Paris Highlights / Lowlights

• Convoyed with a Robin Reliant and a mini
• Mini loses around 1 ltr of oil overy 100 miles and we foolishly stayed behind them for 50 miles. Needless to say, our windscreen was covered in oil
• We made the mistake of ditching everyone, cos driving all that way alone was a bit boring
• One team had a Nissan Praire and turned it into the dumb and dumber 'dog' car
• Another team had a Volvo 850 and they grip filled the whole car with astroturf
• The guys thought I booked us a hotel room, not a prison cell. But for £70 in Paris...
• Upon entering the out skirts of Paris, it took us 1hr to travel 3 miles. This was on a Sunday evening... I can't imagine what the weekdays are like.

First leg, Paris

The first day was tough. We were suppose to meet the teams in Dover 6:30am for the 9:15 ferry to Calais, but we didn't leave Wigginton until 5:45. Ryan was behind the wheel and he was testing the VW to it's limits. But it's alright, the car and us all made it in one piece. Minty (David) finally hooked up the external speakers to the CB so our radio is now up and running. Start of the trip mileage: 199,192 miles

From Calais it took us about 5 hrs to get to our hotel. The road is very smooth and the car is well good. I think our average speed was in the 80+ m/h zone. I took it up to 90 m/h a few times without hearing much complain from the car. At that speed, should grip the wheel very tightly. Just in case of a blow out.

After dinner in Paris, It was a wash out for me because I do not function very well with an early morning start and a 2hr sleep the night before. Minty functioned alot better than me considering he also got 2hrs of sleep. After hearing much grief from Ryan and Minty, I retired to the hotel at around 8pm, and left the two boys out clubing with the rest of the coyotes. But forget it, still only got around 3hrs of sleep! Think my body is trying to fight a flu cos I felt awful in France. Oh well, must get up for the early meeting in a service station at 8:30am. I miss my own bed... but wait, we just moved so I don't even have that anymore.

Next stop, Munich.

Exciting times...

We're almost ready to go. All the hotels and ferry are booked. We bought a CB Radio on Ebay, hopefully we'll be able to get it working. (Better get on this David) The car insurance is finally sorted.

The car is looking well good. I've been driving it since the beginning of Feb. David put in a brand spanking new radiator and new brake pads. The brake pads were a nightmare to change. What should normally be a quick jobby took hours to do and involved a heavy duty grinder and a trip to the breakers for a pair of callipers. Damn those rusted screws!

As for the radiator, the old one leaked and we could have got by if we filled up the car with a few litres of water every few hours. However, the lazy programmers didn’t want to bother with that, so we invested in a shinny new radiator.

Yesterday, Ryan changed the oil filter, oil, air filter, fuel filter and pumped the tyres from it’s current state of 12Psi to the correct 33Psi. We’ve also added a whole bottle of diesel injection cleaner. As I stated earlier, the car is looking well good!

Next step, spray the car…