In the couple of days we have left in Beijing before the Rally begins, there’s rarely a minute that the upcoming race doesn’t find a crack in my enjoyment through which to squeeze its large body and take over the view. The refrain “what if ?” plays through my mind like a stuck record. I know from the past year and a half that if something’s running fine it’s simply an invitation for that something to break down. So even though I can say Roxanne runs fine I always have to append “for now.”
Bernard comes down with a hacking cough. We blame it on air pollution. Beijing is the world’s biggest boom town. Each day 1,200 new cars are added to the choking traffic on city streets. Everywhere, construction cranes like giant praying mantises scratch a turgid sky. The scaffolding of those partially built skyscrapers is an exoskeleton blurred by a brown blanket of smog. I thank goodness I’ve lived so long in Colorado, so I have a trunkful of memories of vivid blue sky to paste onto the beige facsimile I see here. That still leaves the local sun to deal with. It’s a pale disk made white by the smoke of coal-fired power plants fueling the city’s insatiable demands.
Discarding the air pollution excuse I decide the cough is his allergic reaction to my constant tension. He never gets sick, and it seems too farfetched that he’d do so now. Besides, aspirin has done nothing for him. As for me, the extent to which the pollution makes me feel ill is a welcome distraction from the jittery anxiety that besets me once we drop our guidebook in the room and arrive at the formal Rally briefing, along with 250 other drivers and navigators. This is it. The main event is about to happen and it starts here, in this stuffy, windowless hotel ballroom with row upon row of hard chairs facing a low stage. The next three hours are my cram course in rallying. “Focus, Dina,” I scold myself. “This is important stuff.”
There’s a problem, though. My mind is already chock full of imagined concerns. Actually, there are only three, but each one has so many permutations that anything factual will have to squeeze into the nook I prefer to reserve for essential information, like the time of my next pedicure appointment. There’s the “We’re hopelessly lost” worry, the “Our car’s broken down” distress, and the “I have chronic diarrhea” horror. This last one is perhaps the worst of all, what with its attendant image of classic cars circling round while I squat, pants around ankles, unsheltered in the Gobi desert. Not only this, but I’ve seen that the organizers are all driving bright red, new Toyota trucks, which are four-wheel drive. They’re air conditioned, too. I’ve started to wonder what they know about the route that we don’t. I also can’t stop the thought that perhaps I could persuade one of them to trade with me, on the grounds they’d have more fun than I riding in Roxanne.
The Rally medical officer takes the microphone first. He’s not reassuring, divulging dire warnings in precise detail about all manner of health hazards on the road ahead. It’s a small sop when he announces the hours we’re allowed to crawl to his hotel room to plead for assistance or drugs. I reread the list of what’s in our first-aid bag to console myself that the sheer vastness of its contents will keep me safe. It’s stuffed with items for every possible malady I can think of, plus some I’d rather not dwell on. I have five variations on a theme of antibiotics, for everything from stomach ailments to eye and dental problems, plus skin diseases. I have packets of hydration salts in case we forget to drink during the day, along with muscle relaxants and narcotic-strength painkillers saved from various operations. I’ve even brought the morphine pills prescribed for my dog when he was succumbing to bone cancer. There’s a supermarket aisle-worth of remedies for colds and cuts, including one of every type of analgesic and every size of Band-Aid, moleskin, and blister coverage, plus throat lozenges, oil of clove for toothaches, cough syrup, and cortisone anti-itch cream. And that’s for the mild medical problems. For serious ones, I have a plethora of gauze pressure pads and tape to hold it in place, specialty tweezers and hemostats for drawing sutures, a canula, two bags of IV solution, and, thank goodness, a sterilized face mask in case I need to be attached to an oxygen tank. If I do get stuck in the Gobi, I can always set up a rural clinic.
What bothers me, though, are those tweezers, a constant reminder that I wince when I have to extract a splinter. Does this man sincerely expect me to insert a central line and begin stitching up the agonized victims of a major car crash? Thankfully he relieves me of heaping this on top of all my other worries. “If you’re the first car on an accident scene, I’ll need you to give me your medical kit as soon as I get there,” he says. “So I have your supplies in addition to mine. I don’t want to alarm you, but it’s possible the smashed car would be in such a jumble it’d be impossible to find their medical kit. And, um, they might well be in no condition to tell me where it is.”
“Well, what a relief,” I think.
The mechanics, including Betty, a grandmotherly sort with short gray hair who’s reputed to be the best of the bunch, explain the sign-up procedures for getting our car triaged when it falls apart. “We’ll set up shop in the hotel parking lot each evening. When we’re in Mongolia you’ll find our van on the periphery of each camp. Just come over, tell us what the problem is, and we’ll put you on the list. There’s five of us, so we should be able to handle whatever you throw at us. Oh, but please don’t actually throw things at us.” Everyone titters nervously. “We hate that, especially when we’ve been up for 36 hours towing in bashed Rally cars.” They’ve all assisted on rallies before and sound determined to be fair, given quantities of frazzled drivers clamoring for help. Novice that I am, I believe them. Only later do I learn how little of what I envisioned about the P2P bears any resemblance to reality.
Next, the course marshals give us an overview of time trials, time controls, and passage controls, as well as what to do at the FTC at day’s end. They sound like my meager pamphlet; maybe they wrote it. Not to be outdone, the lead route surveyor illuminates just how unprepared I am, because while I have read the terms he uses, I’ve never actually collected them all at one time: “Bring your GPS to that table,” he says, pointing toward the back door, “and we’ll download waypoints and coordinates for the entire course. There are over two thousand of them, but if you bought the unit we recommended, they’ll all fit.” We didn’t. We bought a different GPS, one with a large screen, as a sop to my near-sightedness. I’ve decided contact lenses are a recipe for an eye infection and glasses would only get dusty, smeared or, worse yet, broken. It’s either read what’s displayed with my naked, squinty eyes, or get lost. Now, though, my vision may not even be the main problem. “And don’t forget your route book! They’re full of tulip diagrams, all the controls are noted, and, of course, incrementing and decrementing mileage. We’ve also given you some extras, a bit of local history and such, what to see on your days off. Even a few of our favorite restaurants.” All of these things are my responsibility. Here I was still vaguely hoping I was just along for the ride.
Not one of these presentations is about anything I’m familiar with. Our plans for practice rallies had gone up in the same smoke as our schedule for a six-month turnaround on Roxanne’s rebuild. I am now two days away from the start of the Rally, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. I haven’t had any practice, and I’ve never looked at a route book. Worst of all, I haven’t had any room in my tired brain for thoughts of what this Rally will require. Sure, I understand the words “route” and “book.” I learned those words from my Rally pamphlet. The dictionary definition of “medical kit” and “car problems” are clear. I don’t need my advanced degree to know what those words mean. I feel like I’ve been playing a mental version of the card game Concentration for months. I turn over a card with a rally word I recognize, then search for the card that illustrates how that word relates to what we’ll be doing. I’ve yet to figure out what a matching pair looks like.
All of this is terribly unsettling, and to make matters worse, I seem to be alone in my incompetence, because all around me people are nodding and some even dare to laugh, as if being explained something as elementary as a time trial is beneath them. When we first landed in Beijing, I didn’t think anything could feel more foreign, but now it’s as if I’ve transferred to Mars. I am so alien from those around me that I can’t fathom how to walk or talk like them. It’d be humbling if it weren’t so alarming.
We sit and fidget as a nattily dressed Frenchman approaches the mic. His air of incontrovertible authority is bolstered by a pale lavender silk handkerchief peeking from the breast pocket of his bespoke suit. This man is the arbiter of classic car authenticity, here to explain scrutineering. That’s the pre-Rally inspection certifying that each car’s components are indeed what they were originally intended to be when the car was built. The word scrutineer is so weirdly retro, especially when spoken by a haughty Frenchman, that I have to stifle a weak guffaw. I turn to Bernard and whisper, “Saying, ‘We’ll check your cars thoroughly’ would do, don’t you think?” Bernard shushes me. His own accent is such that this man has his natural sympathy. And then there’s the small matter that if we don’t pass scrutineering, we don’t race.
All fidgeting ceases when a man with a pot belly and bandy legs heaves himself off his chair and walks with slightly crooked back to the microphone. His lank black hair is plastered to his head, his button-down shirt rumpled and spilling out of his trousers. This is the British organizer himself, veteran competitor of many a ruthless rally. Also veteran of too many crashes, as his stiff walk attests. His small eyes shrewdly scan the crowd for a long, silent minute before he says, “Each one of you must give thought to what you’re doing here.” He pauses for effect. “Are you going for a gold medal, and will you do all you can to make your start time every morning from here to Paris? If so, we salute you.” His voice is pompous and aggressive. “Mind though. If a bronze is OK with you, there’s nothing wrong with that. No shame there. That’s why we made them!” He laughs loudly at his own joke and appears to hitch up his trousers, though perhaps he’s rubbing his aching back. “We suggest you discuss this with your team mate. Be in agreement on how you’re going to run, because the bronze means simply that you clocked out here in Beijing, clocked out again in St. Petersburg, and crossed the finish line in Paris. So talk it over. Make your decision now, not when you get in trouble down the road.”
He sounds like he’s scolding us. I feel a flush rising, expecting that at any moment the organizer will point to me. “You!” he’ll shout, and haul me up on stage from where he’ll reveal me as the imposter I know myself to be. I’ve had no time to become savvy about time trials and route books filled with instructions and symbols. I never learned enough about mechanics to be a full partner with Bernard on matters of engine difficulties. My understanding of the GPS is superficial at best, and as for everything else, I am a sailor cast overboard by a rogue wave, flailing in a deep ocean, hoping something, anything, will arrive to save me.
My mother used to say I was a good girl, that I did as I was told. She was wrong. I attribute that to the blindness of motherly love, rather than an unwillingness to acknowledge all the times I argued with her and pointedly did the opposite of what she asked. In truth, I’ve always found it weirdly satisfying to do the opposite of what’s expected. I love bucking conventions. At a childhood party, when I realized my plastic spoon was flexible, I used it to slingshot chocolate ice cream in the birthday girl’s face. In college, when everyone else was pulling an all-nighter after too many nights of partying, I happily went to bed at ten, my work done well ahead of time. Still, at this moment, the organizer’s mandate to make a decision on how we’ll do the Rally is an order I want to follow. It’s the life line for which I’ve been casting about. I turn to Bernard and say, “Bronze.” Before the word is even out of my mouth, Bernard says, “Gold.”There it is in hard metallic terms. For me it’s a journey, for Bernard, a race. I want to get through it. He wants to win.