Brake-down

So for the 3rd time the bus has now failed for it's brake imbalance, so it's really not a question of adjusting them, and in fact a closer look at the hubs indicates that something is leaking and contaminating the inside.

This could either be axle oil from the differential.
-The drive shaft sits in a hollow tube, the axle, which is full of oil, and at the end of the tube are seals that are designed to let the drive shaft spin, but hold in the oil. These rubber seals perish with time and age, and then leak oil out into the brake drums contaminating the them and preventing them from working properly.

Alternatively it's the brake fluid which is leaking out from the callipers and contaminating the shoe. Either way, the shoes will have to be relined or replaced as once they are contaminated there isn't really much you can do to resuscitate them.

Either way they have to be opened up and then the right parts replaced. Next MOT retest on Friday.

Where it began, I can't begin to knowin'

Over the last few days, I've spoken to as many of my neighbours as I have in the rest of the other 3 years that I've lived in this street. Everyone is very curious and intrigued by the bus. A lot have read about me in the past in the local paper so they've guessed that I am preparing for another adventure.

Today Junior my neighbour from next door, came to hang out in the evening in the bus and chew the fat. He'd come round this morning to see the progress too before setting off for work. Lynn from the other side is very jealous and now she want a bus made of rubbish. She's got a shower curtain for me.

A guy that was driving past stopped to ask me what it was all about and if I knew a mechanic that would look at this veg powered merc. I put him on to P. round the corner, who gave me the most lenient MOT on my car. I wish I could fit the bus in his garage. The double glazing fitter, Hamid from Afghanistan came over after spotting the rear window on the bus, and offered me some repair adhesive in case the tank has a leak. - He told me Baluchistan is really dangerous, and not to go there. And a guy from Guyana asked me all about it cos he wants to take a bus back home with him when he moves back after 20 years living in the UK.

My street is really friendly anyway, and maybe it's the summer effect too, but I think as much as anything it's the bus that brings out friendly side to people. Funny how vehicles can do that. Touching me, touching you...

Today I also learnt about a squatters commune in Zurich that are focused on recycling. They have commandeered a disused factory. It reminded me that although this is all new and exciting to me, actually there is a wide traveller community that out of financial necessity recycle, repair and generally make use of the stuff they find. I was tryng to think why what I am doing is different.

It reminded me of a story a friend John told me. He lived in a horse drawn trailer for a number of years, and wherever he parked little old ladies would bring him out a cup of tea or a freshly baked pie. Then he sold his trailer and horse and moved into a converted hippy bus. The same little old ladies would then call the police and tell him to fuck off when he tried to park in the same places.

I'm really keen to visit the Swiss community and see if there is something practical I can contribute to the group and learn from them.

Another week, another Euro.

Yet another week has gone by and it doesn't feel like I am any closer to departure.

Still no MOT although that should be sorted on Monday morning, and then I'll stop banging on about it.

Since last week the Graffiti Kings have sprayed the bus and it looks amazing, and the interior is coming along nicely. Ecovolt panels are powering the battery, the fridge is workinging, the sink and shower are in place though not plumbed in. The toilet just needs a low current fuse, and for the pee tube to be connected up to the waste tank.

The bus still needs finishing on the inside, with carpet, and the lighting circuit and holders need to be fitted to take the Good Energy LED bulbs (can't wait to see how bright they are).

Then I have to fit the engine conversion valves into the fuel lines, move the centrifuge to a higher position, plumb in the heat exchanger and check the integrity of the tank. I'm really worried it will have a leak and it's all so inaccessible now it will be a right bugger to fix if it does. Still, no point worrying about a solution until there is a problem.

Toying with the idea of delaying by another week, as I have realised I haven't sorted out any of my life while I'm going to be away. That would make departure a total of 3 weeks late, mainly due to the difficulty in MOTing a Camper/Tanker, but also due to my hugely optimistic estimates about how long it will all take to finish.

Despite the endless 16 hour days which I am loving, there don't seem to be enough days between now and leaving, to fit it all in. Plus now that Esther can only come for the first weekend, there is no longer any urgency. The only problem I have is the embarrassment of telling all the sponsors it's delayed again and having them think I can't even organise something as simple as packing my bags. The team at Eurotunnel have been great and have rebooked me twice now. I just don't have the heart to ask them again.

New tyres arriving today. Couldn't find retreads and everyone warned me that they would be unreliable so I am using new ones. The front ones are OK but 3 of the back ones are legal but too low for any long distance. I'm going to change all 4 and keep the good one as a spare. I did want to use Eco tyres but the sponsors fell through cos they decided it was too short notice. How ironic that the delay would have meant they probably would have been able to help out.

Another benefit of waiting one more week is that CDT and TVT have been testing a new engine modification which reduces emissions further, and this has now been certified as bringing engines in line with Euro 6 emissions standards. That's the standards that vehicles will have to meet by 2011. It's so new that the details of the standard is still be finalised. You can't even buy a certified Euro 6 vehicle today. The delay means TVT would have time to fit the modification to the bus and it would probably become the first Euro 6 vehicle in London, if not the world... Muahahahaaa.

Iran here we come.

The agent tells me I have been approved and my visa reference number for Iran has been issued. I still haven't seen it as the payment is being processed, but that really great news.

Evan at Archinoetics in Hawaii is developing the Epic Tracker, which will work in conjunction with our Solardata GPS tracker. The Epic Tracker brings together google earth maps and imagery with twitter, and the blog so you can see where I am, where I've been and what I was doing there.

It's a unique bit of interactivity for the website and I can't wait to see how it will look.

At the moment I left the GPS tracker on in my car, which is parked in Oxford at a friends place while I test out the battery life on a charge.

Tryin' to MOT a refurb, They said no no no.

Three times the bus has been refused a test now, not failed, but refused a test.

In the first place the guy said there would be a problem with the lack of seat belts, but he suggested using a loop whole that meant if the bus had 8 seats it wouldn't need them. This seemed strange to me, but it was confirmed by a call to VOSA. And has since turned out to be complete rubbish in so far as, if it has 8 seats or 1 seat, it doesn't need seat belts because of the age and weight.

But in the meantime we fitted 7 more seats (I was keen to let the composting toilet count as a seat but at that stage didn't want to take any more risks).

The first guy had just been granted his MOT license and it became clear he didn't really have the confidence in our bus and didn't want to test it in case he got into trouble if it was on the telly.

So we took it to test centre 2 who took one look at it and decided I was a no good gypsy traveller and came up with some BS excuse about their brake tester not being certified for the axle weight of the vehicle. Utter nonsense since they have been doing MOT's on heavy horseboxes and campervans for years.

So finally we decided the only way to get somewhere was to take it to a VOSA testing centre. These are notoriously strict government run centres for lorries, but at least the people there know the rules and won't turn you away if your vehicle looks a bit shoddy.

They refused us too. Reason: Vehicle unclassifiable. It still isn't fully finished inside and they said until it was a bit more tidy they couldn't test it. But they did give me permission to drive it anywhere in the country on that day. Apparently you can dive from Lands End to John O'groats on the day of your test. And they did give me another test date on the following Wednesday so I would have time to fit a permanent kitchen, and take out all those bloody seats.

The kitchen is now in, though I am still waiting for the woodgas stove from the US, so will probably fit a gas stove for the test.

The crazy thing was that the inspector told me it doesn't matter if none of it works, but it has to be permanently fitted. Leaving aside the existential question of how do you define permanence, the rules are so vague they don't even specify what has to be permanently fitted. So I was at the mercy of the discretion of the tester who by that time had entrenched into a position and wasn't going to allow it.

He also suggested that if I wanted to book a test in Folkstone on the day of my departure, I would be perfectly entitled to drive the bus on to the Eurostar and leave the country with it.

Depending on what happens at the retest I am seriously considering this.

In the meantime, the vehicle is parked on the street with no Tax. Where we live it isn't the only car without Tax, but we called the local neighbourhood watch police team to tell them about it and explain it would be gone by Wednesday. They keeled over laughing that we were warning them and said it was the least of their worries.

Today we are taking it to the Graffiti Kings workshop, where they are going to spray it, as long as it doesn't rain and when it goes back to the testing centre it should look a lot more presentable.

The Price of Recycling and Shopping

In terms of valuing objects, Recycling is the opposite end of the scale to consumption, but it's the same process.

I heard this great urban myth;

A couple go to the souk in Morocco on thier first day and buy a carpet, not realising they should barter over the price. They pay top dollar for the carpet and the salesman wraps it in a red bag and as they walk out of the Souk, every carpet seller tries to attract thier attention and show them more carpets.

The next day, they buy another carpet, but this time they haggle hard and the salesman wraps it in a black bag. On the way out of the Souk no one tries to call them into thier shop.

The couple never realise that the red bag marks you out as a high paying customer.

Its a nice story but it isn't true. The price of an object or service is determined not by the cost of production, but by how much people are willing to pay for it. If someone can make it and deliver it to consumers for less than they are willing to pay for it, the it gets made.

I learnt this in my first week of my engineering degree and I was quite put out by the idea that I might design a great product, but if it was too expensive to produce no one would manufacture it.

The price is set somewhere between the value of the product to the person selling it, and the value to person buying it, with each one asking themselves, "what is this worth to me?".

When a product get to a point where the answer to "What is this worth to me?" is nothing, it gets thrown out, but that broken or old object may still have a value to someone else. That's when it gets recycled.

Recylcing is ecconomically driven. Things arent recycled unless it's worth the recyclers while. Again they are asking themselves "what is this worth to me". That's why we recycle paper, metal and vegetable oil, but not building rubble, or plastics.

Gettin a visa card, now a days isn't hard.

I have a dislike of travel blogs that just talk about how they got thier visas from this embassy or that embassy, and how they were all really inefficient and the system is maddness.

Having visited Lunar house in Croydon, to get Esther's visa renewed in her Canadian passport, and having worked in the immigration service (albeit undercover for the BBC) I'm less inclined to criticise other countries' visa systems because the UK one is down thier with the worst of them, but much more expensive.

I had planned on applying for visas along the route, but in the absense of working on the bus, I've turned my attention to getting a visas with a total failure rate.

The tricky ones are Iran and I thouht to a lesser extent Pakistan.

Iran have issued an online visa applicaiton service which allows you to apply, and if you get it, they email you a refernece number which you can take to an embassy of your choice where they will then stamp the visa into your passport. Alternatively you can use a visa service which I might give better odds of being accepted. It's more expensive and there's no way of knowing if it's more reliable, but that's what I've chosen to do.

At the Pakistan embassy I got the shock of discovering that they weren't issuing visas for overland travel from Iran. They deem that the region is too dangerous to allow visitors between Bam in Iran and Quetta.

I wanted to find out if the border was open to road traffic. If the border is open, there is a chance that I could buy a plane ticket, get the visa and then a refund on the ticket, then go by road.

At the end of the Grease to Greece we were invited by the British Ambassador to the embassy for an official reception. The ambassador has now moved and is ambassador to Iran. I emailed him to ask about the border and although reading between the lines it seems like the border is open he made it very clear this border region, Balochistan, is rife with bandits/terrorists and if I was kidnapped or robbed there is very little they could do to help. He re-iterated the a FCO travel advice for the region.

He cc'd in an embassy contact in Pakistan who replied with a litany of kidnappings and terrorist strikes that had occurred over the last 12 months in that area.

At the same time, I read about a motorbiker that has just ridden along that route, and described military escorts along the route from Bam to Quetta providing protection for traffic and while I am writting I've just heard on the radio about the death of Baitullah Mehsud.

Hopefully over the next 2-3 month by the time I get there the situation will have calmed down, and if not I'll have to look at an alternative route through, Turkmensitan and into Russia. This will be terrible as it will mean missing out India and Sout East Asia. Heading into the cold climate of Russia will cause real problems with the waste vegetable oil solidifying.

I'll know if I've been accepted for the Iranian visa in the next 2-3 weeks. I'll know about the Balochistan when I get to Iran.