The Countdown

Wow. It's already the 24th of November. Exactly 2 weeks from now is the start of the DCI. The car has been 'lifted' by about 2 inches, it now sports 31" Simex tires. We have also changed the front and rear bumper to accomodate the Warn 8274 winch and the Warn towing assembly. On top is a roof rack we borrowed from G's other 4wd. The car is coming along nicely. We have brought it to 3 different Garages to do the modifications, each one a specialist for the tasks given. Today the Cyber4x4 is going to final Garage for the final gloss over. Tie wrapping the cables, make sure all the lights-light, all the buttons function as they are supposed to. Waterproofing the transmission, ECU, and other important electronics.

We have also begun to shop for food. Its going to be mostly instant foods, instant noodles, instant spaghetti, instant rice etc etc. If we could, we would probably bring instant water!
I would have loved to bring some fresh food, but lugging around an ice chest for 10 days in the tropical jungle, might not be too practical. We might just have enough ice for 3 days, after that itll just be water. We decided against bringing a powered coolbox. Come to think of it, I dont quite remember why. It might be because we dont want to buy one. Neither G nor I have a powered coolbox.

There is quite a bit of superstition going around about what kind of foods we can bring to Kalimantan. According to the briefing, we are not supposed to bring salted fish, eggs (fresh or cooked) nor Terasi.
Syamsir Alam, the event director said that last year, cars that had those items, expirienced "strange events": not able to start, getting flats several times in a row, etc. He offered some logic to why not to bring those types of foods: they are powerfull smelling items (the eggs?) they will attract animals of all sorts. Maybe even some of the indigenous population. Which may or may not have ever seen people from outside of the jungle. I guess we had better not take any chances.

As I enjoy photography quite a bit, I will be taking my DSLR (a Nikon D70) with the Sigma general purpose lenses, the 18-135mm and the 70-300mm. I really want to bring my macro lens, a Tamron 90mm f2.8 1:1, as Im sure I will see a lot of interesting flora and fauna, but I might be pressed with cargo space. We will have to see.

Which brings me to the main payload of the car.

We are bringing an ACeS G-Wave satellite modem. It is a portable (8kg) satellite modem which will bring us symmetrical speeds of 192kbps. Symmetrical is important because this means we can up load as quickly as we can download. The event will have its share of journalists and they will want to be able to post their stories of the events that have transpired throughout the day. So will the event organizers, they will want to be able to have a daily update of who is leading, which team is in front, where we are in terms of time, place etc. If we need to schedule fuel drops etc.

It will be our job to provide internet connectivity to the race, wherever we are in Kalimantan, hence the name Cyber4x4. For more information on the G-Wave, please click to g-wave.acesinternational.com.

w.