I had a phone call from Clive via the satellite phone the night before last ... and an SMS at 3:00am this morning ... promising an update on proceedings. Yeah, I know that today was another back-breaking day ... and I know that they´re sleeping in a yurt again tonight ... but a ghost has commitments and deadlines as well!!!
The call on the satellite call was a hoot ... partly because of the time delay between speaking and receiving ... partly because I could hear Ces doing the washing in the background ... but mostly because Clive was so excited. He explained that the P2P is the best thing he has ever done in his life ... but also the hardest ... and he tried to persuade me to take part in the next P2P ... which is in 2013. I´d better start buying those lottery tickets.
He said that it´s quite dangerous ... and seriously scary when you have trouble out in the middle of the desert with no people, houses or cars to be seen anywhere in any direction. It´s not like the Paris-Dakar (or whatever it´s called these days) where there always seem to be helicopters just a rotor-blade away. The most amusing anecdote was of the system for collecting broken-down cars ... they put your car in (not on) the back of a truck ... and you have to stay strapped into the seats of your rally car ... while the said truck bumps and grinds its way over rutted roads for as many hours as are necessary to reach something.
He also said that the yurt tents were very "snug and cosy", but I think he might have been smoking yak-dung at the time.
On the good side, Clive and Ces are still clawing their way back up the leader-board, according to the official results, and with 5 weeks to go, stamina and a maniac competitive streak are on their side.
Finally, for those of you who do not understand the "Dear Nuala" reference in the heading, I can explain. Each time, I write "Day 1", "Day 2", etc, I can´t help but think of the Frank Kelly hilarious remake of the old Christmas song. When Karen and I did our Alps to Arctic run in June, we would hum the tune each morning (not in public obviously). In case you´ve never heard it before, sit back and be entertained ...
Hmmm .... as penalty for not getting blog posts to you all on time, I think we should require Clive and Ces to write and record a 12 Days of P2P.
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