Final night in Krakow

My last night in Krakow was, as ever, fantastic albeit a little sad. I met up with Gareth for a good steak in the Grill bar followed by yet another Tyskie on one of the many terraces on the main square before Gareth had to dash off to catch his train. If your reading this mate, I’d like to see your photos from that night.

After that I wandered off to meet Marcin, Jakob, Volcheck and Kamil in a large courtyard bar which was playing some fantastic music… typically, I was shown this place on my last night! We had a good relaxed evening that served to remind me that I’ve made some good friends here. I’m quite proud to hear that they’ve picked up a lot of my Enlgish slang and mannerisms. I know that is probably not a good thing, but I like it.

Back to Blighty

Having been forced to take BA instead of Easyjet, the only flight out of Krakow left on the Friday morning, effectively giving me the day off. By pure coincidence landing at Gatwick at 13:20 I arrived 5 minutes after Alberto of the Spanish Bullfighters. We met up and took the Gatwick Express into London running over a lot of the final details for the 2006 Mongol Rally Launch that was due to start the following day. We then made our way onto Kings Cross to meet up with Alberto’s team mate, David, who had driven the car up from Spain with a friend of theirs. With the car fully prepped and looking good we grabbed a proper steak pie in the local pub. Good to see the Spaniards liked English grub.

A little later on I trekked off to Clapham to meet up with Jon. Dragging a suitcase behind me in the heat and humidity was not at all pleasant. Especially when the suitcase cried enough and the wheel fell off.

By 9 we found ourselves in Kensington for the official rally launch party. It was an excellent night where we met many of the new teams and fielded hundreds of questions. I was also able to catch up with Tom and Jenny and many faces from last year’s rally, including the infamous Finton. With a long day ahead for the Saturday I tried to take it easy, but we still didn’t get back till 3am.

Rally Launch – Hyde Park

5 hours sleep was as good as it gets as we had to be in Hyde Park for 9am. Jon and I had volunteered to be part of the registration team for the rally. Now this turned out to be a monumental event: Over a kilometre of cars lined up for the launch with thousands of well wishers. There was the usual collection of Fiat Pandas and Suzuki SJs in various states of preparation, about 9 minis (what have I started?) and some real gems such as a hurse and a chap taking a Honda C90… full kudos points!

I spent most of the time running between teams collecting charity cheques or evidence along with the cheques for the car deposit to get into Mongolia. It actually was a bit stressful, but enjoyable at the same time. I manage to make myself unpopular by putting a lot of the paperwork into the organisers vehicle and then walking off with the keys. Unknown to me people were panicking and running around looking for the keys. Still, if they don’t give me a walky talky…

I just about managed to see off the mongolminis, who looked seriously cool in red, white and blue. It was quite strange watching the teams leave and seeing the expressions on their faces. I know that feeling from last year… “So it’s really happening. What are we letting ourselves in for?” Things calmed down by about 3 and all the marshals were able to relax. Much like last night, several faces from last year turned up, including Ian from team wrongolia and of course Luke from MyBlackBoxRocks. I must say it was great to see Luke again. As cool / eccentric as ever with his newly made mobile phone (in the body of an old house phone) and his recently restored bakers bike. That boy has real talent.

Sitting around afterwards with Jon and Luke reminiscing was great. We spent several hours with the last remaining team who were still waiting for their passports to turn up. After a little while I discovered that one of these chaps went to the same school as my flat mate. Pete. Small world.

Finally team Alan Paca left at about 7:30. Instead of hitting an expensive bar, Luke, Jon and I decided to stay in the park, drink a few beers and while the summer evening away. As I’ve said before, London in the summer is fantastic. After chatting about everything and nothing we decided to leave the park at 12:30 after being warned by undercover police about a recent string of violent robberies. Imagine the reaction of the policeman when we responded to his question of “how long have you been in the park tonight boys?”… “hmmm… about 15 and a half hours!”

Farnborough Airshow

In continuation of the somewhat irregular weekend, Jon and I headed down to Farnborough on the Sunday for the Airshow. We went 4 years ago just before I set off for Spain and liked the idea of going back.

We didn’t actually enter the show, as there is a park / field which gives fantastic views as a lot of the planes fly directly overhead. We went off in search for this field based upon some satellite photos from Google. Unfortunately we went to the wrong field behind the wrong golf course behind the airfield. An hours walking and a lot of sweating rectified that.

Once in position we were able to sit down, get the BBQ going and grab some photos, both playing with our respective new digital SLR cameras. I was seriously impressed with my 30D’s ability to roll of 5 frames a second (and at the same time eat through memory cards), but I discovered several problems with the camera. Firstly the sensor seems to be dirty leaving blotches on many photos. Secondly the Sigma telephoto lens doesn’t seem to communicate with the Canon body very well. Initially, sometimes it would throw an error when trying to take a picture, but after a while this prevented me from taking any shots. Being without a telephoto for an airshow was a severe handicap. Thankfully as the planes came by so close the smaller lens did suffice.

The airshow itself was a real spectacle. The immense new Airbus A380 looked gracefully like a whale slowly flying about, surely on the point of stalling. This followed by numerous fighter jets doing ludicrous maneuvers (accompanied by an amazing collection of sounds) which seem to defy the laws of physics. Best of all, however, was the finale with the red arrows. Impressive stuff!

Working from the UK

Both Monday and Tuesday I worked from the UK office in Fleet, Hampshire. Rather than actually working it was more of a social visit. I had the opportunity to get to know some of my new companions better as well as catching up with old friends and colleagues. Highlights were catching up with Niki and Bryan over lunch on Monday and meeting up with Neil on Tuesday. We went over to the Keys, a restaurant / bar for which the beer garden looks over a lake (perfect for this weather). On the way back Neil even let me drive his Subaru Impreza! Probably the fastest car I’ve ever driven, and in the short time I drove it I must say it was seriously impressive.

On the Monday night I headed into London to catch up with Natalie. Pretty exhausted by then we took it easy at a river side bar by Tower Bridge, bringing to an end 4 fantastic days in the UK.

Bloody British Airways

Arriving at Heathrow for my return flight with 45 minutes to check in, I was informed that the flight was overbooked and was probably full. Being used to budget airlines like Easyjet this came as a bit of a surprise. Joining a queue of 5 others who also didn’t get on the plane to Madrid for which they had a ticket, we were informed that we would have to wait 4 hours for the next one.

After those four long hours I boarded the plane, only to sit there for another hour before we even moved… Problems with loading the luggage apparently. I finally arrived in Madrid 5 hours late having endured two Americans who were Hi Fiveing each other before and after landing. Still, its not all bad. Because of the delay I was unable to go to work. On top of that BA did give me a decent sum of money in compensation.

Back to Madrid, back to the Inferno. No matter how much people were complaining about the heat wave in London, Madrid is far worse (and this is just a normal summer). The days with no wind are the worst. Trying to sleep at night when the temperature doesn’t drop below 30 degrees is not pleasant.