At last we had the chance to sleep through the morning, but that doesn't mean that there was nothing to do on the last day before the start of the World Record Run Dakar2Moscow.
Our first destination of the day was the German embassy to present the project and to thank them for all the help they provided. While the rest of the team was busy with solving the potential problem of border truck blocking in Morocco, I had volunteered to invent the mechanism of taking the Total Quartz engine oil sample before the start. As in any other capital city, embassies are not neighbors to service stations, but there was no lack of pharmacies. With a lit bit of creativity and engineering, the suction system was assembled.
After that the team headed to the Volkswagen dealership to meet the head of the local importer Mr. Dam, who will participate in the start ceremony, and to give a couple of interviews.
A final visit was to be made to S.O.S children village in Dakar, the chamber of charity foundation that Rainer supports since 2005. The donation evolved into good tradition before every record run. This year the sum is 1500 Euros (20 cents per each kilometer of the run). Me and the rest of the teammates spend some time with the children of the village to get to know them and play a little quiz related to our record run Dakar2Moscow with official footballs from the Germany embassy acting as prizes.
Even though the sun was already setting down when we returned to the hotel, a lot was yet to be done. First of all, to run through the checklist of the car preparation. All liquids have to be on correct levels, so is the tyre pressure. The interior compartment had to be cleaned out and re-arranged for non-stop four day survival. After everything was triple checked it turned out that i still had some time to spare for sleep, but this dreams were ruined when just outside the hotel, on the beach, some strange religious performance started to unfold. Probably I'll get some sleep after start.
Georgy Golubev