Travelling hungover...

We’re going to do our best to try avoid this but one has to prepare for every eventuality. So, using this fantastic article on surviving travelling on a hangover that Lyn found on the Matador Network as a guide here's how we'll cope...

The hangover cometh.

It's not Tuesday but it's still a top ten: Medical Supplies

As we prepare for the rally in earnest I realise that Girl Guides really didn't stand me in good stead for big adventures.Or, if it did, I wasn't listening to those talks. Either way I realise that I don't know how to make a tourniquet (I had to google the spelling of that); I can only build a fire after about 4 false starts and certainly can't do it without a match or lighter; and if we get stuck in the mud we'd better hope we have a flare gun so people can find us because my grasp of the physics of mud and the force of friction is not that strong. Bearing all this in mind, and realising it's less than 3 weeks till the trip, I've decided to make a list of all the medical supplies we'll need so that when faced with a broken bone, a burn, or bruising from pushing the car, we're at least prepared for that!

1) Arnica - because I bruise like a peach
2) Dettol - this is good for disinfecting and we don't want to waste perfectly good gin if we don't have to
3) Immodium - 12 hours in a car with a dodgy stomach, thanks to some ill-advised fresh produce, is a prospect I certainly can't face
4) Malaria medication - this is fairly self-explanatory. Can one buy this over the counter in South Africa?
5) Plasters - ideally with cartoon characters but hospital beige will do and some cloth bandges too, just in case.
6) Headache tablets - definitely self-explanatory!
7) Rennies or other such stomach settling product - I don't get car sick but sometimes my stomach just doesn't agree with me. It's a curse.
8) Hay fever tablets - good for insect bites and sneezing thanks to "the nature"
9) Zambuk - "the real makoya" as it says on the tin, and good for just about everything (thanks Zed for introducing me to it!)
10) Savlon - good for the Bs - burns,bites and blisters (I think).

And then of course there's suntan lotion, after-sun, chewing gum, ear plugs and old favourite boiled sweets. This isn't quite medical, but not quite not either....except maybe for the boiled sweets. But what's a road trip without barley sugars?

Top Ten Tuesday: Camping equipment that we need

As the rally rapidly approaches and I keep waking up with night sweats realising what on the "list of things to do in preparation for the rally" has been done (not much), still has to be done (lots, and growing), may have been an impossible dream and should be taken off the list entirely - I thought it was about time we actually started making these lists visible. Perhaps if they are here for everyone to see, we'll get things done? And perhaps someone with fresh eyes can tell us if we're being a little hysterical....

We can change a tyre!

With less than a month to go until registration day we’ve been quite good at ticking the fun things off our Put Foot To-do list – like looking at route and ogling at pictures of Mozambican beaches – but there are still quite a lot of not-so-fun things that we have been avoiding. For me the most dreaded of these was to come to grips with changing a tyre. So you can imagine my delight when I discovered a flat on a bitterly cold Joburg morning! It wasn’t fun, and it did take me ages making me late for work, but I am proud to say that I can now change a tyre on my own and am feeling a lot more rally ready.

FML.

Top Ten Tuesday - Things We Can't Survive Without

With the minidiots planning to fit everything they need for 17 days into a mini I think the pitstoppers can definitely manage in their Toyota Conquest, with space to spare, well maybe not space to spare but we can cross roof rack off the list of things to buy perhaps...

All this being said I've spent alot of time thinking about what I can't live without on the trip and what the first ten things I'm going to put in my suitcase are and I've narrowed it down to:

1) Headlamp - yes I'm vaguely frightened of the dark and if I'm going to get eaten by a lion in any late-night tent to bathroom rambles I want to at least see it happen to me. Perhaps I also need a little camera attached to the light for when they want real-life footage in my bio-pic.
2) A Kindle - apparently they have 6-8 weeks battery life and I can't survive 8 hours a day in a car without something to read. There will be another blog post (or 10) about what on earth is suitable reading material but that is definitely for another day.
3) Insect repellant - it may be winter, we may be hardy but I can't help it if my blood is sweet and I certainly don't intend to spend 2 weeks scratching at myself. My recent brush with bed bugs has once more brought the reality of insects and their bites to my coddled first world existance.
4)  Sunscreen - I don't deny I long to be nut brown but Lyn's nose peeling (not her fault, the fault of ten hours at the border - yet more content for another posting) has reminded me the perils of sunning one's self. There is of course the great fear of old-before-my-time skin (and there is no space for anti-ageing cream on this trip) and skin cancer. 'Nough said.
5) Passport - fairly obvious but important
6) Cold Hard Cash - I don't think any officials that might need a bit of palm greasing will carry a card swipe machine.
7) Address book with contact numbers written down in pen, on paper. I read recently that you know you're old when you carry a filofax (good thing I don't then) but we best have contact numbers somewhere accessible for the hugely unlikely (but then almost definitely going to happen) situation when not one of our phones is accessible (lost, stolen, not charged) and we really really need to call mum and there's somehow a payphone to hand, or perhaps a kindly stranger with a phone.
8) Headache pills - self explanatory
9) Wheel jack. We may not know anything about cars but we can change a tyre so we should at least be prepared to do that.
10) Duct tape and Swiss Army knife - homage to McGyver - he's gotten out of worse situations than we'll find ourselves in using these two items. Surely we can too, after all we're a scientist, a writer and an organising fundi. There isn't a lot we can't do!