april 2 2008 : portland, oregon, usa
This is going to sound like an April fool’s joke, but today Ali and I had to pull out of the Great Race. Yesterday we brought the car in to the mechanic to have the brakes, shocks, engine, and pretty much everything gone over. He called us back last night and asked us to come back down. It sounded ominous. So this morning we were back at the shop standing underneath the car up on the lift.
Things were obviously not good under there. Now, we knew the car had rust issues, it’s a 43-year-old Porsche and these cars are well known for this. However, I thought that it was more or less just a cosmetic issue. But from the looks of things, it was pretty clear that the car wasn’t up to the task of racing around the world. Actually, who knows, it would probably make it around five times without incident, but with us risking as much money on this as we were going to be, we just decided we couldn’t do it.
In last year’s race we won a free entry into the North American portion of the 2008 race. For a while we considered taking the VW instead of the Porsche out to New York for that. But after sleeping on that idea we decided it was just stupid. There is no way we could drive something essentially just for fun. We’re too competitive for that. So we’re doing the work that we can on the Porsche and going to run from New York to Vancouver, B.C.
So we’ve had a big change in our plans for the next year, but it should work out in the end. After the race ends in Vancouver we’ll head back to Portland, switch out into the bus, and head back north to explore Alaska for the summer. After that we’ll either ship it to Russia, Ecuador, Vietnam, or South Africa. Haven’t quite figured that one out just yet.
april 10 2008 : portland
It is starting to feel as if our plans change every day. This morning we received the news that the Great Race 2008 is on hold. China being China has revoked the travel permits. They don’t want anybody in the country that might report something negative back to the outside world before the Olympics. So, while we weren’t planning on running the full race any more, it doesn’t much matter now because the entire thing has been postponed. I can’t even imagine how many thousands of man hours have been spent by the organizers and the teams involved getting ready for this. It’s a shame.
So as of today it looks like Ali and I will be putting our new plan into place a few weeks earlier than we’d originally planned. We’ll be heading to Alaska sometime in May. We’ve resigned ourselves to being cold, and have decided that before setting out this time we are going to buy some socks. Sharing three pairs didn’t work so well.
We’ve also made some longer range plans in the last week. We decided that from Alaska we are going to ship the bus to Vladivostok, Russia. We’ll spend the summer driving across Russia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan, and then tour Europe for a while. From there we’re going across Africa, Cairo to Cape Town. We’re pretty excited with the new drive and can’t wait to get on with it. This past year we’ve really been trying to wing it and just see what happens and where we end up. But we’ve sort of found that we enjoy having a more specific goal. It helps keep us motivated.
Today we went and saw Cirque du Soleil, which if you’ve never seen you should really check it out the next time they come to your town. The show was awesome. Forget Barnum and Bailey and the elephants walking around holding each other’s tails. I don’t know how anybody could see this show and not want to run away and join the Cirque. You could even be tricked into thinking that being a male gymnast might actually be cool.
In this months 356Registry magazine is an article about our 2007 Great Race experience.
april 18 2008 : portland
We just spent the last few days in Spokane, Washington. My mom grew up there and was reminiscing recently when Ali said, “We should go.” And that’s what we did a few days later. We drove around her old neighborhood where she pointed out all of the houses her family had lived in at one time or another. She had stories about each of them. “This is the one that my brothers had to sleep in the hallway on bunk beds, and this is the one that we had to move out of in the middle of the night to avoid the landlord, etc..” It was funny, even when telling us these stories that highlighted just how poor she was growing up, she would have a big smile on her face. We drove all over the city visiting her old stomping grounds. She even wandered around inside her high school before we went to dinner with a couple of women she’d known since kindergarten. It was a fun couple of days in which we got to learn a lot about my mom that we may otherwise have never known.
april 24 2008 : portland
We’re slowly preparing the VW for the next leg of the journey. I’ve been researching tires lately and finally came to the conclusion that we were going to go up a few sizes and get some fatter meats on the road. The consensus on the big VW site was that most people go with 205s, which would be about an inch and a half wider than what we’ve got now. We went to the shop and I told them we were a little concerned about the tires fitting in the back wheel wells.
Fortunately they didn’t mind mounting a tire and giving it a try so we could see it before we paid for it. Well, the 205 didn’t even come close to squeezing in there. Next up we found a 195, but again it wouldn’t fit. A bit of research turned up the fact that there are no 185s being produced with the sidewall strength we need, and at the end of the day we ended up back where we started with our tiny 165s. The benefit to these tires is that they hardly cost a thing and we can throw an extra one up on the roof rack, the downside is that, like our last set, we probably won’t get more than about 15 or 20,000 miles out of them.
I’ve also been working on a problem we’ve been having with the clutch for the past couple of months. When I press the clutch pedal down I get sort of a growling noise in return. After more research the probable culprit may be the TO bearing, which is part of the clutch and requires the removal of the engine to get at it. So my project next week is to drop the engine. Should be interesting to see if I can remove it and actually put it back together again.
Sticking to bus preparations we’ve also tracked down a shop in South Dakota that has a splash pan and a dashboard tray for us. The splash pan should help protect things underneath, and the tray will make a nice addition as the home of our maps and guidebooks.
april 28 2008 : portland
We participated in our first car show over the weekend here in Portland. It was a VW show and was pretty fun. The beetles were out in force and we decided if we ever settle down that we’ll get one of those for our running around town car. Maybe a ’58 to complete the set.
The bus was a big hit too. We spent the day talking to people about our interior. Everyone seemed to dig our aluminum panels and bamboo woodwork. I don’t know how many people told us they were looking for ideas on how to finish their own bus. We had a good time, but I doubt we’ll be rushing out to join in on another show anytime soon. Although next week we are going to a big VW ride in which a few hundred air cooled dubs will be cruising around for charity. That should be a little more interesting since we actually drive around instead of just sitting in a parking lot all afternoon.
