Only four days into our trip and already we have had quite a few adventures. I am sitting in my hotel room with a little down time and thus a chance to update the web site. We are currently located a few miles outside of the British colony of Gibraltar in a small but comfortable hotel. Wilson and Ed left this morning to do some site seeing over the border and Paul and Shane are transporting parts and equipment back and forth from Gibraltar for Al’s truck repairs. This morning saw a flurry of action at 7:00am as Al’s truck was ripped apart and the entire gearbox was hoisted out. We have secured a used transmission from a supply yard in Gibraltar and hope that will do the trick. To date we have had the following truck related issues:
Al:
Blown Gear Box
Shane:
Poorly adjusted throttle linkage
Mike:
Full tank of Diesel fuel was mistakenly put in at a gas station- resulting in a
very poorly running truck for 30 miles or so after most of the diesel was
siphoned back out in Cadiz.
Jim:
Blown starter solenoid
Not too
good for a total of 116 KM driven!
Things
fixed today: Satellite email
system, Mike’s CB radio, Shane’s throttle, my laptop video link and hopefully my
email uplink system.
To date
we are two days behind schedule, although we expect to be at least 3 days behind
schedule by the time Al’s truck is fully repaired.
The team
is in very good spirits however and we are enjoying our extra time in Spain and
the opportunities to sight see Gibraltar.
Madrid and Cadiz were both excellent cities to visit. The drive from
Cadiz to Algeceiras was marked by some unbelievable scenery and included some
hairpin winding roads. We also saw
thousands of windmills, sometimes as many as 100 in a row along the route here.
The
weather has been very good until today, averaging around 75 degrees Fahrenheit
during the daytime hours. Today is
somewhat cooler and raining on and off.
We are
looking forward to arriving in Africa either tomorrow or the next day. Our ferry
tickets are in hand and the crossing time is just 2 hours from here. I think everyone is a bit anxious,
although concerned that the trucks need to be in perfect shape before we head
out.
The
highlight of the day yesterday was getting to drive my truck through Spain, a
somewhat surreal experience and one that probably isn’t too typical. We
certainly attracted some attention because of our American license plates. The people here have been tremendously
friendly and very helpful- not to mention a hotel that has allowed us to turn
their parking lot into a full scale repair facility.
Well, I
must go now and send this out to the web.
So far that has not been a huge issue. We have found a combination of Internet
Cafes, direct laptop link, satellite email and phone have worked pretty
well. Hopefully that will
continue. It is a pretty amazing
thing that I can send this stuff up to the web and seconds later the whole world
can see it. So much for isolation!
-Michael
Ladden