Circle of Death?

After months of hard work, our Left and Right shoes were ready to ship. What should have been a quick and easy run down I-64 turned into a potential taste of things to come this summer.

For those of you that don’t know the story behind the demise of “Erika” (the ice cream truck of “The Rolling Cones” during Mongol Rally ’09), I’ll give you the abridged version. In Tajikistan, we broke down due to a busted radiator. This ended our journey with the truck. With no way to get the parts we needed before our visas were to expire, and the prospect of Tajik jail looming if we didn’t get out of the country, we felt that it would be prudent to sell the truck and continue on our way to Mongolia via other means.

The past three years have been spent going over many “what if?” scenarios as to what could have been done, or what might have been, but in the end, I vowed that I would not let the Shoebarus succumb to a similar fate if I could at all prevent it. For our trip, we’ve given ourselves more time, more wiggle room on the visas, we have multiple vehicles, and we planned to be smart about packing spare parts. The one thing that stuck out to me was that we couldn’t go without a spare radiator.

A few weeks back I found a newly dropped 1998 Subaru Forester at Chesterfield Auto Parts and I snagged the radiator, fans, and overflow reservoir. I felt that having that in our back pocket could potentially helpful down the road. What I didn’t realize was that “down the road” would be literally 9.7 miles away on I-64 while we were en route to deliver the Shoebarus to port.

The car began to overheat, I pulled over, opened the hood, and saw coolant everywhere and the reservoir cap blown off. After some investigative work and a couple minutes of swearing and being pissed, I realized that in the back of the car, we had coolant! We had hoses! We had a thermostat!We had the necessary tools! …and most importantly, WE HAD A RADIATOR! Twenty minutes later the crap radiator had been pulled and the new one dropped in and somewhat secured (zipties FTW!).

Traveling in convoy–Right Shoe, Left Shoe, and Mom driving parent’s Acura–turned out to be helpful. After my mom got some water to mix with the coolant and several phone calls to our trusty mechanic Al to make sure that I had covered my bases, the car was started. The temperature gauge was holding right around 40% where it should be. At this point, the cars were packed back up (of course I had to tear everything apart to get to what I needed) and we cautiously headed down the road. With my eyes glued to the temp gauge, it held steady. After about 10 minutes, I tried the heat and it blew hot. The remaining 70 miles were uneventful and we arrived and delivered the cars safely to the shipper.

One of the best lines to describe how one should approach the Mongol Rally was “If nothing goes wrong, everything has gone wrong.” It might not make sense, but it is the idea that we do these adventures to not only experience the world, but also to test ourselves and to have great stories to tell.

With my Mongol Rally experience ending with a blown radiator and this journey beginning with a blown radiator there is certainly some circle of life…or circle of death thing going on here. I can’t tell if this is a good sign, or a bad sign. It is certainly a sign that I need to make sure a radiator can fit under the seat in front of me on the plane ride over to the UK!