Happy Holidays from the Terranauts

Merry Christmas from the Terranauts! We are on the road from Fes to Marrakech. Rufus Wainwright is on the stereo, and it has been a mellow Dusty day so far; our only a contretemps was getting locked out of the car thismorning, but that was okay because our window pops out with a bit of bendy wire.

After dashing through France and Spain, we feel much more athome in Morocco because everyone thinks Dusty is a taxicab. We are hailedconstantly, “sorry, we’re not a taxi!” White Mercedes W123s are the most common car on the roads here and Moroccans will pat her on the back and people will with knowing affection how good a machine our Dusty is.

We are charging hard to Marrakech, where we hope to meet up with the other rally teams for the first time. We were supposed to meet in southern Spain for the ferry to Morocco, but some inevitable repairs set us back almost an entire day. Dusty dropped her exhaust in front of a trucker’s restaurant/hotel on Wednesday night, luckily only 10km from a Mercedes-Benz garage. They also repaired our hydraulics, which lifted up Dusty’s back end and made her into the smooth-cruising honey we are sailing in tonight.

Dusty’s two other breakdowns have also come in convenient places: “Dusty’s luck”. When a certain smell of burning rubber turned out notto be from the truck ahead of us, but the rich black smoke billowing from our right front tire, the team of locals who rushed to our aid sent us to a mechanic less than a mile down the road. He diagnosed jammed brakes and went into hammer the disk straight.

Of course, the bent disk was due to a minor incident on a high Atlas mountain pass, where under challenging driving conditions one of theTerranauts sent Dusty sliding gently into a drainage ditch. We’re not saying which one, but evidentiary photos are reminiscent of a New York City parking job.

But no sooner did Dusty deposit her nose downwards than helpful Moroccans appeared from all directions,which was refreshing in the Rif valley because everyone else there wants to sell you hash.

The brake job was cheap, and we sweetened the transactionwith a few YouthAIDS dogtags, which are proving to be the coin of our mobile realm.We have 1,000 of these shiny necklaces in the trunk, and they are charms which open conversation and ease our passage. The Moroccans love them, and we have given them to guides, mechanics, parking attendants, hotel managers, road saviors, and anyone who asks about the car or shows us a simple kindness, like the gas station mechanic who gave Emily two bright oranges as she waited in the car.

We gave tags to Omar the olive oil presser as well. I’ve never seen olive oil fresh from the press before, and when Omar handed me aliter of the divine stuff, deep green and cloudy with life-giving properties,and wanted only $6 in return, Emily and I had to show that our appreciationwent further than the price at hand. Out came the tags, and within a minute tenmore people had appeared, smiling and asking for one. But the point of the tags is to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS, and so there by a roadside oil press in the middle of the Atlas mountains, Emily engaged Omar and his friends in a serious conversation that they were ready to have. “Yes,” said Omar, who is no olderthan 35, “I know AIDS is a serious problem, and especially a problem here inMorocco. But no one talks about it.” One of his friends was in the Moroccan army, and told us that the military was just starting to warn its soldiers of the dangers of contracting AIDS. There was much more to say, but that small opening was enough, and we had to be on our way.

There is also much more to write, but…our exhaust just felloff again and is dragging in the road! There are sparks flying out behind thecar and we are pulling over…amazing. Already a Moroccan man has stopped to help…he pulled over as soon as he saw the sparks. Dusty’s Luck! More next time….

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Best,

Jimmy