Monday, June 25, 2018

RETROSPECTIVE: Dan & Simon Race Across Europe 2016 PART TWO and a HALF

PART TWO and a HALF: THE ORRERY

A white Audi A80 with a black interior, our car had no frills (except for a sun roof)[1]. No A/C, strictly manual controls, no CD player (thwarting our entertainment plans)[2], it was otherwise in good shape for being 25 years old at the time. On our trip from Frankfurt to Lille, we discovered it had headlights like a pair of bad fake tits and a proclivity toward turning on its oil warning light and buzzer (the buzzer was the worst part). We therefore vowed to never drive it at night and to give it a nice long break every few hours.




I'd made various stencils and we decorated the car in Saarland. It rewarded this modification by slowly disintegrating - while the engine and transmission held up just fine, we were constantly bombarded by foam, fabric, and adhesive as driving with the windows down took its toll on the interior. Additionally, our gas gauge and tachometer were problematic, which led to us intensely listening to the engine and calculating gas consumption via the trip odometer. We originally had the idea of selling the car to a dealer in Barcelona, but our decorations and the destroyed interior quashed those plans. The Orrery met its fate in a Barcelona scrap dealer's garage.[3]






PART THREE: COMING & GOING

Dan's Commentary:


1 A manually operated sun roof, no simple electric button, we had to turn a crank to get it open.

2 We knew it probably wouldn't have an easy headphone jack to plug a phone into, so we burned 30 or so CDs with music. Then we found the car only accepted tapes and we hadn't brought a tape to CD     converter. We learned a lot about various countries’ radio stations.   

3 Three hours later at the after-party multiple people told us they would have bought it, but this was too late to save the Orrery from the scrap dealer. Farewell noble steed, you carried us through fields, mountains, and beaches without complaint. Shadowfax himself would be in awe of your deeds.

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