly wonderful, i drive the time trail sections just the way i have been doing them, swiftly!

Today was another blinder of a day, we left our hot springs resort in the middle of a canyon and the first section was only 12k’s on smooth gravel with long sweeping corners. Fabulous. Now we are own well made roads we can finally get some speed up and haul our 2.5tonn car along. The results havnt come up yet but it felt like i took a podium place. I’m not really sure if another vuaxhall could have possibly done that section any faster. It wasn’t reckless by any standards, but it was fun! And i was so chuffed that none of the cars caught up to us and we had to let them pass. Top stuff Penny, you did well!

The border from Namibia to RSA was the most fluid out of all of them today, no more then 15 minutes. In and out, and then in and out on the other side. Kudos to them.

There was a few time controls that looped off the main road around lunchtime going up and down the hills to the side (would have been nice drive) on dirt roads, but the map suggested they were really windy going up and down, and it was another STINKING hot day, so we decided to give them a miss. Even plodding at regular driving speed on the main road we were running at 200 degree’s F, let alone if we started to push it to make the average speed’s set for each given section (mind you were set at 95kph, no possible chance of keeping up). And our decision was a good one, we plodded along to do Olifant River time trail late in the afternoon and made it in on our schedule time. Another short section of 11k’s and to clear it we were given 7 minutes, i clocked in at 10minutes 2 seconds. Faster than the americans in a jeep, and an MG. 😀

an easy 350k’s tomorrow with 2 short sections in the sederberg hills just out of cape town, can’t wait! Then festivities all through the night at the Table Mountain hotely/bar thing. And then a sleep in, i’ll be looking forward to having a good nice lie in on monday morning, with nowhere to drive, no times to do anything, just bumm around.

James

9:38 am. Whats this? I have some spare time in the middle of the day to write a blog entry. How unusual. Oh wait, it’s because we are broken down in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Hahaha. Not a major problem, just minor, but big enough to delay us too much and cop maximum lateness all day. Which is a shame, it was going to be another day on beautiful gravel roads for 700 k’s and 10 time controls we will miss. Which means about 5 hours of penalties 🙁 we won’t hold our glorious 31^st place tomorrow.

I was driving along, and noticed the front right mudguard was wet, and i thought to myself “hang on, there are no puddles in the desert, how is it wet??? Shit….. our radiator has a crack in it.” Only a very small crack on the side where the solder had started to split. Smaller than a pin hole. So we dried the area up, and pushed silicon gook all over it, put more silicon gook all over it. And voila, no more leak. Now we are just waiting for the gook to go off and dry so we can plod our way down to Ai-Ais tonight. Everything else? Fine!

8:15PM. By Poseidon’s Trident it was hot today. We were in the worlds oldest desert and it was scorching hot! Pushing 40 degree’s C. Not very ideal for tyre life and engine heat. Reports from other drivers are that lots and lots of people got flats or de-laminating tyres, from the intense heat and gravel roads, the tread just working so much harder it was literally falling apart on the lesser quality tyres. We couldn’t make up the time we lost this morning for two reasons; our engine was getting too hot when we pushed it, and we were just too far behind from our radiator problem. Even taking shortcuts and more direct roads we only made the final time control 30 minutes before maximum lateness. But still drove 700k’s on the same beautfil gravel roads.

700k’s on roads like this takes so much energy and concentration, especially a giant car like that at respectable speeds on the gravel, i’m exhausted, but i am getting fitter from doing it hahaha. Only 2 more days to go. Then a bit of a rest!

Namibia is beautiful, almost entirely desert but there is something about the rugged-ness and just how old this place is. The canyons, and rock escarpments and sand formations are just amazing. Our SD card reader is currently broken, so no photo’s until we can buy a new one in Cape Town sorry. And so so dry. The amount of water we drank today was phenomenal. More sand in places you didn’t think you could have sand in as well haha.

Pulled into a lonely servo – 300k’s from anything else that had any signs of life – and jumped out and heard a hissing sound. Then i had a bit of a chuckle thinking the poor fella next to us had a flat tyre. Wrong! It wasn’t the poor fella next to us, it WAS us. So we changed another tube today, not quite as formula one fast as yesterday because it was hot and we didn’t need to rush, but still changed it out in 15 minutes or so, ready to hit the road again. Just another one of those “brilliant, no spare wheels remember, dad! Remember what happened to them?!”

ANNNDDDD our starter motor kinda broke today as well (our good luck must slightly be wearing off). Not a big problem, we will push start tomorrow and when we have more time tomorrow night we can fix it, just a bolt snapped. No biggy.

Animals:

-Some giant deer kind of thing, with no horns,  the size of a horse, oval shapped furry ears a bit like a rabbit, and pale grey all over. No idea what it was.

-and a mongoose. A few of them actually, so plural of mongoose would be Mongeese? Mongooses? Mongi? Who knows, but we still saw them.

-Ostriches

-and some more warthogs.

James

Today i felt like a full on rally driver. The only thing to make it more official was if dad had pace notes calling the corners out to me. Thus far, my favourite day of driving. Namibia has brought everything that was promised and then some! 600k’s today and about 500 of it was on gravel, and it was the most beautiful gravel roads ever: wide, smooth, no potholes. On tarmac we sit at about 107-108kph and on the straights the roads were good enough to do the same speeds. It was just heaven. And over the entire day we only dropped about 17 minutes over 6 time controls, and we even cleared a few of the sections. I was so chuffed about the results. And now we have jumped up to 31^st position! Movers and shackers over here, watch out leader board! haha.

We were also about 1minute before our schedule time to leave after a lunchtime stop, and we see that one of our rear tyres was de-laminating and falling apart. And because we don’t have any spare wheels, the only thing to do was change the tyre, with levers and lube. We mananged to change a tyre and tube and be back on the ground in no more than 12 minutes, then a mad dash to the next time control (luckily they moved that time back 8 minutes) to be 1 minute early. So in all, changed a tubed tyre with no loss time! Bonus!

The Namibian’s take their stop signs at police checkpoints very seriously as well. We got hardcore yelled at because we didn’t stop on the line and started rolling forward. It looked like he waved us through, but no, eveidently he didn’t. And then proceded to tell us that a stop sign actually means STOP instead of ‘please, keep rolling through.’

Heaps more warthogs on the roads today, we were flogging it up a hill, dad was looking behind us taking a picture of the scenery and then BAM, a family of warthogs dashes out of the scrubs, sees us and thinks we are a giant predator and then scuttled away again. All in the blink of an eye.

James