Reilly Traveling Circus

I never thought I would find 84 degrees and humid refreshing but everything is relative. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. We are about to embark on another rally adventure but first a little background.

When we last posted, we had finished in Paris. You may recall that we completed the rally with a ‘borrowed’ motor from Tuthill in England. We also had sustained damage to the right side of the car from an encounter with a Toyota Landcruiser in Bulgaria. We shipped the car back to Tuthill in England with plans to return their engine, have our engine rebuilt, the body repaired, the suspension rebuilt and a few other changes. At the time our engine was removed in Baku, it was crated and slated for shipping to Tuthill. Or so we thought.

Fast forward 6 or 7 months and an email from Tuthill informs us that “we can’t find your engine and have no record of receiving it”. Or words to that effect. Lo and behold, said engine was still in the garage in Baku. It was then shipped to Tuthill and rebuilt.

So now, almost 1 year after Peking to Paris, we have a car with new shocks (dampers to the Brits), raised ride height, new skid plates, repaired body work, new wiring, new door cards that hold a power impact wrench and our water bottles in addition to clipboard and maps.

All of this in preparation for the “Nordic Challenge”, as 12 day rally starting in Copenhagen and finishing in Oslo, traversing Sweden, Finland, back through Sweden and down the west coast of Norway.

But first we had to get to Copenhagen. Those of you reading this in ‘real time’ will doubtless have read or heard about the heat dome over Europe and the record high temperatures. Over the past two days, we have had the most miserable experience driving the car from England to Copenhagen. And that’s saying something given some of our experiences in the Peking to Paris rally. Incredibly hot, incredible traffic jams, hotels fully booked and gasoline at $8-10/gallon. We started by picking the car up late Thursday and driving back to our flat in London. Friday morning, we left to drive to “Le Shuttle”, a car transport through the Chunnel. It was supposed to take 2 hours. Four hours later, we finally drove onto the train. A quick 45 min underneath the English Channel and then debarked in Calais. What followed was France, Belgium and the Netherlands, 100+ degree heat, much time in stop and go traffic and a prolonged search for a hotel. Friday was a bit better: through Germany, via Hamburg to Denmark and then west towards Kobenhaven. Pleasant in the early morning but then hot and reasonably crowded, although very few slow downs. 860 km after our early morning departure, we were through for the day, in multiples senses of the word “through”. When we finally got close to Copenhagen, the temperature dropped 10 degrees in a matter of 10 minutes. Hence the opening line in this entry. We arrived in our underground car park, after initially missing the entrance and touring downtown, to encounter two locals complaining about how hot and humid it was. They had no idea.

We checked into the Marriot, had dinner at the bar and sacked out. Sunday, we went over our car, checked the calibration on our odometers, filled with gas (another expensive proposition) and now await official rally check in at 1 pm. We get underway tomorrow.