London - Prague 31 hrs non-stop

Saturday 22 July London
After waiting in Hyde Park for 5 hours checking out other cars (around 200 cars) and do some last minute pimping on Hatsu we left for our first check point, Prague the capital of Czech Republic at 3 in the afternoon. Hatsu had already its first challenge to cope with the extreme heat in the city of London and it took us more than 2 hours to get out London and went straight to Dover to get our ferry to Boulogne Sur Mer, France.

Of course our ferry was delayed an hour and we already had a late ferry so we ended up getting in France not before midnight (about 6 hours behind every other team and we are one of the slowest vehicles anyway). But then our adventure really started. Tijs drove the first bit and did it Tijs style, getting everything out of the car and adding the comment that Hatsu could do even more. While Anthony and Tom were taking a nap in the back Tijs and Jesse drove through the night aware of the epic adventure they were facing. Jesse already noticed the lack of gas in the car but Tijs was confident that we easily could make for another 50 miles. But then he started to get nervous also because on French B roads in the middle in the night........ there aren't many gas stations open. But after some minutes of having visions of us running out of gas already before Lille we found a gas station (with only 2 liters of fuel left in the tank) and our adventure could go on.

With a full tank we were heading for Lille (short cut, Tom's and Jesse's idea should have never done it!) and of course we get lost on some C D and even E roads so that took us at least another hour so at the time we were actually on a highway it was already 4 am.

Gas wise we were doing perfectly! Engine was running fine, suspension was holding, only the lack of air in the tyres wasn't really nice but after changing the pressure from 1.5 bar to 3.0 (rear tires) we were doing fine! No wonder the van looked like a low-rider!

I don't want to bore you with all the things we've been doing during the 31 hours in Hatsu driving to Prague so I made a short summary of highlights during our first day(s).

-Lack of oil (Hatsu is an oil addict, wondered how it got through MOT (APK))
-Running out of gas, see above (afterwards we agreed to always fill up tank when the meter strucks quarter full sign)
- Getting lost in outskirts of Lille, see above(Tijs had a short cut through some picturesque villages around Lille)
- Clutch plates slipping which we probably need to do something about




- oh and then drove for another 24 hours to Prague

I'm still really tired of the long trip and a couple of beers yesterday night (little Mongol party with all the teams) and Anthony and I have to look for an car repair manual to fix the clutch and other stuff so I have to end this blog. Hope we still have the option to keep you up to date the coming days when we are heading for Moscow through Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

Cheers!

Team Hi Jet Set