There are only two days left to finish everything, adrenaline is rising, chaos is (slowly) decreasing.
The good news:

• Michal returned from Australia and due to extensive jetlag he is very efficient (spends all the night working!)
• we got our sponsors’ stickers yesterday and the Beast is even more beautiful now (see below)
• nothing new broke during the last days (with the exception of the wipers, but this was fixed quickly)
• already before start we are becoming great improvisers: instead of fixing a broken horn, I decided to buy an air horn (the one used to make noise at soccer stadiums) and to attach it to the roof rack
• we are still receiving lots of donations, the basement of my house is again full of them, Michal will deliver the next load of boxes to the donation truck tomorrow
• my sister prepared a perfect emergency medical kit for us (it seems to cover any medium sized hospital’s needs for a year or two)
• blogging from our sat phone and even SMS blogging works, so you will have up to date stories every day

The bad news is that I am tied to the bed by flu, and will not be able to join the meet&greet party tomorrow night.
The official start is at 8am on Saturday at Budapest’s Heroes’ Square, join us if you can make it, it will be a big party with strange costumes and even stranger cars (rumors talk about a Trabant covered by grass, rusty old Polski Fiats, and a hovercraft joining the race).

Sorry for not having blogged more recently. As we are approaching the start date, more and more missing and still to do things pop up:

• the SMS to e-mail feature of our Thuraya sat phone doesn’t work. Spent half a night trying (most of the time outside at 1 degree below freezing, since a sat phone does not work indoor) but giving up now. We will have to connect with our notebook to the Internet to blog 🙁
• started to enter the waypoints of the stages into our GPS. Corresponding to the philosophy of the Budapest-Bamako there are not too many waypoints in the roadbook (we’ve got the coordinates of every corner of the Monaco Formula One racetrack, but for the offroad sections there are sometimes 3-4 points only). However Google Earth is perfect to fly over the stages and to add some more points. It’s a pity it doesn’t work offline.
• There are still some small things to be done in the car: add at least one more loudspeaker (there is only one working now) to enjoy music in stereo, mount the roof rack, etc.
• sort, label, pack the donations. The picture below shows what I did today: 20 boxes, more than 250kg. This is approximately 50% of the things we received. Computers, clothes, drugs. I will deliver them on Wednesday to the African-Hungarian Union, the organization running the truck which is accompanying the race. I hope they have enough space left for our stuff…

We proudly announce to have finalized our second charity project. We are cooperating with the Mali branch of SOS Children’s Villages International and donate computers, toys, and books to their schools in Bamako. Read more about the project on our Charity Page.