Jump to content
  •  
Advertise here

Confessions


Barry

Recommended Posts

Ok so let’s hear some car related confessions

 

My first, me and my friends bought a Volvo 340, way before any of us was old enough to have a licence. It was my turn to drive one night. I launched off a huge jump, missed the corner and landed half way up a telegraph post and knocked it over. There were no phones in my village for 3 months and to this day, nobody knows who did it. 

  • Like (+1) 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I was first starting off my safari career and I hardly could drive on sand. There was a big group and right with all the senior management also in the camp which was very rare to see things went smoothly, but as soon as the guests arrived the camp generator died and there was a huge panick and no matter what it refused to come on. There was a spare generator but that was at a new camp site being built and none of the drivers knew the location of the new site. I had been there only once seeing this as my chance to prove my worth ans to make inroads into company to get more work. I said Ive been there and can bring the generator. I had been there once, but hardly knew my way around the desert or knew how to drive on anything but tracks

So the manager handed me his keys and like a super hero I took the land cruiser pickup both fuel tanks topped up as far as the needle can go because he had a company fuel card and kept what ever car he was driving always topped uo anyways so started up and got on my way.

Our camp was exactly on the spot where emarat petrol pump on maliha road is after the bridge and the road ended at the bridge, but the road to maliha was being constructed and the bull dozers had just leveled out the sand on what today is the maliha kalba road. 

Me being a noob had no idea how soft bulldozed sand is. Less than a km out I got on to the bulldozed track and the pickup sank up to its axels in powered sand. I had seen a few peope rocking the car to get out so tried that to self recover. Nothing I tried and tired but nothing, dug as much as I knew but. Car wouldnt budge, dunno how much time had passed but it was quite dark by then and I knew even if I got out now I woild for sure get lost in the dark as I barely knew my way around in the day. 

And if I called someone to help me out I knew it would be the end of my safari career for doing something as stupid as jeopardizing such a big operation.

I heard the call to prayer over my car radio and I made a very deep prayer that please god save me skinand get me out of this situation and save whatever credibility I have left. 

And gave it one more try and like a miracle the car came out but by now it was pretty dark and alot of time had gone by I knew I still wouldnt be able to get the gene. 

Then my phone rang...gulp. I picked it up out safari manager asked where are you I said Im almost at the new campsite. He said no need now as they were able to fix the generator and get it running and told me to comeback eveb though I lied and said I can bring the other gene just in case because I was almost there. TOTAL LIE, but he said no need come back as the pick up is needed.

I also knew our manager was a very smart fox. So what I did was put the car in low and really ripped around the sand in 1st and 2nd for a good while until I had used up half a tank of gas and then went back to the camp and handed him the keys back.He thanked me and said good job. But I kept my eye on the car and later in I saw him checking then fuel gauge on the car.

So that was ne saving ny safari career before it ended by lying through my teeth and some devine intervention.

Oh and just for reference the new campsite was in the area opposite the bidayer shops where you take the tunnel underpass to head into the desert. So quite a drive from Kalba gas station to there, specially for a newbie on his own

And this is just one of the many stories I have in this field. Sometimes I think I could write a book just on such events.

 

  • Like (+1) 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Well you all know from my first post. I grew up in the mountains. There wasn’t much to do. At the weekends we would all put our money together and buy a scrap car and rally it until it died. 

There was this one mountain road many people used to rally scrap cars on. Google Benbradagh army base if you’re interested. It was a single track road but it was tarmaced. There were no houses on the road so it was a 2-3 mile stretch people could go and have fun with no worry of police coming. 

I had been going there for years. Never had any trouble. I was like 14-15 at the time. 

One weekend we bought a Lada Riva for £50 (250 dhs). Brought it to my dads shed and welded the diff so it was a drift machine. My granny beat my ass for driving past her house at 160kph but that’s a different story. 

Anyway, this road was open and always empty so everyone went there to have some fun at the weekend. 

We decided to bring this one guy with us one weekend. He paid his £10 share. 

When it was his turn to drive, he veered off the road at every opportunity and smashed every farmers fancy wooden gate. 

This incident lead to the whole road being blocked off by a massive steel barrier at the bottom. 

That guy hecked up fun for a hundred young petrol heads in my area. 

I will tell the digger story at a later date. Needless to say he was ostracised and ignored and had to move to the city. 

  • Like (+1) 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Barry said:

 

One weekend we bought a Lada Riva for £50 (250 dhs). Brought it to my dads shed and welded the diff so it was a drift machine. My granny beat my ass for driving past her house at 160kph but that’s a different story. 

Was there a strong wind blowing downhill, and did your granny (bless her heart) by any chance live at the bottom of the hill the wind was blowing down? :-D 

 

  • Like (+1) 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I stand by my comment. It was showing an indicated 100 mph on the clocks. Ok, so maybe with adjustment it might be 90 mph but trust me, my granny beat my ass with a stick so hard that I am still traumatised to this day. 

  • Haha (+1) 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My house was built at the bottom of an old ice age glacier so there was a massive sand pit maybe 1000 metres up in the mountain. Not many people knew about it because it was so isolated but some of the old school guys used to come up with horse and cart and dig out sand to make cement. It was a great place for rabbits so we used to go up sometimes and shoot a few for lunch. We all had bikes so we used to see who could race the furthest up the sand slope without falling off. 

Anyway,

this one guy was with us before. Same guy as last time. There was an old atlas digger abandoned in the pit so we fired it up and made a few jumps for the bikes. 

This guy jammed the throttle wide open and set the digger to spin at full speed so nobody could get into it and switch it off. 

The digger ran for 3 days straight until the diesel was almost gone and the owner discovered it. 

He cursed us up and down and told the whole village how his digger ran until the manifolds were red hot. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

this is one of the days in when the road to jebel jais was still in papers and not in real there used to be a beaten path up till wadi beah i guess it was 98 or 99 eid time i with a group of friends had my dads trusty corolla 86

we want up to wadi beah it was winter time and the place was just full of fog  so dense we couldn't see a flying fuck anywhere so some were spooked and some were just in for the sake of fun of it we had planned to spend the night there in the wadi so were prepared with some lenins and covers and bbq stuff when we reached and spread the sitting and water was just condensing on top of everything we couldn't even start a fire and gave up and then after having chit chat about things and started to just doze off it was really cold there in sometime later in the night i woke up to a wired sound my eyes opened and i am just trying to feel my friends nearby as i could see anything. there was no one in the blanket everyone just jumped in the car and had the heater running

 we then packed up and made a run back and some times later on i mentioned that i woke up to a sound which they spooked one then related to we never stopped by for the night in that area....

P.S :i got my D/L sometimes in 2014...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wadi beah is a strange place and a lot of strange and unexplained things have happened there, some I have seen myself and some Ive heard directly from people who lived there.

I'll write in detail of one the stranger things Ive seen later on, 

It's from the time when it was totally open and ypu could enter from Dibba and do the entire track and exit from Ras Al Khaimah. We use to call it the grand canyon tour. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of use