Day before the Start

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Saturday morning before the start at 6.00am Sunday - will be seriously long day over 730kms in serious heat but we have aircon - unlike everyone else!! Monday is over 600kms - all up 4500kms in 8 days and 1450kms of special stages

Rally is 60 cars with at least 20 being very serious and very fast with a couple of ex world champs. Our old girl is attracting much attention as nobody actually knows what it is other than the Aussies but reality is that she is far too big for these roads without enough suspension travel. Plan is "survival"!!

Roads are appalling. Far worse than anything in Oz and expected speeds are quite high - big transport stage tomorrow at over 300km and expected average is over 90kph! All the stages are on "open roads" which will make life interesting trying to avoid elephants etc! Special stages are very long - first up Sunday 73kms which will take best part of an hour I suspect

Had a trial run yesterday - apart from me getting David lost, all seemed to hang together ok. Theory is that if we make every stage in one piece we will end up mid field. Local service crew we have hired seem great - three will accompany us all the way, Paul, Meshack and John and I suspect there will be an advantage in having people who know where they are going and where to get welding etc if needed

Start from Mombassa on the coast - weather "very Brisbane" with high humidity - should ease as we head up towards Nairobi in a big loop that will take us thru the spectacular game parks and the Rift valley - the "cradle of humanity" supposedly. All locals very helpful and no sense of being unsafe but truth is we have had to stay pretty close to hotel getting organised so time will tell. Is a huge event in this part of the world but it helps to be slighly nuts to do it

Briefing in an hour and then it all starts getting a bit serious - now if I can keep the "red mist" from the eyes and stick to the plan...........

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