“cool”

Below is the transcript of a conversation with the Consular General when picking up the Ukrainian visa’s.

Him: "So, Magadan yes”
Me: “Yes, Vladivostok, Magadan, Mongolia, Khazakstan, Ukraine”
Him: “Why Magadan?”
Me: “We saw it on a documentary and thought it looked cool"
Him: “…. cool” said in the most sceptical tone I’m sure he could muster.
Either he has been there and knows it’s a hole, or he’s never been and has no idea.

You might remember the strap used to tie up the tie-rod end… the mechanic bagged it up for us.
I spent time on the weekend replacing the rear brakes which would not have had 1mm in pad depth left.
I wasted time trying to adjust the play out of the steering. I’m torn between two thoughts. One, it’s not that bad, get over it. Or two, it’s annoying and I have the right not to be happy with it.

On another dot point all together, I’ve been invited to use computers with some indigenous people from Brewarrina, which is in far west NSW. You might remember earlier in this blog, we wanted to visit Cameron Corner, which is in the corner of QLD, NSW & SA.

View Larger Map

These guys will pay me a return trip to Brewarrina, put me up for two nights and provide meal allowance. I’d say they’ll pay for the trip, so taking a two or three day detour may be fun.
Cassie won’t have the time to come, but it may provide an opportunity to give the car a good run and work out any bugs. Apparently it’s dirt from Bourke onwards. Not that dirt is a problem, but it represents isolation which is confronting for a city boy. If I know myself, I’m going to be unable to sit still on this little micro-trip. Especially seen as no one will be with me, I suspect I’ll get my own way.

Questions...waiting...more questions...

Wow do I feel like the biggest nagger in the world right now. I feel like all I'm doing is emailing or calling someone with a question. I'm then bugging people if I don't hear back from them quickly enough - I waited about a month for the Mongolian embassy to get back to me with the answer to a simple question. The travel agent we went to see two weeks ago still hasn't sent us the information regarding flights etc...TWO WEEKS!! Despite phone calls from us chasing it up. Aaarrrgghhh. That's so annoying. Well, they've lost their chance. We went to see another travel agent yesterday so hopefully they come through with the goods.

On a more positive note, there's been progression with our visas. We have been granted our Ukraine visas! Happy days! Graeme was at the Ukraine embassy doorstep spot on 9.30am when they opened (consular services for each embassy are generally within the hours of 9.30am - 12.30pm, not a very large window of time). He sent me a picture of my visa straight away and I whooped with joy and announced to everyone within earshot of my desk at work that we got granted our Ukraine visas. Only one person out of four was happy for me, haha oh well! I was absolutely stoked about the visa because that was the one I was a smidge worried about being declined for reasons I covered in a previous blog post.

Last Tuesday I couriered our passports and visa applications to the Kazakhstan embassy in Singapore. There is no Kazakhstan embassy in Australia and Singapore is the one that deals with Australia and New Zealand. That was a nervous moment. I was honestly shaking a little bit as I was writing out the address. Just all the time, effort and money that's been poured into our passports because they now contain two very important visas. I don't know what we can do if we lose them. We may have time to apply for another passport but I'd say we'd have a lot of difficulty trying to replace the Russian and Ukraine visas considering they only just got granted. It would look a bit suspect to them. Anyway, not worth thinking about because it's unlikely to happen.

I bought us awesome waterproof jackets and polar fleece jackets last weekend. Got them all for an amazing price because the store was having a sale which included 20% off already reduced prices. Well, everything I chose was already reduced so I got everything dirt cheap really. My timing was very fortunate. Here's a picture of what I bought us...

Graeme road testing one of his new jackets

Next things we really need to get sorted (apart from trying to book flights with another travel agent), are travel insurance, car registration, car inventory, traveller's cheques and foreign cash. It's all slowly coming together. I also need to buy some phrase books. Particularly a Russian phrase book because realistically, despite a crash course in Russian last year, my Russian vocabulary is about that of a three year old. Won't get us very far! I'll be lucky to order bread for dinner. And don't ask me to say "Where's a fuel station" in Russian - quite an important question I reckon. There's going to be a lot of hilarious charades going on during this trip, let me tell you. I was thinking of doing up cards with pictures on them for the key things that we'll need to ask in most areas like where's fuel, food, water, hotel - that sort of thing. I was thinking simple symbols like these:

 Image source: all-free-download.com 

Image source: startbreakingfree.com 

Don't know if I'll end up doing that or not. I've just never been to a country where I don't speak the language and it's likely none of the locals will speak English. Either way, we'll get by.

Greasing the wheels of progress

Actually, that's quite literal now that I look at it

I am so impressed with this mechanic I use, they have always been so honest, I felt they needed rewarding. I had assumed I would be picking the car up today. To the suspicious, it may look like I was trying to ‘smooth’ the results of my pink slip, but this was not the intention. Looking back however, it may serve to smooth the process of billing me ;-)

The valve clearances are done, the guy said they ‘were quite a way out’. In pretending like I understood, I just nodded and was all like ‘yeah ah cool, cheers’. So I assume that once these are done there will be more power or improved economy or something. Hopefully both! From what I understand, it’s important that this procedure be done when the motor is stone cold, like overnight stone cold. As I drove past on Wednesday night, I noticed were it was parked, and Thursday afternoon when they did the operation, it was in the exact same position.

I didn’t check if they did both front tie end rods (I really hope and assume they did as there was two on the passenger seat)

T-Shirt Time

Surprise surprise I'm still plugging away at the paperwork. I am enjoying doing the research and finding out about all these things I had no knowledge of before going through the process of organising this trip. But I must say, it's a full-time job for both of us! I get an hour's lunch break each day and try to cram in research, phone calls and emails pertaining to the organising of this trip. Then when I get home there's always something to organise - an email to shoot off, a website to read, a form to fill out etc etc...you get the picture. I would love to be able to devote much more time to all of this but unfortunately money is paramount so I must keep on working to help get the money in and save like a crazy woman.

For me, this year is split into thirds. The first third is happening now. Organising the trip, settling into my new job and putting as much money into savings as humanly possible. The second third is the trip itself - ahhhh. The last third is post-trip - getting back into work (or me looking for a new job - whatever the case turns out to be), picking up the car from the wharf in Sydney (what a day that'll be!), going through photos and stories with family and friends trying to pass on some of our experiences.

Well, amongst all this organising and fretting I've actually been able to put my creative bones to use. It was the lovely Graeme's birthday last week and for his present I bought two plain t-shirts which I then printed a design onto. Here's the pictures - apologies that the last picture is on it's side. Dunno what happened there and can't be stuffed fixing it if I'm honest.

So there you go, official 'Two Magadan' t-shirts! For those who are interested, I did these designs in a free photo manipulation program called Gimp. It's sort of based on Photoshop but, being free, is obviously nowhere near as good. In fact, as the number of layers increased as the designing progressed, the program crashed quite consistently. Hmmm. So word of advice if you want to download it and have a play, SAVE YOUR WORK CONSTANTLY!! Gosh I lost work so often because I was silly and didn't learn that lesson quickly enough. Anyway, kudos to the people who contribute to making the program and for keeping it free.

Exhausted

Cassie and I are both exhausted in a seemingly difficult to describe way. We are getting ample sleep, but we are still exhausted. It comes out in different ways. For me, it’s a chicken and the egg kind of deal. It looks like I half finish things I start. Like I repaired the winch rope yesterday, only to find I only checked one length of rope for damage, missing about 1M of damage on the other half…. so now that’s on the floor not really complete and I’ve lost motivation to finish it off. Another example is the car. I’ve half done the tie-rod ends, but without a tool, I can’t finish the job. So I can’t tell if they are not being finished because I’m exhausted, or we tired because we are not able to complete anything?

After giving more thought to this, I wonder if it’s because nothing is ever finalised. We’re always waiting. Waiting for paperwork, waiting for people on information etc.. Nothing seems certain, conclusive and no one inspires confidence with conclusive answers. Because we are new to this, we need to be lead and told what to do - so far, we are not getting the feedback and reassurance we need.

Here is the joined rope with the tape still on, and the ends exposed.

The lock stitch prevents the join coming undone under conditions where there is no load on the join. Under load the join locks itself by design – almost like a ‘monkey grip’

Finished product… it’s hard to tell were the join is.

Another sore point is work (which is made more difficult by the fact the guys at work read this blog)
Nothing against these chaps, they are great, but it’s a shame that they see my exhaustion at work. I’m so disorganised these days it’s embarrassing and sets a terrible example. Not only is my productivity shot, but I distract them to no end like the class clown. I have soooo many loose ends to tie up, and a heap of work to get done before I can look like leaving and my attitude isn’t helping anyone.

Part 2
Today, I purchased another tie rod separator tool. Well, this time it worked….. kind of. It actually separated the ball from the joint instead of separating the steering arm. After struggling to make any progress I laid down on the concrete, entirely deflated at the failed exercise and wasted days. After hitting rock bottom, I realised that I was 200 meters away from the trusty mechanic. The joint will need to be pressed out with shop press which I don’t have. Nor do I have the capability to remove the steering arm from the steering box. I’m passing the baton, they can finish it, I’ve had enough.

Initially I planned to suspend the steering arm, and just manually point the tyres and have Cassie drive. I inflated the tyres quite high to make them easy to move, but it was still far too difficult. After that failed exercise, we tried cable ties, then a webbing strap (pictured above). We limped the car the 200M to the mechanics with hardly any steering input and with just the tip of the steering ball resting in the cup, it didn’t take much input to make it pop out (and loose what little steering we had).
With some patience and about 10 minutes we had backed it out of where we were, driven down the street, made a right turn, and reversed it back into the mechanic’s lot, ready for work when they get around to it. I feel like a bit of a failure having to have a mechanic finish the job but I have exhausted the skill and tools necessary for me to do the job. When people bring ask me for help with their computers, they most often feel embarrassed about their inability to fix it themselves. It’s funny how I can be understanding of other people not having the skills necessary, but I am much harder on myself, somehow convinced that I should be able to do this. I would say the biggest thing that ever gets me down, is when results of my work don’t match what I had in mind. And I don’t think my preconceived outcomes are unrealistic, which makes it ever so frustrating when I can’t meet even a ‘good’ result.

Cassie did highlight that the car needs an inspection (pink slip) so that we can renew the registration ahead of time. I also felt like a bit of an arse dropping the car on them without booking it in (I did make clear that just whenever they can get around to it is fine, weeks etc.), and also and arse because I have brought the parts with me – that’s always a quick way to annoy a mechanic. After all, I did intend to do it myself, but failed :-)

Reality Check

We managed to find a freight forwarder in Queanbeyan, which is amazing. This would save us a day of mucking around (driving to Sydney/Melbourne) to load the car into a container. Unfortunately we went to go see them today and it seems they are no longer in business. Above a picture from Google StreetView, below from Graeme StreetView.

This trend was echoed by driving by two other freight forwarders in Canberra… not a good feeling.

On a positive note, here is a picture from another traveller:
This photo (not ours obviously) was taken at a border town in Mongolia… Spot any trend?
I found it when searching for information surrounding Carnet de Passage. As far as I can tell, we don’t need one. This was confirmed by these peoples finding: http://unusvita.com/Preparation%20Russia%20Central%20Asia.html

Long weekend and pictures galore

As all weekends seem to start, a trip to the local parts store. In today’s kit, some jack stands, front and rear brake pads and a tie rod separator/ball joint separator. I’ve found a new place to work on the car. It’s a new industrial estate, which features shade, shelter, ample space and no one around.

I have a particularly stubborn tie rod which will not come free. I’ve use two of these… yes two, this is the SECOND one to break… heap of rubbish.
To remind you all, you can click on these pictures to see the full size. I also have the typical fork type separator, also by Stanley and it too is rubbish. The angle of the forks is too steep, so it’d doesn’t really split it apart, it just smashes it with a little tension. I’m going to try source one like the below with a gradual slope, and it should work a treat. It’s a public holiday tomorrow in Canberra, but we’ll see how I go. I’m in no great rush.

Above, the offending tie rod end. Don’t be alarmed, I tore the rubber boot off to get better smashing access.

I also changed the front pads too. I’ve never worked on an easier brake calliper. You slide the two pins out, then just pick out the pads. Everything stays in place and everything lines up perfectly. The second picture shows the calliper off the steering knuckle, it turns out unnecessary to remove it due to the simple design. It doesn’t have the complexity and room for failure like my floating Pajero calliper.
Second picture indicates compressing the pistons with the old brake pads and vice grips. The cheap part of me thinks the old pads had another 20,000km in them, but oh well.

These ones (if you believe the marketing hype) generate better cold and hot braking performance… like 30% shorter distance. I figure for the additional 30% cost that even if it buys you an one meter extra stopping distance, that’s very cheap insurance. One meter may not sound like much to us, but it’s a lot to the pedestrian who just stepped out.

On the upside, I did get two of the four replaced. The threaded tie rod proved an interesting learning exercise. One end had a reverse thread. Makes sense now, but at the time, I was quite confused. One end came out OK once I was turning in the right direction but the other end was MUCH more stubborn. I even took the whole bar out, and heated the end with our butane cooker. It worked a treat. And by a treat I mean I was able to move it a millimetre, and after a steady 15 minute diet of WD-40 and millimetres of back and forth progress, it was free enough to spin out. I did count the turns at each end in the hope of avoiding the need to get a wheel alignment, but I obviously got it wrong. It’s not a long way out, but it is out. I’d like to say that replacing just two has made a huge improvement, but it’s too early to say. I imagine it feels better, but after spending the best part of a day working on a problem, you tend to be optimistic when reviewing your work.

Determination

In the interest of stirring my confidence, I’ll sometime write things like this blog post:

Determination to me is the relentless resilience to do what it takes to achieve an outcome.
We continue to hit hurdle after hurdle, setback after setback and still push on. I do feel that we hit more obstacles than most as I suspect we stick our heads out perhaps further that people our age. By sticking our heads out, I am implying that we take on more risks than most.

”Were great goals are attainable, great obstacles exist. If a goal had no obstacles, it would just be an activity… like lunch.” – Brian Tracy

If everyone played it safe, we would have none of the modern spoils that we enjoy today.
What we are doing is risky. And not in the ‘someone will rob us and steal our things’ kind of risk, but in the acceptance that we may come back to a blank page. We may both be without jobs, investments wiped out etc. It is a real threat that we must accept in order to move forward. History tells me that this won’t be the case and everything will be fine, but no doubt worries us.

I can remember vaguely a story whereby the first fleet of settlers, who arrived on a foreign land then proceeded to torch their ships as a message to the settlers that this was now a ‘must succeed’ situation… there was no going back. Can you imagine the sensation and commitment to success that such an event would stir inside you?

We can trust in the fact that we have calculated and pre-committed to the consequences of this trip.
I know it sounds like we are blowing this all out of proportion for just a simple drive overseas and in the fullness of time, it will all seem insignificant. Hell, in a years time we won’t know what we were worried about, but then again, that’s context and perspective. The frog doesn’t see much from the bottom of the well.

We were given a card when we were about to leave on our last trip by a customer who has recently been quite ill. It meant a lot to us as were just acquaintances at the time. The card read:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
— Mark Twain

I knowwww that everyone overuses that quote, but it was special to us as it was a gift.
But, I keep telling myself, that provided we have our health and youth, we can always start again.
…and even then, there would be worst things than being old and broke.

Victory Photos + Video

Even comparing the photos from last night, the ground has washed away further

Steven with the chainsaw

Freedom at last… in fact it only took about 10 minutes including chopping the limbs off the tree.


Net result = smiles and barefoot joy

You can see the line where the rope had etched the paint off.
Here is a video of the recovery:

I can’t help but think how fortunate we are to have people in our lives who drop everything to help us. It was either a midnight call or a 7am text in the pissing rain, but still no one hesitated. It knocks me for six, sometimes you think no one cares at all, but I was very wrong today. It does prove how valuable it is to nurture the relationships in your lives. It’s too easy to take people and relationships for granted.

Is this a test or a warning?

So, it’s 9AM Sunday morning. Canberra has been having consistent rain for the past week.

Cassie’s parents are en route with a chainsaw to facilitate trimming a tree that is preventing a clean extraction (without breaking windows and denting panels) This will all be obvious in our next daylight post. Warren our next door neighbour came down at about 12:30 to help extract us – what a champion! Well, the laugh of it is, if we had reversed down this hill, I would not be up writing this post, because i would be sleeping in. As we headed down this relatively tame hill, it appeared that there was no longer room to turn around at the bottom. We stopped, and engaged reverse and had that distinct sinking sensation at the front wheels. It came totally as a surprise as it looked just like the rest of the road. I’ve driven a 2WD Yaris down it before with no problem whatsoever. Well, the short of it is, we sunk up to the bull bar and didn’t budge an inch. In fact, the ground could not even hold my weight. I walked around the front and for the second time was surprised how I sunk to my knees, the only thing holding me up was the bulbar. It was seriously like stepping into a swimming pool. Like quicksand.

If we had reversed down, we could have very easily winched back up using the big tree up the hill from us. No luck there. When Warren arrived, he successfully snatched us backwards, but because he couldn’t get a straight line pull, we ended up between the ‘swamp-road’ in front of us and a very rough collection of sawn-off branches conveniently at window height.
We tried to winch the car sideways using the pulley block and although was slightly successful (moved about a foot) it eventually snapped the winch rope :( The good part of this failure is that the rope did indeed fail very safely. With a sound like flicking a tea-towel, it fell to the ground of it’s own accord.
I had initially thought that it was due to the crazy angle and rough edges of the bulbar the rope was dragged over, but I actually think it was overloaded. Imagine how much force it would take to pull a car sideways… on a hill… in mud.

We then tried another approach using the snatch block, and the reused the broken winch rope to continue the sideways pull, but using the driving motion of warrens car as a high speed winch. Well, it didn’t move an inch which again makes me think we overloaded the rope as not even two tonne budged it.
We then tried incorporating a snatch strap into the above equation to give some ‘yank’ to an otherwise immobile situation. Well eventually this snapped the rope, but this one sounded like a gunshot as the snatch strap went flying into Warren’s tailgate.

So we gave up on the night and decided to return in the morning. We rang the police to tell them that the car was not stolen/abandoned or victim of the nearby flooding river.

However sleep eluded us. from 3AM to 7AM I’ve done nothing but stress, unable to calm down, pulse like 120. I can’t speak for Cassie but I assume she was in a similar state. I'm not sure what was worrying me, but I think it was that this could happen to us in the middle of nowhere. Here we can just call the NRMA as a backup plan. But what about Siberia?! This happened so easily and we could not see what we were in for. From the photo you may be able to see how it just looks like the ground around us.

At night, things always seem worse:
“What if it somehow falls down the hill into the river?”
“The insurance won’t cover that.”
“if that happened, we couldn’t afford to go this year and would have to postpone or forget the trip forever.”
“The holiday is over”
”There won’t be any insurance on our trip, if this happened it would be a total loss”
”What kind of lecture are we going to get from authorities tomorrow morning?”
”God I hope it doesn’t attract a crowd”
”What if Steven/Warren can’t get us out?”
“How much is a tow truck going to cost?”
”What if that truck gets bogged or they say no to recovering it”
”I’ll have to wreck it in place and recover the kitchen unit, fridge etc from the river floor”

You get the picture, my mind was not a nice place to be.

In the light of day, two things are apparent:
1) Insurance should cover it. I specifically asked them, they said that “so long as it’s not used for competition or racing, it’s covered, regardless of if it’s on a road or not”
2) When the ground dries, I’ll drive it straight out.

See the midnight logic?! Amazing.

Now I’m yet to see it today, it may be gone, or vandalised, but it’s like last night I went through every stage of the grieving process and am now calm to the idea that everything is fixable, everyone is safe.

More details later, hopefully I will have my car back today ;-)

Paperwork update

So, I'm writing this sitting at my desk at work, eating my salad wrap for lunch as the rain relentlessly falls outside my window. It's been raining pretty much non-stop for the past three days.

On a side note, I've decided my blog posts look super boring with no pictures, so here's a random picture off the net (image credit: vteamessex.wordpress.com - even though they probably nicked it from somewhere!).

Anyway, with the scene set, here's what we're up to with the paperwork involved in getting us and the car through our journey. Wonderful news is that we've both got our Russian visas now. I realised the day before I went to pick up my visa that this means the trip is now physically doable. With both of us having access into Russia, we're able to collect the car and drive all the way through Russia and into the EU. Of course this isn't the plan, but worst case we can still get the car, have a great trip and get home.

We've also sent off our Australian import application form. We need an import certificate to allow us to bring the car back into Australia and that'll take another couple of weeks to process.

Next we're applying for our Ukraine visas. We're deliberately not applying for the visas in order of travel due to the timeframe of the visas themselves and the application timeframes.

If the voicemail at the Ukraine embassy is correct, they close at 6pm each evening, so we're going to scoot round there today after work to drop in our visa applications. Fingers crossed their office is open and it goes smoothly as we're not able to obtain the exact visa support document that is typically required for applications. Instead, I rang the embassy last week and strained my little ears trying to decipher what the guy was saying in his very heavy Ukrainian accent! In a very simplified version, part of the conversation went a little something like this: Ukrainian guy..."Are you an Australian citizen?" - Me (after paraphrasing back to him what I thought he said)..."Yes" - Ukrainian guy..."Then all you need is a covering letter explaining your situation" - Me..."Are you sure we only need a covering letter?" - Ukrainian guy..."Yes, you are an Australian citizen, it'll be fine". Hmmm, good to be an Aussie? I hope so.

I'm a tad nervous going, particularly because I've learnt it's not always easy to understand what the people in these embassies are saying because of their accents. I've asked Graeme to come along with me because, well, I'm a chicken! I want another set of ears and another brain to help me just in case it gets a bit confusing. I'm sure I'm worrying about nothing. But hey, it'll be nice to have Graeme there sharing the experience with me - that's secretly why I've asked him along anyway! Oops, there's my secret plan revealed!