Saturday 03 Jul 2010 23:03

Duh duh duh duhhhh! Duh duh duh duh...

by Tony Edgar of Steppe By Steppe

The blog title is a vague reference to hair-rock classic "the Final Countdown" by Europe. Yup, a week from now we should be fitfully snoozing in our pop up tent somewhere in Belgium, a day into the adventure. Really mental that it's almost launch. I'm typing this standing at the bus stop in East Dulwich, listening to some posh kids talk about Russell Brand. It's hard to fathom that this epic trip we've endlessly planned, stressed and talked about for almost a year is actually happening. We don't do stuff like this. I've been waiting to get busted for being a fraud since we began. But here we are. Just said my farewells to a couple of mates with the statement "see you on the other side". That's honestly what it feels like - a step into the unknown. Our mighty van is in the garage getting a new cam belt and water filter fitted to ensure we don't break down before Dover. We got a few essentials for camping today and are on car detail tomorrow, but for the first time in months I'm calm and positive about the road ahead. We're actually doing this. It's going to be amazing.

By rights, we should have been organised enough to make it to my friend Sandra's wedding on the 3rd of July, but it became apparent by around March that it wasn't really going to be an option. As it was, the Saturday was spent running around buying even more basics for the road ahead - food, more camping gear, other bits and pieces on our checklist, whilst on the Sunday I became rooted in Halfords as I stocked up on spare bulbs, fuses, tyreweld, k-seal, radweld - you name it, if it was possible to spring a leak or crack on a vehicle, I had some sort of gunk to squirt into it.

The weekend also saw the first of my proper 'bon voyage' pints, with a couple of old mates, Murray & Ally. It's around at this point, a mere week before we left, that it sank in that it was definitely happening and that, what's more, we were reasonably well-prepared. My mental checklist had been getting reviewed and revised repeatedly for months and it was only at this point I began to realise that the key issues were sorted, the visas were in our passports, the tickets to the continent were booked and we were set to depart no matter what.

My crash course in vehicle maintenance had flagged up that the cam belt was the single most potentially fatal failure an engine could have (running out of oil potentially excepted) due to the damage the thing can do if it snaps when you're tanking it at 85 down the autobahn. Enquiries had got us nowhere regarding when, if ever, it had last been replaced, so we took the tough but sensible decision to get it changed before departure. The inspection by Dragan, our friendly Macedonian mechanic, had also flagged that the brakes needed fixing - again we agreed. It stung our already meagre budget for £400, but meant that at least we had taken pre-emptive action as far as we could - if we ground to a halt before we got out of Europe it wouldn't be because we'd overlooked or ignored a basic fundamental of vehicle preparation.

The countdown to departure was well and truly on.