Tim and Mari’s World Tour #11

Leaving Oz – January 30th

So there you have it.

On January 30th, Mari and I have been travelling for one hundred days. It seems like a long time in numbers, but when you realize that we have only touched two countries, it seems that we have most of our trip ahead of us.

This of course is very good.

We have arrived in Sydney, and are camping in a park on the edge of town until our flight to Singapore on February 3rd. We put our car up for sale, but had very little success and we took it back to where we got it. For anyone following behind, we bought the car at Travellers Auto Barn, and they gave us a buyback guarentee, and then today they gave us what they said they would for the car (what is the world coming to, an honest used car salesman?????????).

So that is out of the way. We changed our money into U.S. dollars and Singapore dollars, and have just enough Australian money left to go out for dinner and to get to the airport.

We updated from Melbourne, and since then we really haven’t done much except try to sell the car, and drive from Melbourne to Sydney. Since we have now sold the car, and there is no longer any worry, we can talk about it.

When we started the trip, I was talking to my father. When he was young (1836 I believe) he had a friend who owned a Ford Falcon. Anyway, my dad laughed his head off because his buddy’s car would never start, and he assumed that we would have a similar fate. INSTEAD, we had absolutely no trouble getting the car to start – it always got going surprisingly well. It suffered through incredible heat, and 11,000 km of hard driving, and the engine worked beautifully. What was a problem was getting in and out of the damn thing.

The Ford Falcon comes standard with very heavy doors, and very bad hinges. the handles themselves are cheaply made. Thanks to this we had a total of three door handles broken (that’s not good odds eh, although it was a four door). The driver’s door sagged with the heavy weight, and dropped about 20 centimeters. This meant that to close the door, you had to lift it up and then close it (so driver got in, passenger closed the door, and then ran around the car and got in).

But better than this, with one day to go before getting to Sydney, the door and the front panel overlapped to the point that the door could not be opened or closed. I personally fixed this by manipulating the door

itself so that the overlap was not as severe (I kicked the bloody thing until the metal folded and we could open the damn door). Luckily the mechanic had to kick the door to get the car closed and we blamed the dint on him.

Now, if you look to the right you will see a large VB. This is signifigant. February 1 is my birthday, and with this and selling the car coupled with moving to Singapore, I believe that Mari and I will each have one.

Here’s hoping everyone is having as much fun as us. Thanks for reading and the support.

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