Soooo, which charity you gonna support this year? Who you gonna bung fifty quid to cover the guilt over the festive consumption?

Send a Cow sounds like a pretty good one to me. Or, you could do it the complex and fun way. Via Sortapundit.

Yes, he’s off on the Mongol Rally in the summer and the money raised will go to Send a Cow. He doesn’t, as yet, have the requisite sponsorship to even enter but I’m sure we’ll soon solve that. I’m kicking in a free BlogAd (once Chris Mounsey has worked with him to design one) and that wouldn’t be a bad idea at all for all of us in the UK BlogAds Network. We’ve all got free spaces there after all.

I’ll also be making a cash donation of course, as I hope others will.

Looks like I might also be posting their adventures as they travel…depends on whether they can get good net access, in which case they’ll do it themselves, or only mobile phone, in which case I will.

I’ve not driven that far east although back in 1991, over Christmas, a couple of friends and I did go from Bath to The Ukraine. Fun times indeed, including things like staying in a student hostel in Prague. On the women’s floor, as that’s where the spare room was, which made the morning communal shower rather interesting.

We’d been bet, in a pub of course, that we couldn’t make it in a car worth less than a hundred quid. The purchase of a Daf 66 with the rubber band Variomatic Drive and we were off, losing the exhaust pipe entirely on a level crossing coming down into Czechoslovakia from the German border (past innumerable hitch-hiking teenage ladies who must have been awfully cold in their skimpy party clothes).

As we didn’t actually have visas for the then Soviet Union the Hungarians didn’t want to let us across the bridge at Chop (we were there on Christmas Day…and the battery contacts had got loose so that the alternator wasn’t working. We spent some time in a completely dead car then some nice Russian Mafiosi types tried to tow start us. Can’t do that with an automatic although we didn’t know that. Then one of us was taken off by some nice Hungarians to a garage…..he was fed Christmas lunch while they looked for a battery and the other two of us sat in the car in the snow. All sorted eventually.) but we said that we were fine with being turned back on the other side, just wanted to get into the Ukraine, even if only 50 yards.

So they let us through. We were indeed then turned back. One of us (who is now a senior Unilever exec, just shows you who actually runs the corporate world) didn’t really get how to use body language. He thought he was miming dodging behind a bush for a pee. The (armed) border guard thought he was offering a quick screw as a bribe to get us across the border. He would be one of the few conscripts not into cottaging really wouldn’t he?

Back over the bridge. Hungarian border guard this time, the one who had let us through 20 minutes previously. So, you drove all the way from England just to get turned out of the Ukraine then, eh?

Yup.

Over Christmas?

Yup.

Why?

For a bet.

How much for?

A pint of beer.

Fuckin’ English.

The car finally died in Szeged (although not before future senior Unilever exec had tried to take us across the bridge into Yugoslavia. You could just about hear, when the wind was in the right direction, the artillery at Vukovar (?) at the time) so we took the number plates off, gave the keys to a drunk on the corner and took the train home.

Ah, happy days.

As Keith writes vastly better than I do I’m looking forward to his reports from the road. Send money now!