Stage 3- Cordoba-La Rioja

An update from Simon & Christophe in Cordoba via Team Rally Australia

Que puta calor! Left Cordoba at 11.00pm last night in an attempt to get to the end of today’s special. Got most of the way before tiredness stopped us. Pitched my tent in a dusty abandoned childrens playground and slept the sleep of the very fricken tired.
Our cunning plan paid off and we found our way down a long dusty track to the end of the special. I suspect you’re asking what the hell the special is. Basically every race day is made up of a liason on road and untimed and a special which is the full on off-road bit.
I fended off a French attempt to get me out of the area and got down to business. Christophe came in mid way through the field.

Dusty and tired but good. He took a tumble somewhere along the way and damaged a fork that he has since replaced. Had big trouble with the helmet cams today. I think it’s the insane heat that is messing with the lithium batteries. It’s ok, I’ll just send a production assistant to get some more. Oh! Forgot, I don’t have one.
Spectacular scenery as we drove across the plain towards the Andes. This is the stuff I live for. Looking forward to crossing into Chile in two days time. We’ll be crossing a mountain pass at over 4000m.

So so far all good. Christophe still in the race, getting good footage and boiling our arses off in Argentina.
Tomorrow, the mechanical freak show that is the Dakar moves to Fiambala. Hasta Pronto

in another country

An hour and a half south of Atlanta and the road side changes.  The landscape opens outwards towards a distant tree line.  In an instant it falls inwardly upon itself. A choked flash of clay creek bed.  We have been in the car for most of the day.  The children are curled up, drifting in and out, beneath one of our travel blankets.  We press on deeper, the v8 hitting both the dusk and the cotton fields at seemingly the same moment.  A flurry of cotton and the hedge rows look as if covered by snow.  The tatty remnants of harvest strewn across an Alabama road.

The children have a campfire in the pine woods between the house and the lake.  We watch as they shapeshift between explorers, mermaids,  Indian trackers.  The adults busy themselves with buttered and salted pecans from a relatives orchard out near the highway.  Miles away from the warm chestnuts out of the brazier in Trastevere the week before but equally as fulfilling.   There is talk of  the upcoming Alabama vs Auburn game and the size of alligators in the lake.  This,  followed by the briniest of oysters from Apalachicola, and  a dense black bottom pie.

Visits to South Alabama always have me leaving with a head full of moments that hardly seem real at the time. Becoming stranger still as they ferment.  This time it's  one about B.B. asking a leisure suited Gerald Ford to hike the football while in the oval office.  A throwback to Mr. Ford's days at Michigan no doubt.  Apparently the snap wasn't to B.B's liking and he had the president re-do until he got it right.

At night we read the children the Nick Adams Stories.  With a bit of on the fly editing,  the "Indian Camp" piece has them squealing.  A small respite before we begin the forceful stride towards Christmas and the year end. 

E.M.M.