Day Fifty to Fifty One - A little shocked

“No, there’s not a single thing wrong under here mate,” said Quentin on the phone to Captain Shock in a greatly improved mood. “There’s not a scratch,” he added. “There is a bit of dirt but they’ve driven it for a few hundred k’s.” Somers and I looked at each other. This was promising, we’d spent the previous evening writing account of the events, sorting the photos of the broken shock before and after removal, we even had a video of it. Our confidence was growing.

Before we could even discuss the situation further, a new part appeared, and was fitted. Both Quentin and Captain Shock said they’d never seen a shock so badly damaged before. Quentin still clung to a sequence of events in which the tyre had burst first, in doing so breaking a piece of metal designed to take huge mechanical loads and what’s more, when the tyre burst, it drew the shock towards itself. His logic defied physics; we didn’t care. We’d come for a fight and by nine o’clock in the morning we realised we had nothing to for the rest of the day. Our fiftieth day on the road had turned out nice again.

We wandered Windhoek, and relaxed. Back at the hostel we met a couple of French bankers on a ’round the world trip’ sabbatical. They were leaving and had a couple of sleeping mats and a tent that they needed to shift. The items were three weeks old; we took a mat and the tent off their hands at 50% discount on the tag price. The second mat had a puncture, that one was free. ‘Nice one Rodders, nice one.’

The following day we had Redvers' pressure washed. Laura waxed him in the afternoon. He looked like a beast, his gleaming paintwork and fat tyres, slung on banana suspension, he was ready for anything. That evening we went out to wine bar for drinks with some NGO guys we’d met at the hostel, and drank some very nice wine.