The official start of the P2P’s first day in Mongolia is delayed. Blearyeyed from our shivering sleepless night, we couldn’t be more thankful for the nit-picking of Chinese officialdom. There are three hundred people and their associated classic cars to clear through the Erenhot border, and these guys are taking their sweet time. They’ve never been asked to handle so many cars at once, let alone foreign makes they’ve never heard of, like Sunbeam, Itala, Brassier, La France, Alvis. All the drivers are ordered to stay with their cars while navigators crowd into the large immigration hall, car documents in hand. Ever so slowly, three small, officious men in oversized military peak caps scrutinize papers. They look very smart in their white shirts, creased khaki pants cinched overly tight at their slender waists. They squint at passports stamped with car authorizations, trot between their respective booths to get a second opinion, occasionally make eye contact to check that the person before them matches the image on the passport.
I edge along, muttering pardon me’s and sorry’s till I find a place next to Sybil. “God am I glad to see you,” I tell her. “I hate these crowds, this shuffling along.”
“I do, too,” she laughs, another thing we find we have in common. Since our introduction that night back in Beijing, we seek each other out most evenings to trade stories, opinions on the day’s events, and whatever gossip we’ve managed to pick up about other competitors, which isn’t much. As the queue inches forward, I tell her tidbits of my New York childhood, and we trade our hopes and worries about Mongolia. Already, in three short days, her olive skin is attractively tanned from open-air driving.
She tells me about other rallies she’s done with Nick, and I reveal my worries about this one. Now that the easy stuff in China is over, I can feel my shoulder muscles contracting like rawhide on a rain-drenched saddle. We’re about to leave the comfort of easily identifiable landmarks like buildings, monuments, paved roads, and streets signs. All those whitegloved hands pointing directions will be staying behind, too. According to the route book, for the next eight days we’ll be using GPS waypoints, a set of numbers created by satellites, to find our way. Landmarks will be few and undistinguished, an occasional telegraph pole or a railroad track the only manmade objects to help us identify whether we’re going the right way. Wood poles and iron bars aren’t the most distinctive of features, especially when there are miles of them. All I can think is how in the world to differentiate the right pole or track from the wrong one, while trying to find my way through a wasteland of desert. That’s not all. We’ll be doing time trials in the Gobi, and while I understand the concept of them clearly by now, I still feel wet behind the ears as a navigator, not at all sure I want to test my skills and nascent confidence against the clock.
When the hubbub in the waiting line gets too loud, officials shout at us to be quiet. At least we infer so from their harsh tone of voice and the frowns on their faces. When it comes to not speaking Mandarin, it turns out I’ve been in good company. The room grows still, but only briefly, and then the chatter and laughter build again, like an orchestra tuning for an overture. Normally I’m so impatient that if there’s even one person ahead of me in line I dissolve into twitches. Impatience could be called one of my chief features. Or more accurately, my greatest flaw. My reaction to knowing that the people in front of me will move to the next thing before I will is physical, a combination of jaw clenching, muscle tensing, and shallow breathing. My brain becomes undisciplined, unwilling to focus on a conversation, conniving instead on how I can right this unfairness by sneaking to the front. Would that I could say I do these things unconsciously, but I don’t. My intolerance shames me. With Sybil’s company, and no route book demanding attention, for the first time in my life I feel relaxed in a crowd. This is such a novel experience that I smile at the ceiling, marveling at what it feels like to be too happy while waiting in line. These couple of hours of companionable banter are more welcome to me than a hot shower at the end of a long day’s drive. Almost.
Once clear of customs and reunited with Bernard, we drive across a strip of no man’s land and enter Zayman Uud, the Mongolian side of the border. This is a hallelujah moment, something I’ve been waiting for since we hosted those Mongolian scientists at our home the year before. I remember clearly how their delight matched mine when we realized how similar our home landscapes were. I look around, hoping for something familiar in the scenery. The best I can do is liken these surroundings to Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado. Even that is a stretch, as the terrain is hardscrabble and grave with no lovely rounded, fine dunes rising anywhere. The ground is parched, having received just that bit of moisture that tempts green things to grow into scraggly blades that wilt in a few days. For no reason at all, I held a hope that the landscape on the Mongolian side of the border would be different from what we’d just driven through in China. I wanted this to be true because already I longed for a landscape in which I could feel at home, a landscape that would welcome me, that would give me that same feeling of comfort that I get when I enter someone’s home and smell coffee and chocolate and cinnamon. I brush aside my disappointment, focusing instead of how good it feels to be reunited with Bernard. There are thousands of Mongolian miles ahead of me, and there’s no reason not to be confident that up ahead I’ll see countryside that reminds me of home.
For the time being we bide our time in a sandy depression, a holding area where all teams have to wait until everyone has finished with the border formalities. Each Rally crew handles the mounting tension differently. I offer a “Bon appétit,” to the cheery blonde Finns, who have flipped open the table and storage cupboard cleverly built into the side of their butter yellow Packard Coupe. As I walk by, I see they’re snacking on tinned fish and sipping coffee. “Good luck,” they reply, raising their plastic mugs. The lithe raven-haired driver of a black Citroen arranges his lanky, T-shirted frame on the balloon fender of his car, crosses his arms, and takes a nap. I hang out, waiting for him to fully relax and then roll off. Yes, I’m that desperate for amusement. A few diehards work on their cars, reaching into toolboxes the size of a child’s lunchbox, roomy enough to hold two wrenches, a few screwdrivers, and a modest assortment of spare nuts and clips and still have room, if pressed, for a PB&J sandwich. Either they’re woefully underprepared, or we could make a killing selling some of the hundred pounds of tools, spares, and every size of nut or bolt we packed, for that special moment of need.
Bernard and I are neither tired nor hungry nor inclined to inspect Roxanne’s engine parts one more time. All that’s left for us to do is pace. For once Bernard joins me in worrying. Through China we’ve been on paved road, a kindness on the organizer’s part that allowed everyone to test their car and make sure everything was working, or tight, or dust proof. Except for the unfortunate incident of the fan falling off, Roxanne has held up superbly, and after Bernard’s extemporaneous removal of her side panels, she’s stayed calm, cool, and collected.
Mongolia’s dirt tracks promise a whole new story. Given that her fan was jostled loose on a smooth road, all manner of things could fall apart once we get onto truly rough track. I picture the steadfast, hardworking Roxanne with her doors, fenders, and hood flying off left and right, leaving Bernard and me exposed in our seats, riding along on the bare chassis. I have other worries now, too. As we’re moving into wilder territory, open country with no villages to provide civilized landmarks like streets and bridges, I realize that my earlier navigational anxiety was mere self-indulgence. In a city there’s always someone you can ask for directions, even if your question is conveyed in sign language. If you’re completely lost, you can even pay a taxi to guide you. Who’s going to be around to help if I get us lost in a featureless expanse of sand?
After several hours, all the cars have arrived. We notice some drivers revving their engines. Car 1, a 1907 Itala, splutters and burps to the start table. This titan of an ancient car is my standard bearer. It has an engine bigger than a Formula 1 Ferrari except that, at its maximum of 45hp, it puts out about as much power as a snowblower. It’s a carapace on wheels, fenders and running boards bristling with chains, levers, and other mechanical bits that newer cars hide beneath the hood or under the body. It is so heavy and complex to drive I have to believe that, if they can do it in that car, we can handle Roxanne. The driver and his wife, a quiet pair, have dressed the part. Each wears a skull-fitting leather helmet, goggles, kneehigh lace-up leather boots, a long duster for chilly mornings, and a scarf wrapped around their necks, ready to pull over their noses if the dust gets bad. They’re signed off, and, with a faster series of pops and bangs, they head toward the desert. From there, the starter’s white flag drops once a minute, releasing one car after another into the wilds beyond.
The eighty-four minutes we have to wait feel like an endless age as we’re each gnawed at by the sharp teeth of uncertainty. So deep are we in our respective reveries that we’re startled to see Car 70 at the starting desk. “Quick Bernard, we have to get in line,” I shout. We jump from daydream to action, racing through a last-minute check to make sure nothing’s left behind. I slide into the car, grab my time card, click the 4-point harness closed. “Do you have the route book ready?” Bernard yells, his voice rising with the strain and excitement of the moment.
“Of course I do. I’m the navigator. No worries,” I lie.
Bernard turns on the ignition. Kathunk. He tries again. A third time. Roxanne won’t start. For a moment I think she’s refusing to go into the Gobi. But no. Roxanne wouldn’t do that to us now. Something’s surely wrong, but there’s no time to find out. We have to take our place in line or lose it. That means we’d be relegated to the end of the line, starting only after every other car had left. That wouldn’t be the end of the world, but with the many penalty minutes we’d be assessed, it’d probably be the end of Bernard’s quest for Gold. Adrenalin sending sparks through my body, I jump out and lay a shoulder into a fender alongside Bernard, feet searching for purchase in the light sand as we struggle to get Roxanne up the incline to the starter’s table. Other crews whose departure comes much later lend muscle to push us up the slope. Roxanne weighs as much as a small Panzer tank, and I put every ounce of effort I have into moving her, fueled by desperation and the knowledge that the calories I burn would be the equivalent of one full Nautilus circuit at the gym. There’s the thought as well that it would be rather disturbing for all the people at home who have told me they’ll be reading the daily Rally reports to wake up and see “Rally crew squashed when car rolls over them.”
“Our engine’s quit!” I shout to the marshals. “What do we do?” I am one unhappy navigator. Here I’d just begun to feel confident about the time control procedures and now I don’t even have a car for them to time.
“Just roll ’er on through,” is the nonchalant reply. “As long as she crosses the line, you’ll be noted as taking your start on time.” This seems a bit lackadaisical to me. Here I thought the Rally was about cars moving, not cars being moved. Never mind old assumptions. It’s their rules, not mine, and right now I’m glad the rules bend in my favor.
A course monitor initials my time card, the white flag drops, and we push Roxanne across the starting line, keeping our crawling momentum going till she is under the concrete awning of an abandoned gas station next door. That’s how we start our drive through Mongolia: on foot.
Minute after minute other cars are flagged off and lumber by us. I wave, projecting good cheer while inside I feel like I’m being twisted in two. I’m wondering how good Bernard really will be at fixing Roxanne on the fly. Maybe, without telling me, he’s testing himself to see just how much he can do. What if he can’t do it all? Each car that passes is one more car that will get to camp before us. Here I was just starting to feel like I had a comfortable space within this group, and now they’re all bypassing us. All I want at this moment is to keep up with the Joneses, all three hundred of them. After ten cars have gone, Bernard calls out from under the hood, “Got it. It’s minor, really. A linkage from the gearbox is out of adjustment. I can fix this in no time.” I don’t even realize I’ve been holding my breath till I exhale. “You are one swell guy!” I holler back. The problem he’s described means nothing to me. That he can fix it means everything. Another five cars and we, too, are back in business.
Sagging into my seat, I’m lavishly happy that we won’t have to spend the rest of the day trying to repair Roxanne at a bleak border station with no services. We’re in Mongolia for sure now, a place with a population the size of Brooklyn, in an area the size of Texas, California, and Montana combined, with West Virginia thrown in as a bonus. There’s literally no turning back, regardless of whether we want or need to. The organizers have told us that China will not let any of our cars reenter once we’ve exited. Seems like three days of foreigners driving helter skelter over their roads is as much as the Chinese could bear.
The first mile of Mongolian road is a concrete slab, built to imbue the border with a sense of modernity and permanence. Like many third world projects, this one never was finished. Either money ran out or drained straight into the contractor’s pocket, leaving the fine concrete with an eightinch drop to the sand. Given that cars are vastly outnumbered by people in these parts, the road has become a sidewalk. It looks like half the population of Mongolia is streaming toward the border, most likely having arrived here by cadged rides from Ulaanbaatar. In simple T-shirts, slacks, and loose flipflops, carrying cloth bundles or plastic shopping sacks, people weave and wander around us like a school of tropical fish through a coral reef.
We’re off into Mongolia, and this strikes me as a major event worth acknowledging. I’m already accustomed to the eager, excited crowds that mobbed our car at each fuel stop in China. I wave my arm out the window and some return the gesture, but most just walk by. Suddenly there’s a loud crash, followed instantly by a sharp bang. I hunch reflexively. As a child of the sixties, I’m a veteran of school air raid drills. I now execute a perfect duck, knees cradling my head, arms covering all. “What the hell was that?!” I shout from between my elbows, as Bernard shouts, “A rock. Someone threw a rock at us!” I peer up and see the windshield on Bernard’s side is a crazy blossom of cracks. Bernard keeps driving, giving me only a second to spot the culprits: a small group of cute tousle-haired young boys, who mockingly wave rock-filled hands. They’re laughing.
“Slow down, Bernard. I have to get out.” Bernard knows that I’m irrational and that rock-wielding kids are nothing to trifle with, so he does the smart thing. He speeds up. I yell at him to stop. He ignores me. Before I can even start fumbling at my seatbelt latch, the boys have faded into the flowing crowd of pedestrians.
As Roxanne thunks off the concrete pavement onto the sandy track that heads to the desert, I realize I must be ridiculously fragile. Something as modest as a rock thrown as a prank, as unimportant in the grand scheme of possible car problems as a damaged windshield, has thrown me completely out of kilter. Bernard, as I expected, stays calm. “Just drop it,” he says. “It’s done. Maybe we can get a replacement in Ulaanbaatar.” I could use some commiseration, but all he gives me is practical advice. I lower my head, nursing my wounded pride, and pick at the sparkling splinters of glass that glitter in my lap, souvenirs from where the sharp tip of the rock poked a hole in the windshield.
Three days in and I want to scream with vexation. Because it’s not about the windshield. It’s about that year and a half, and all our efforts to make Roxanne beautiful and worthy. If I cared to admit it, it’s also about my own efforts to see myself as worthy, to be the half that makes the two of us a whole.