Smoking through the mountains / Füstölgés a hegyeken át

Traveling through beautiful and pristine regions with your car might make you think "this is wrong" since a petrol engine inevitably pollutes. But this won't stop you traveling and driving in your favorite countryside, right?

We also thought about this issue: how can we give something back to Mother Earth while we smoke around with our vehicles?

Even though we alone can't and won't stop global warming and growing pollution of the world, we do whatever we can. With our limitation but with our commitment.

Taking charge of pioneering a new trend in motorsport and adventure travel, the Caucasian Challenge have partnered with the American non-profit Trees for the Future, to calculate the actual carbon-dioxide emission of everything from the flights of participants getting to the starting line to the impact of all the participating vehicles.

What does that exactly mean?

Based on our inputs (number of vehicles, total distance, etc.) the representatives of TftF calculate the emission figures and the number of trees they need to plant in order to neutralize our CO2 emission. They do the planting job in certain areas and inform us about the location so we can actually see the result if we want to.
As simple as that. We have used this methodology successfully in last year's Autorickshaw Challenge. The calculation has been validated by the FAO too.

Once again - I'd be careful saying we are "green" now, but at least we do something useful (even though it's a tiny thing in our ecosystem) which is much more than nothing, right?

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Amikor gyönyörű tájakon és érintetlen természeten keresztül autózunk (mert azt ugye szeretjük), óhatatlanul felötlik bennünk: vajon rendben van ez igy? Elvégre egy autó - vagy motor vagy quad, vagy bármi, amit belső égésű motor hajt - szennyezi a környezetet. De ez nem gátol meg abban, hogy a sivatagban, a hegyekben vagy a sztyeppéken autózz, ugye?

Ezen a kérdésen mi is elgondolkodtunk: hogy adhatnánk vissza valamit Természet Ősanyának, amiért keresztül hajtunk szűzies tájain?

Nyilvánvaló, hogy mi magunk nem tudjuk és nem fogjuk megállitani a globális felmelegedést vagy visszaszoritani a növekvő szennyezést, de a saját kereteink között megtehetjük, amire lehetőségünk van.

A kalandtúra szervező cégek közül elsőként együttműködési megállapodást kötöttünk az amerikai (USA) Trees for the Future nonprofit szervezettel.

Mit is csinálnak ők pontosan?

A szervezők által rendelkezésükre bocsátott adatokból (járművek száma, fogyasztása, megtett távolság) a TFTF képviselői kiszámitják a résztvevő járművek CO2 kibocsátását, az ennek semlegesitéséhez szükséges növényzet mennyiségét és annyi fát ültetnek, amennyi a projektünkhöz kell. Ezt dokumentálják, igy igény szerint akár meg is lehet tekinteni a rally által "létrehozott" ligetet.
Ilyen egyszerű. A tavalyi Autoriksa Futamon már sikerrel alkalmaztuk a módszert, amit a FAO is jóváhasgyott.

Hangsúlyozom - nem szeretném a ma oly divatos "zöld" szóval illetni a futamot, mert ez önmagában félreértése adhat okot. De legalább teszünk valami hasznosat (még ha apróság is), és ez még mindig több, mint a semmi, nem igaz?

Sign-up / Jelentkezés

The sign-up page is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. Sorry for the inconvenience, please come back a bit later.

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A jelentkezésre szolgáló oldal pillanatnyilag nem működik (karbantartás miatt). Bocs a kellemetlenségért, kérlek, nézz vissza egy kicsit később.

CC blog goes bi-lingual

This will obviously be a pain in the... back, but I decided to run the blog in both English and Hungarian. Me alone for now, but will involve other bloggers soon!

The fact is, that the ratio of the foreign and the Hungarian teams are almost exactly 50%-50%. And I received requests that peopnle (not necessary participants) would like to read these posts in Hungarian.
So here we go.

I still need to figure out how exactly I'll do it, but let's give it a chance.

We'll speed up now, lots of interesting or entertaining or (?) info will come soon on the blog, so stay tuned.

As the first invention, I will divide the English and the HU posts like this:

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Kétségtelen, hogy önmagam szivatom vele (hiszen dupla munka), de mindent a kedves fogyasztóért. Úgy döntöttem, hogy mától a Kaukázus Rali blogot két nyelven, angolul és magyarul írom.
Egyelőre egyedül, de nem lesz ez így sokáig!

A döntés hátterében áll - többek között - hogy a résztvevő csapatok szinte pontosan 50-50%-ban külföliek, illetve magyarok. Nomeg kérések érkeztek hozzám, hogy szeretnék a blogot magyarul olvasni. Hát íme.

Még nem tudom, pontosan hogyan fogom megoldani, de adunk neki egy esélyt.

Ja, a dolgok felgyorsulnak a közeljövőben, sok új érdekes és mindenféle infó kerül ki a blogra, úgyhogy maradjatok velünk!

Első újításként például az angol és a magyar bejegyzéseket így fogom elválasztani:

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Aliens endanger the route of the Caucasian Challenge!

Breaking news!

This is coming directly from a well known worldwide news agency and has to be taken absolutely seriously.

It seems that besides land mines left behind after the Balkan wars, hair-raising curves and serpentines of the Bosnian mountains, and lethal strong local rakija, participants need to face another serious threat during their trip.

Organizers will do their best to protect rally participants but cannot guarantee their safety while driving through this particular region controlled by aliens.

Trying to call E.T. though for some friendly help...

See the brief story here.

Keep you posted.
(Never drive when it's raining...)

Test your driving skills in Yerevan - NOW!

Guess what: you can instantly test your navigation and driving skills in downtown Yerevan.

Someone just recommended me a funny software (download available here, 27 MB) - just download it, install it and right away you're free to rush through the streets of the Armenian capital. Just mind the speed limits, right?

According to the authors, this is the first 3D game software made in Armenia and these guys actually built the whole downtown of Yerevan in 3D! Get familiar with the roads before you get there, so you won't find it difficult finding the major highlights of the city or the way back to your accommodation after a loooong and exhausting night :)

It's a demo version, but you'll be fine with that I guess. If there's a huge demand I'll buy the final version for you...

Start the adventure now!

(Errr... navigation is a bit tricky, but I'm sure you'll have a lot more difficult challenges during your journey before you reach Yerevan :)

Homepage update

Hi there!
Today, from 19:20 to 20h, the www.caucasianchallenge.com is under maintenance.
After that, the sign up section will have more severity, the base will be more stable, some small bugs will be repaired and the Hungarian translation will have some changes.
Enjoy!

Socialize!

Hey,

join the Caucasian Challenge community on Facebook (as well)!

Push the left button on your mouse after you positioned the cursor HERE.

See you there.

We've done it

An update and a summary about the one night stand rally from last Friday/Saturday.

This race was one leg of the Bamako Championship Challenge, a 3-leg event for rally enthisiasts, future and ex Budapest-Bamako partcipants and for whoever being stupid enough to drive through half the country during the night in totally remote places.

On the day of the start our vehicle arrived from our friend, our general mechanic and co-traveller of Bus number 7 project, Soma. He spent enormous amount of time and money to fix the Moskvich... as far as I know he adjusted sg. on the brakes, installed new windshield wipers and fixed a mandatory fuzzy dice on the mirror. Oh, we also bought a set of rubber floor mats for 1.5 Euros.

And of course we printed nice stickers for the front, back and side of the car (after all it's a promotional vehicle) and printed 200 leaflets as well. Quality job from my drinking pal who owns a digital printing house.


Before the flag off.

Our team of 3 - me, Szabi, the co-organizer of Bus Number 7 and Peter (who we recently appointed as a manager for a very-very interesting project we come up with soon) just couldn't wait for the start sign. Well, 3 idiots in a Moskvich - a guarantee for a great night.


Peter with the indonesian suitcase. He never leaves the house without it. Doesn't metter for 1 day or for 4 weeks. Same stuff. He's carrying some foldable chairs as well (thanks Polar Bears! :)

More than 100 teams signed up for this event, so the parking lot of one of the Budapest shopping malls where we got together was quite busy with participants running around and friends greeting each other before the flag off.
Out of the 100 cars, there were only four 2WD vehicles: 2 Suzuki Swifts, a Peugeot Partner and our beauty.... and our Moskvich was the oldest and most (sorry darling) primitive one in terms of engine and construction. What are the chances of a 20 year old soviet Moskvich against 100 modern 4WD giants? Well, we'll see...

We were flagged off at 8:40 PM and we immediately "rushed" to search for the first geo-challenge near Budapest. That was the last time we were driving on tarmac.
And we kept driving from point A to point B for the next 12 hours... in pitch black, in the middle of nowhere. My mother would say at least we were out breathing fresh air.


Peter writing the answer for the current challenge... somewhere.

To be honest we had no f.king clue which part of the country we were for hours and hours just drove in the mud, sand, green fields, through forests, farms, who knows what.
The car was just excellent. People behind us were amazed... a Land Cruizer team (once we met them) said they wouldn't ever reach us if we were not stuck in the mud somewhere. Well we stuck only twice but take a look at the terrain (ok, can't really see that in the dark pics) and our perfect offroad tyres :)

We didn't mind stopping once in a while meeting with other teams and share our vodka with them...


...even if these guys were the official marshals of the race ;)







Yes, once we tried to get off the mud with the sacrifice of our back floor mats, but the mud-clay mixtrure said HA HA. So someone towed us (with our special "ropes" - thanks Polar Bears!)



We stopped another time - the spark plug (err...what is that?) cover fell off the plug and contacted the exhaustion pipe and obviously melted in 5 minutes. Having 3 cylinders working we have tried to fix it. Removed the residuals of the plastic from the wire but the small metal screw from the tip of the plug disappeared, we couldn't fix the wire with the plug.


Oh-oh... doesn't look very good...

At this moment Peter cried out: wait, I think I have a spare plug in my case...next to my toothbrush!
While we were all thinking about why would anyone on Earth keep a spark plug next to his toothbrush, he explained that he kept spark plugs everywhere in his luggage. He drove a 1971 Mini to Mali in January and the car was not exactly in good condition. So just in case he hed plugs hidden everywhere. And naturally he didn't unpack the suitcase in the past 2 months. I love mental people :)

We drove until 5 AM until dawn then realized that we need to start driving towards the finish to get there in time not to lose our points.

We got to the finish safe and reeeally dirty 10 minutes before the time was up.
And guess what - we finished number 27 total! Lots of the teams couldn't even finish the race. Many of them didn't make it in time. But we did!




Mud inside and outside - but that's what we expected!


Damn tired... and we still need to drive back home. But keep smiling.

After this thorough and pretty tough test we have no choice but to give this lovely Moskvich the following ranking

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

(also for the Caucasian Challenge)