July 13th, 2010

Dispatch from the road: Rally London-Mongolia, Part 1

Drive Like A Woman Editor-in-Chief, Michele Shapiro is setting off on a rally from London to Mongolia. She will be driving with Parag Khanna, Mikhail Zeldovich and Jen Mueller. Jen will be starting with the team in London and Michele will be meeting the team in Moscow and will switch places with Jen. The team will be driving a 1991 Land Rover Defender ambulance. Upon arrival in Mongolia the team will donate the ambulance to a local hospital. Drive Like A Woman will be posting dispatches from the journey.

London, Pre-Rally:
- Written by Jen Mueller

“I thought I had anticipated every eventuality.  But this, I did not see this coming.”

I gazed over to where Mikhail sat staring out the windshield at the London rush hour traffic swerving around us.  A Land Rover turns out to be quite the obstacle when it cannot move.

“Oh, I can definitely say that this was the part of the trip I was dreading the most.  I was ready for anything to go wrong today.”

Misha shook his head.  “I thought we would break down in Siberia or Mongolia.  But this!  We haven’t even started the rally yet!”

It was about then that the cops pulled up…

Yes, our big adventure had started off with a bang.  And this was not the first—or even the second—fraught situation that Mikhail (aka Misha) and I had found ourselves in during what was supposed to be a quick outing up to Doncaster, about 180 miles north of London, to pick up our Land Rover for the rally launch the next day.

I suspected things were not going according to plan when my phone rang shortly after 7, the second time that morning that Misha was calling in advance of our meeting at King’s Cross for a 7:35 train.

“Jen, where are you?”

“I’m just leaving my hotel,” I replied.  “What’s up?”

“Our train was canceled.  We have to try for the 7:20.” Misha said.

“Right.  I’m on my way.”

First I had to get there.  Thanks to Ryanair’s totalitarian weigh scales, I knew that I was toting close to 80 pounds of luggage (much of it camping gear for the team and wine from France).  I was a bit more than half a kilometer from the train station, but a bus or taxi would be too risky a wait.

The platform was empty as I came huffing around the corner at full steam around 7:17.  A lone figure stepped out of the train and waved a crutch.  (This may be a good point to introduce the reader to the not-insignificant plot point that Misha is recovering from torn ligaments and a broken bone and can walk neither far nor fast.)

“Success!” I gasped, flopping on the seat next to him.  “And –“ I pulled out a stash from my hotel buffet “—breakfast!  Let the adventure begin!”

At Doncaster, we took a cab to LRS Offroad, the outfitter who had helped us with repairs and registration for our vehicle.

And there she was.

“Oh, WOW.”  We both leaned forward in our seats.  There was only one vehicle before us, and it was not small.  This was not a contemporary SUV, nor a car built to British scale.  It was a retired British military 1991 Land Rover Defender, and it meant business.

Derrick, our mechanic, came out to greet us.  He seemed politely surprised to meet Misha’s surrogate driver, but not overly concerned.  After giving us a tour of the ambulance inside and out (yes, it really has a siren and stretchers; the flashing light is there too, but temporarily down so we’re not stopped in Russia), he handed over the keys so I could take it for a spin while Misha took care of paperwork.

The “spin” was mostly in first gear through the parking lot of the local industrial park.  “Whoa,” I muttered (actually, I muttered something a fair bit stronger, but this is a family blog).  After clambering up behind the wheel (on the right) and kicking her into roaring, shuddering life, I waggled the stick shift in search of reverse and eased backwards without the aid of a rearview mirror.

By the time I was on my second lap of the parking lot—one that involved a number of k-turns and long reversals; the ambulance has an impressively wide turn radius—I realized that all employees at the garage next to LRS had stopped working and were regarding my progress with folded arms.

“Just one thing left to do,” Mikhail announced after we’d loaded up our bags.  “We should lock the back doors just to be safe.”

Which is when we found out that none of our keys fit the back lock.  “This won’t really work for parking in London tonight,” Misha observed.

Derrick looked crestfallen as he wrote out directions to a nearby locksmith.  “I hadn’t even tried that lock.  I feel like I let you down!

As it turned out, the problem would not have been solved by the procurement of the proper key.  Derrick’s directions led us to a nearby strip mall and to John, and young and earnest master locksmith who took on the lock assembly like a personal challenge.  We paced anxiously.

An hour later, John had determined it was not repairable.  Our only option was to install another padlock on the door, something he was kind enough to do.

After a quick stop for a pub lunch and another for gas, we were finally on the motorway to London.  We swayed and lumbered in the slow lane for most of the way, hitting the city, as I had been dreading, at rush hour.  The roads slowly became narrower as we moved through a series of multi-lane roundabouts.  Between the heat of the engine and the sweltering summer sun, we were baking.  But we were within three miles of our destination.

That was when the engine died.  Moving to start after a light turned green up a small incline, I suddenly realized that we had no power.

“What’s going on?”  Misha asked.

“Hang on.”  I tried again; it caught and died.  Then refused to catch again.  We looked at each other.

WOULD THEY GET THE CAR STARTED AGAIN? CLICK READ MORE TO FIND OUT…

We called Derrick; he did not answer.  We called Parag, our third team member, to say that we’d be late for our planned dinner.  We called our hosts to say that we were stuck.

And we called AA, the British Automobile Association.  I had mentally rolled my eyes when offered the AAA guide to Europe while getting my international drivers license, but I had accepted the glossy book thinking it might have some useful information on country’s driving rules.  What it contained, it turned out, were the phone numbers for all of the European auto clubs with which AAA members have reciprocal benefits.  The UK was on the list.  We called; they would send someone straight out.  All we had to do was wait.

The police found us first, though, and we braced ourselves as the officer approached the ambulance.

“Hallo, broke down?”  He was smiling.

“Yes, sorry, we’ve called AA…”

“That’s alright, we’re just going to tow you around the corner to get you off the main road,” he said cheerfully.  “I’m just going to hop in to steer if that’s OK.”

There is nothing quite like seeing a BMW sedan tow a Land Rover three times its size.  We stopped just around the corner on an access road.

“So what’s the problem with it?” the cop wanted to know.

“It won’t start.”  We had tried it about a dozen times in the last 45 minutes.

“Really?” he turned the key and the engine whirred but did not catch.  “I see what you mean.”  He turned the key again and the ambulance roared to life.

We both stared at him, eyes wide.

“What did you do?!?”

“Well…” he looked both pleased and slightly sheepish.  “Ah, actually nothing really, I just turned the key.”

We piled on the thanks with our goodbyes.  Misha still looked half-convinced that the cop had applied some super-secret car repair technique.

After waiting a bit longer for AA to arrive with hopes of getting an authoritative diagnosis of the problem, we opted to push on.  We were hours behind schedule, hungry and hot, and with the ambulance running we doubted the roadside assistance would be able to offer much bankable advice.

We were entering the last roundabout of the night when Misha looked at me.

“I’m really glad you’re doing this.”

I knew what he meant, but I teased back: “What, you didn’t want to pick this thing up today with a broken leg?”

He grinned and retorted, “I’m just happy that you got in the left lane like I asked you to!”

Ah, the things a friendship is made of.