Day 2

Early start after Charlie got his alarm wrong (its becoming a habit!!). Bloody good job though because Jeremy knocked on our door telling us that the coach was now leaving at 8am instead of 9! No dramas and headed off to brekky for another big feed before being shipped into the desert!

Once on the bus we were handed our roadbooks for the race. For me this was really, really special. It made everything so real. We had a couple of great girls on the bus behind us, Michaela and Debs. The Controleur with us, Angelique was also great. Let the conversation flow!

A short while after we set off, something strange happened. It started raining and 5 hours later it was still raining. My mind inevitably started thinking about how this could affect us. If the campsite is wet then we were in trouble.....the one thing no one can be prepared for is wet weather. Our sleeping bags in particular are totally useless if they get wet. Do I just attract bad weather?? Its the Sahara for Christs sake!!!

There was a crazily fat bloke on the bus who was jumping off at every stop and chain smoking. Angelique finally cracked and asked if he was running. 'Yes', came the reply! My curiosity also got the better of me and asked if he was taking ciggies out on the run with him. Again, 'yes' was the answer. 'How many' I asked. '20 a day' came the reply. I clearly looked surprised and he followed up with: 'well, there not heavy are they?'.

You cant argue with logic like that!

After a packed lunch and few pee stops we were at our destination and army trucks were ready to take us to the first campsite. Charlie and i missed the first trucks so got out the rain and back on the bus. Then we were told we were heading off on the bus to another place because access was becoming difficult because of the rain. So, there we were parked up in this little town while alternative arrangements were made. An hour turned into several and rumours started to get scary! The fact the french competitors could not even get past roads that we had travelled on a few hours before hand was worrying. Or, Perhaps they just surrendered to easily.

After lots of waiting around and more worrying rumours we were told we were going to be sent to a hotel and to expect an update tomorrow. Mmmmmmm.