Is this really us?!

I have spent the last minute doing little ankle jumps in excitement. It’s dawned on us that we only have one more Monday left before the car is shipped! I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited in my life. Not even Christmas excited. I can only imagine a similar level excitement would await the delivery of a new sports car or something else you’ve ordered years earlier.

Cassie’s trying to convince herself that ‘people do this all the time’ and that we are not doing anything particularly awesome. Knowing deep down, we are doing something very odd, and going against the grain. We will be drowning in uncertainty and unfamiliarity the moment we step off the plane in Seoul, let alone Vladivostok. In my head, Russia feels like this impatient and unforgiving animal. Not one word of English will be spoken, and no one will give us the time of day with our weak language and currency skills. This may prove to be untrue, but it’s worth documenting.

“This isn’t something that ‘we’ do, we’re not adventurers.” This is the stuff of movies and make-believe! I truly cannot believe that this is happening. I find myself cautious of things that we undertake from here on. For example, 4wding, motorbikes and generally risky activities are ruled out from here on. I’m not even driving the car at all from here on. Regardless of it’s insured state, any fender bender would mean us missing our deadline which as far as I’m concerned, isn’t a viable option.

It must serve as inspiration for anyone that has an impossible dream, you really can achieve anything if you put one foot in front of the other. I remember reading Ted Simon’s book, Jupiter’s Travels. He said you need as much time planning as you will spend on the road. Rubbish I thought, how hard can it be? Realistically, we would have easily done 3 months of 9-5 planning and preparation if we added it all up.

It does alarm me how we’re running out of time however. I ordered some paper maps yesterday with plan to put them in the car so we don’t have to carry them in our luggage. I don’t think they are going to arrive in time.

It also alarms me how even the most basic of things is going to be immensely difficult. Even from the first steps in Russia. How are we going to pay the taxi driver in Vladivostok? How is he going to tell us how much it is? How are we going to check in to our hotel room… I think we’ll be out of our depth. I’m of two minds. I’m glad Cassie can take some of the pressure off, but in the other mind, if no one was to see me fumble, then there would be no embarrassment when I do! It’s interesting that topic of embarrassment, that will come in a future blog post I suspect. Thankfully our arrival in Vladivostok is at 2:30 in the afternoon which should give us enough daylight to get us to our hotel without being stuck somewhere overnight in a foreign land.

Note to self: buy marker pen and write on the oil filter when it was changed. The batteries will be disconnected in the container, so my odometer indicating the service interval will be wiped out.

The picture above is the eye-bolt which secures the chopping board. I was using a bolt previously, but this should be easier on the hands.