Monday, July 18, 2005

So far so good


So far so good
Originally uploaded by myblackboxrocks.
The car sporting its new custom-made roofrack that Danny made for us yesterday. Also, many thanks to Danny's dad for his donation of two 1951 gerry cans for spare petrol.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

A Smaller family in our T's



Originally uploaded by myblackboxrocks.
So we don't have the Nieces and Nephews yet. Big deal ;-)

NEWS UPDATE. I went to see Franco from Ricambio this morning and he has donated some spares and passed on a wealth of Panda knowledge to us. Including such things as timing belt tensioners, rubber coil spring assisters, relays, cold start sensors, air filters and ignition coils.... No idea, but it sounds good.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Testing our Gallery

Hello everyone,

I'm just testing whether you'll be able to keep track of our trip by visiting an online gallery, here's a link to one from my trip to the Pyrenees last week In theory we can link galleries from the blog or you can keep track directly by visiting:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/myblackboxrocks

The only catch is going to be getting a fast enough interwebby connection to upload them along the way; well that's not the only catch...things like keeping the car running and getting across roadblocks count as well I guess. Oh and in case you think I'm just playing on the internet at the moment, there have been other developments. Despite the minor setback of the Kazakh embassy being closed on wednesdays, I've got a nice guy from Fiat's main UK spare parts importer Ricambio to help out with our ailing Panda this weekend for free. We'll be adorning Black Box with his stickers in return.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Never met you in my life...

T-shirt sales are going very well. Get a photo of you wearing your t-shirt on our blog, just email us the images and we will post them. See a few here.

Heffer gets snapped wearing our Tee!

Monday, July 11, 2005

About the Charities

(Taken from the rally website)

SEND A COW
In East Africa 85 per cent of the people depend on small-scale farming to survive. Land is often scarce and native cows give only 1-2 litres of milk per day. Send a Cow provides families with a cross-bred cow whose milk yield is very high - up to 14 litres a day. Livestock provided by Send a Cow provide a lasting solution for desperately poor farmers in Africa, enabling them to combat malnutrition with protein-rich milk and earn an income from the sale of the surplus milk. Manure from cows and other livestock can also double and even treble milk yields, making a real difference to families dependent on tiny plots of exhausted soil for their living. They use their animals' manure to fertilise their small plots of often exhausted soil - many now harvest three or four times more than they used to. Families are able to improve their diets with milk, eggs, meat and honey, and sell the surplus to bring in desperately needed income. Many families invest some of this money in other money-earning ventures, such as more land and livestock or a small shop. Most use it to keep their children in school.

SAVE THE CHILDREN
A third of Mongolian children live in poverty, exacerbated by the country's harsh winters. The first two years of this century have seen some of the harshest winters on record following on from very dry summers – over two million livestock died, farming was devastated and homeless people's lives were threatened. To find out more about how Save the Children is working to alleviate child poverty and hardship in Mongolia follow this link

Buy a T-Shirt for Charity











If you want one put £12 (plus £2 to cover postage if you're not in London) onto the sponsorship site and drop us an email with postal details, colour (Army Green, Yellow or Grey) and size preference. I'm afraid we're all out of Pink...

Welcome

Over the next 3 months this blog will follow me and Luke as we head off to Mongolia on the Mongol Rally. With the ink on Luke's driving licence still drying we're setting off on an 8 000 mile dash across ¼ of the earth's surface in a car that most people consider underpowered for doing the shopping. We have no entourage of support vehicles, there is no carefully marked course, there are no professional drivers and no fast cars, or even good cars.

The start date is the 30th July but the adventure is well under way. At the moment we're both scraping together sposorship, sorting the car out and adventuring into the world of former soviet republic embassies in search of offical approval.
For no particular reason we settled on My Black Box Rocks for our team name and have so far printed off 100 t-shirts with our team logo on to be sold at grossly hiked up prices for charity - excellent.