Hello hello again … long time no hear :P
Happy new year everyone and marry Christmas :D for all I didn’t contact in person yet.
The last days at Park Istra in Slovenia has been a pleasure and sadly came to an end at the 15th of December. I convinced 2 other travellers to join my trip and as many signs (yes I believe in those for those who don’t know me enough yet) pointed me to travel to Portugal instead of traveling further south to Romania and the black sea. I’m speaking about very old friends who I didn’t talk to for maybe 7 years suddenly asked me to come to Portugal. Or random persons sending me articles “they may be interesting in my travels”, over Portugal, old flatmates writing me about Portugal, meeting the one traveller who now is with me, who was thinking of moving to Portugal just before he went to Park Istra, random Workaway persons asking me to come to Portugal, some potential travel buddies who didn’t come to Slovenia in the end ended up in Portugal….just to give a few examples for those who don’t know my spiritual side yet. So for me that was clearly the next destination.
So we (me and the other two Persons with me now: Philip a guy from Sweden and Gemma a girl form Ex-EU Britain) decided to make our way slowly to Portugal with a stop in France to maybe learn some French and meet some new other workaway people in another country, maybe be able to celebrate Christmas together. We found this guy on workaway who was happy to take us three even though I had a very diverse feeling about the situation. I don’t know what but something felt very odd and also OK but I didn’t get the “everything is right” feeling when I normally take decisions. Talking with the others and with friends about this odd feeling helped a little bit but still left me in a very weird mood. Again my spirit part of me tries to tell me something but I didn’t know what it is. But I know if things run smoothly, I’m on the right path….so I decided to watch the feeling but also go one with the decision we took to drive to this place.
2020 has been a year of many changes I think you will agree but there is a new glory year waiting for us and also for Jack of course. So that’s why Jack has a new list I have to update …. Yeeey
Finally…
broken_parts_list.remove(“turbo charger”)
broken_parts_list.remove(“starter”)
print(broken_parts_list)
[‘exhaust’,’steering’]
…hang on how did we get ‘steering’ on the broken parts list ???
Well well long story short to tell. But first of all I want to share how delightful it is to drive with a working turbo charger. And then I’ll get to the point how a working turbo charger nearly killed us.
So imagine you always drove a Diesel car and got very use to the fact that on low revs (Umdrehungen/min) the car pulls. And on high revs the car is kind of garbage. So having Jack as a Diesel car unfortunately this never applied to him. So basically on each little hill (not even talking about mountains) I had to switch gears downs sometimes one sometimes two. And still got overtaken by many trucks on the way up the hills. In fact I drove the car like a Petrol car as there was no pulling on low revs. Maximum speed between 80-100 km/h. But most likely it was more 80 than 100 km/h.
After I got the turbo charger changed, all this changed. I had this nice feeling of a Diesel again. Suddenly I don’t have to give high revs to Jack to get more acceleration. Now it’s low revs and acceleration :). The good thing is if you get your car close to Italy (because it’s a FIAT) repaired and it was also a very good guy, you may be able to get the last “new” part. The guy literally called around in Italy and found the maybe last place with the last original 30 year old new part I needed. Costly but not as costly as in Germany I guess. And NEW (just 30 years old but still unused :P)
Now Jack easily runs up to 100 km/h quickly. Before you have to really talk into him before for gaining speed over long long time, now Jack just says “yey let’s do the 90, 110 or even 120 km/h”. Suddenly Jack plays in the 110 league more frequently but that also brings some dangerous things with it.
Did you ever experience a bad steering car? I mean not a person who can’t drive, but a car which has a kind of loose steering wheel. Well since Jack only played in the below 90 km/h league we didn’t run into that problem before.
But things changed. So now Jack gets a little unstable or lets call him “Jack delayed”. So you turn the wheel a little bit and it takes a while (1-3 sec) till the car changes directions. In this time you can’t feel much force on the driving wheel so you think nothing happens. Again, this only appears on higher speed (100-110 km/h). Being used to driving a sailing boat I think I handled that new hidden feature which unlocks at >100 km/h without even recognizing it. For those who don’t sail, if you want to change directions on a sailing boat you push (or pull) the tiller (“Pinne” or “Ruder” in german) for a short time then you put it back to the straight position. The boat will make a small turn of direction… with little speed on the water you will not feel much force on the tiller.
With Jack it is: the quicker you drive the less force on the driving wheel is needed (I guess till here that’s very normal) but also you will not feel the change of direction immediately. Still it’s very important to put the steering wheel back into position (which is also unlikely I guess). This little hidden feature got us into big problems when we changed drivers. The other person didn’t feel the response of the car and pushed even a little bit further the driving wheel. Then the response came harder than expected and then steered into the other direction. Again the change was not direct so the person steered even stronger into the other direction and we soon ended up getting the car into a very uncontrolled swing with rising amplitude. §”$%cking eigen-frequency shaking the car up even more….
I tried to gain control again by breaking the swinging with holding the driving wheel steady, which kind of worked but then we were straight on our way to the road rail on the left, the driver just pulled into the other direction in time so we didn’t crash there…now pointing towards the truck on our right, still swinging but less……..J U S T A N I G H T M A R E
Somehow we did get slower while using all 3 lanes of the freeway (luckily the other cars/trucks realised our struggles and slowed down) and kind of ended up on the right two lanes and managed to get slowly to the emergency lane on the very left and turned the ignition to stop the car!
SHOooooOOOOOCK!
Woww that was a very very lucky outcome somewhere in Italy someone was watching over us there….
After we switched back drivers we decided that even Jack is now a formula 1 car we keep the speed more in good old pre turbo charger times numbers below 100 and drive more like formula 2 with low revs and high acceleration.
Remember my feelings about the place in France we decided to go and I was concerned? I calmed myself down with “if it’s the right place to go it will be a smooth way” that’s how I recognise a wrong path (thinking of the book the Alchemist if someone read it, I can warmly recommend this book to find back on your right path). And I’m so happy that suddenly I can feel this “being of the path” or “got taken care” feeling again, since I lost it/ or better probably ignored it in the last few years. Feels good to have it back!!!
Back to the track back to the road back to the feelings…. That nearly car crash, when we ALL have seen already the spot in the side road rail we will hit was clearly NOT a “smooth path” or an easy going way. Sooo you can all imagine how this made me even more concerned of going to the place to France we decided to go. Back with my feelings and struggling to not listen to them (also don’t want to make the others freak out and think I’m crazy) I again communicated the struggles also talked with a good friend back home long on the phone which helped me calm down (even though we all were still in deep shock stress after that nearly crash).
Found a nice quite place in the App park4night again in the end of a little town 10 minutes from the freeway which was not so free to drive on (because it has toll (Maut) on it).
How ironic after this nearly car crash the universe provided us a completely super spooky empty little town with very low light…not even cats where on the street and you can see rubbish at the street. The end of the town and the little turn of the road we had to take to get to the park4night spot led us directly to a …..graveyard. Thank you universe, I took the message: “if you continue this spooky path, I will lead you to the graveyard”….
Hahaha, of course I had to go out of the camper all by myself to find a place to pee in the complete darkness. And as any random hero in a very bad horror movie I had to walk alone for a while around the graveyard before I agreed to the place I felt “happy” to be the darkest place there was… hahaha.
So that is my answer to the universe at this point “even though I don’t listen to the signs you provide, even though I choose the spooky empty road with struggles, even though you will lead me to the graveyard even then…. I will not fear that you will always provide a safe passage to the place I want to go and guide me if I want to leave this place.” (more to leaving a place later :P yes everything is connected).
Back to the camper and the place we found. After some nice dinner we made and talking about the near car crash I guess we drunk all bottles of wine and beer we had and tried to find some sleep even though my brain was still showing me those pictures of the road rail or the truck we nearly hit….I think it was 2.28 am without any second of sleep when two “not so nice” “maybe very angry” “maybe very happy to chase us off” policemen knocked at our camper to tell us off. I don’t know what some humen being think what people do at 2.28 am when all lights are off? Maybe some illegal drugs? What the hell, why wake (or disturb my near crash experience thoughts) at 2.28 am in the morning? Are we allowed to be in Italy, YES?! Are we allowed to get the driver back to the driving condition with sleep or processing near crash experiences, YES?! Are we allowed to be in the country corona-wise, YES?! …..So what is the 2§$%§”ing problem??!!!
Guess those guys are happy guys, happy to chase us off and so they did. They said we had to leave by 6 am….. very happy guys… so I guess they were just stupid. Forcing a person to drive after driving the whole day after having few beers and wine (ok we didn’t mention that). Anyway by the time the alarm went off at 5.30 am I didn’t sleep a single second so I just drove off, decided to drive to the not so free freeway again and take the next parking place on the way and act like a truck….just stood there and slept.
…That worked, so I finally got some 3-4 hours sleep till the others (they slept before already 3-4 hours) were awake and yes small space shaky camper, if one gets up, everyone gets up!
Another big sign of “things are not running smoothly but ok Jan is not listening completely yet :D (more to this later).
Next stop after a very expensive hole in the mountains between Italy and France was a proper camping place (just wanted to have a safe sleep this night) in a very snowy valley place called Bramans.
Things went very smoothly here. Paid the night and had finally a good night sleep after I don’t know 16 hours of driving with 3 hours sleep.
Next day we made our way to Terre Rouge the magnificent place with the not so magnificent guy ….
But this is another story I will tell you guys next time :D you have to be patient but here is a picture of Terre Rouge
…lovely :) but the story is another one…
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