Tick Tock Goes the Clock

I am writing this on my 2nd to last Thursday in Dublin, still a little bit hungover from my first leaving drinks, a lovely posh curry preceded by cocktails. All very expensive but paid for with my spare change gathered throughout the year. The evening wasn't the usual drunken chaos and everyone was home by midnight, safely tucked up in our beds. Next weeks leaving do, which will be shared with four of five others on the project, is sure to be a return to the normal carnage. In between all this drinking (and Jenny is as guilty as me) we are trying to tidy up all the paperwork and logistics that is needed for a trip like this. I am sure there will come a time that we say this is all worth it, but we are currently so overwhelmed by our ever present task list, that we can hardly think about the pleasure that will be associated with the trip.

I will quickly mention first of all that I am making some updates to our forum, under the Overland Preparations section, to document the details of our paper chase. We will be using this part of the website more and more so please do check out this area regularly. The forum is very easy to update from any computer, so lightweight quick updates will be made there, but we will still use this blog to document and journal our trip.

We are undertaking part of our trip with our old friend Russ, and we sharing some of the pain with him. But he recently found out he has been turned down for his Iranian visa, even though he applied for his at the same time as us, and we have got ours. He is now having to decided whether to apply again or change his route. We now have the minimum visas we need to leave the country (or will have when our passports return from the Iranian embassy) although we do have to pick up our Turkmenistan, China and Pakistan visas on the road.

Both myself and Russ are having lots of 'fun' in dealing with our banks to get a guarantee for our Carnet De Passage. This is the cheapest way of obtaining a Carnet, but because they are normally given to businesses we are finding the banks a little uncertain on how to deal with personal customers. Also the credit crunch is making the banks a little nervous about guaranteeing normal people. Hopefully we should have it in the next couple of weeks, and will update here to let you know how it's gone.

On top of fretting about visas and guarantees, we have both been concerned about what will happen with our house whilst we are away. We originally tried to sell it, but obviously the current market wasn't exactly helpful, even though we were happy to accept a little loss. So next up we put it up for rent, but didn't have a single viewing in the first month, despite dropping the price a couple of times. This started to become a bigger worry as time went on, and we eventually decided to move to a different agent, Pococks, local to us in Marchwood, and wow what a difference. We have had five viewings in a week, three of which have made an offer. And the good news is we have just accepted the last of these, and with a prevailing wind we will have them signed up tomorrow. touch wood! This and a new 5 year mortgage at a favourable rate mean we are now feeling like we can relax a bit. Well, it's all relative!

OK, off to pack for the penultimate time, hope this finds you all funky. Don't forget you can follow us on facebook and twitter if you are not getting enough jolly follying here!

Hang loose, and hopefully see some of you at the party.

Cheers

Big Folly and Little Jolly