The night before departure we were all in very high spirits, enjoying the party, the drinking and the socializing with other rally teams.

These guys were not particularly out of the ordinary. While we were focused on actually getting ourselves here, many others seem to have been choosing between the half windsor vs. the full.

Impressive digs. Let’s check out the inside.

Well, maybe not as architecturally spectacular.

Could you imagine the sight of invaders rushing from the horizon?

Morning finally came and we were set to take off. For us, it was fairly unspectacular. Most teams would wait around for the launch festivities, but with a poorly planned ferry ride looming we were forced to take off early.

Our car was mostly prepped, having only a minor hiccup the night before when someone (**cough**Gabe**cough**) locked the keys in the car. I was able to break in by exploiting one of the security vulnerabilities of the car which I re-fixed afterwards. We were mostly set, albeit some issues which seemed to be arising between teammates early on.

As luck would have it, turns out we didn’t need to rush to the ferry anyway. We missed ours, and getting on the next one wasn’t a problem in the least. By the time we boarded, other rally vehicles who stayed for the launch party were arriving. Oh well, no one was particularly fixated on the idea anyway.

Of course, the first country we drove through then would be France. However we had no stops scheduled for the country. Instead we would drive on until we arrived in Brussels, Belgium. We did stop here and take a look around the city. As with most of the EU, Brussels is very nice, very clean and rather expensive.

We didn’t want to waste more time than necessary in Brussels as we wanted to make it to Koln, Germany as early as possible. So after par-oozing for a bit and getting lunch, off we went. One note is that it was in Brussels where Gabe lost his iPhone. So begins our list of Gabe’s Lost Items.

Gabe Lost Items

1. iPhone (Brussels)

After getting back on the road it took until well after sundown before we arrived in Koln. Once there, our night mostly consisted of logistics, rest and diffusing. Issues began developing between all of us, and these would grow, recede and grow again throughout the rally.

We did our best to deal with it maturely, but we can all attest, that damnit it was hard at times. Louise may be prone to over-reacting. Gabe may be prone to causing reasons to over-react (losing things, locking keys in the car). I may be prone to indifference…and as the one in the middle of the two, I probably should have been more diplomatic with them.

Unrelated to our cohesion, the next morning turned into an enormous fiasco regarding insurance. I made a mistake when telling our insurance agent the dates of our travels, so were essentially insured for the dates exactly one month off from when we should have had them. No worries, we’ll call and get them changed. Well, no. They refused to change the dates of our coverage, and we were royally screwed out of around $450 collectively.

Our solution? Fuck it. Let’s just not get insurance…not now anyway. We’ll worry about it later.

So we take off from Koln (extra late) and don’t arrive in Klenova, Czech Republic until well after the other teams. One discovery made while enroute was that our trusty steed was consuming oil. I topped us off just before reaching the castle, but I was concerned to have consumed a noticeable amount of oil so early in the rally.

Our solution? Fuck it. (notice a trend?) Nothing to do about blow-by in the cylinders now. Or anything internal on the engine. If we have a catastrophic failure we’ll deal with it when it happens.

That was about it for our first two days. As mentioned, the team was being forced to cope with itself early on. The car wasn’t getting the fuel economy I had hoped and expected, and was consuming oil. Gabe was off to an expensive start in his quest to strip himself of all valuables. But the journey for which we had been planning for a few months was now in full steam, and we were all excited for things to come.