The next morning starts poorly. I’m in the lobby of our hotel extracting millions of Mongolian tugrugs from a willing ATM machine, when Franklin shambles over. He puts his arms around me in a droopy hug. “This is goodbye,” he says. He and Eduardo have retired from the Rally, their middle-aged Ford too rusty and leaky to continue. A Dutch couple, too, have retired, the entire chassis of their Bentley having cracked in half. All I have time for is a promise to keep in touch. We’ve fixed Roxanne, though not her windshield, and Bernard’s already waiting for me outside. As I carry our bags out I feel morose. I can’t help but think it should have been me leaving, not two crews who are more experienced than us. Yet here we are, ready to head back to the desert and six more nights of hard driving and camping.
As has happened on previous mornings, my services as navigator are not particularly necessary. That’s because the MTC is in UB’s Sukhbaatar Square, an immense gray quadrangle rimmed by austere, colonnaded Soviet-era buildings. The city elders have organized a major welcoming and bon voyage ceremony for us. It seems half of UB is streaming in that direction, so I close the route book and instruct Bernard to follow them. The morning is warm, and with the window open I can hear the ceremonial band playing syncopated versions of Beatles classics and an occasional Souza march from many blocks away. When we round the corner to the square, we see a parade ground so vast that the triple row of Rally cars parked on one side look like tinker toys. Across from them is a juryrigged bandstand draped with red polyester skirting. It’s replete with a full swing band of horns and percussion, and a mike at which stands a significant person declaiming good wishes to the assembled multitudes. At least, that’s what I assume he’s saying, since not only is the mike weak and the sound system crackling with static, but the official is speaking Mongolian. Townsfolk mill about, some in city clothes, others in embroidered silk tunics and brocaded caps. I open Roxanne’s door so a child can be placed on her seat and a photo taken. This time, though, I’m not invited to participate.
We’re only two days into Mongolia, and the struggle to get just to here has taken its toll. By now more than half of the cars that started the race have suffered one or more calamities. Many sank over their hubs in deep sand, where they wallowed like floundering mastodons till a faster, sturdier car arrived to pull them out. Some disintegrated, fenders and bolts launching themselves suicidally onto the dirt road, doors hanging crookedly off hinges, springs wheezing as the cars groaned over miles of washedout track. It’s not just vehicles that are in dire straits. Three crews broke up as well, driver and navigator brandishing one-way tickets home, fuming about how miserable the Rally turned out to be. One navigator simply abandoned his driver, leaving him to complete the remaining 7,000 or so miles alone. Everyone grumbles about how Mongolia is not what they expected. No one seems able to fathom how we’re going to make it to Russia, much less Paris.
If not totally cheery, I am basking in a pleasant sense of relief. Roxanne’s shock problems are fixed, and she again handles like a champ. When we leave UB, though, the initially alluring asphalt turns into a patchwork of potholes connected by fragments of tarmac, the damage done by a continuous flow of cargo trucks going to and from Russia. We try the dirt tracks next to it and find them smooth enough. Roxanne’s rugged off-road tires grip the loose gravel like suction cups, and as we surmount a low hill and plunge back down to the short-grass prairie, it feels like I’m on a sailing ship. Even the unremitting brownness can’t dampen my spirits. Though there’s still no place to stop for lunch, there are things to see besides rocks and dead grass. Herds of shaggy, brown and black cashmere goats browse by the roadside, shepherds on motorcycles moving them along toward the hills. Whirling dervishes of local sandstorms, which seem to twist up out of nowhere, whip across the road and hightail it for the horizon. I haven’t yet seen a Mongolian pony, but I’m hopeful. After all, if it’s true they outnumber people here thirteen to one, they must be somewhere.
We make quick work of a short time trial. Directions spew from my mouth like bullets from a machine gun. Bernard manhandles Roxanne’s bulk, swinging her left, right, charging forward, braking a split second before we have to make a hairpin turn, using centrifugal force to pull us around the badly banked, gravelly curve.
At camp that night, after dutifully signing in, I check the time trial rankings, set up on that red velvet bulletin board, which now stands in the organizer’s headquarters tent. What I see astonishes me. “Bernard,” I call as I run back to where Roxanne’s parked. “Guess how we did in the time trial.”
“We did well?”
“Better than well. We got in the top ten!”
He stands up and brushes his pants off. A big smile, the biggest I’ve seen in days, spreads across his tired face. “Ha!” he says. He’s never one to gloat, but the good news makes me feel talkative. I’m eager to find Robert and Maddy and Nick and Sybil, to see how they did and, yes, if the occasion arises, to share this tidbit of information about our accomplishment. A little gloating would do me good. After Bernard has finished with Roxanne and I’ve popped open our tent, we head for the dining pavilion, weaving through the colony of small tents that has sprouted, each one like a colorful mushroom growing next to a dusty car. People look up as we walk by, some wave, others nod hello. The camp has an aura to it. I think it’s shared pride, partly an unspoken acknowledgement that we are a select group doing a difficult thing, and partly silent relief that we are not among those crippled or broken down beyond repair. I still don’t know most of the competitors by name, which would have bothered me to no end before the race. Now, though, I feel I have my own small family. We gravitate to each other each evening, sharing stories and going over the next day’s route. We find each other in the dining tent, or, if not, look for each other strolling around the camp after dinner. There’s a double-helix binding all of us together, one strand joining people into groups, the other joining the groups into a whole. There’s no doubt that I’m part of a great enterprise, and even though when we’re driving during the day I feel as close to what I know of despair as I’ve ever gotten, in the evening the camaraderie in camp heals me.