Car Trouble Middle East, Turn Left, Turn Left, Oh Shit

This BMW was lent to us by my good friend Professor Orvosi Szolnoki from the department of meteorological studies in Budapest, we made it a short distance down the street before colliding with a lamppost.

We had to rent a car fast and all they had was this c-class mercedes which was comfortable while it lasted. We were rushing to Ferihegy International Airport in Budapest to catch our flight out to the middle east when this unfortunate accident happened to the driver Fehlender Gehirnmann and myself.

Rental car 200m from Damascus International Airport in Syria, minor damage according to our driver Fehlender Gehirnmann but we had switch rental companies at this stage.Rental car 200m from Damascus International Airport in Syria, minor damage according to our driver Fehlender Gehirnmann but we had switch rental companies at this stage.
This Nissan Suv took us another 70 kms before Fehlender Gehirnmann 'parked' it in this bus stop.

We rented this limo privately and made it as far as this wrong turn in Lebanon Mr Gehirnmann said that the road had been open the last time he had been here, clearly that is no longer the case.

More car troubles this time Fehlender blamed it on the rain, we are now black listed at Avis.

Amman Jordan Okay so we did swerve to avoid an animal (I didn't see it my self as by this stage I had a detached retina and a migrane)

Borrowed this vintage Cadillac in Madaba From Eugenio Barag, he was not happy, we are not on speaking terms anymore and we are short several vital pieces of equipment that you can't just buy from anybody.

Black Caddy Yes this was the one where we were all burnt by the hot coffee we had just picked up.

We managed to get this BMW from Eurpocar at very short notice, it was a bit flash but now it isn't



It started to become increasingly difficult to rent cars in Jordan for obvious reasons, but we found this small place that had a number of used but well looked after cars at good rates without, We borrowed this Lexus from them. The guy in the jeep was surprisingly not badly hurt, a couple of bruises and scratches, luckily he was traveling alone...

We then quite quickly went through these two large North American vehicles on our way to Saudi

Large Sedan 2 some pain and a burst ear drum. I started to feel that these North American cars are large and soft as opposed to their european counterparts which are smaller and harder.



3 more white sedans in Saudi Fehlender Gehirnmann's has concentration issues I think.

Luckly I was asleep in the back at the time but I decided it was time to let my driver go after this one.


We rented this Nissan Primera from Hertz in Riyadh, the new driver from The Munschk Centre Du Recherche Comprimée Avançée De Carbone, Nessun Vedere is not much better than Fehlender.

Hertz were quick to send out a replacement for the Nissan which lasted a few more hours... we called it bmw_3

This was the last car that we would break in the middle east it is another of those large softish US numbers.


Back Home, On the way back from the airport the mini-cab driver managed to miss his exit from this traffic circle. This one didn't hurt so much but I am through with road trips for a while.

I was greeted by these very friendly people when I had finaly got back to the office, which was nice.

Our recent seismic work has taken us to Siberia to try out a couple of deep crust blasting projects, mostly they went well

Jango Board-Weaver was our initial contact for our Siberian operation. He was the one who secured us the deep crust blasting certificates and generally got our most ambitious project off to a good start. Later on however our relationship soured over some unpaid parking fines and it became necessary to distance ourselves from him.

Later Marco Croûte de Monsieur took over the role of fixer, he was in pretty good shape as you can see from this pic, he never seemed to wear a shirt and yet the petty bureaucrats we encountered along the way never seemed to bat an eyelid.

The renown father and son team of blast watchers Poulios and Petrus Enflez were oiled up and on duty 16 hours a day. They primarily use the Cropenberger technique of peripheral blast watching although Petrus being younger sometimes uses a mid-finger mounted giegernometer as well, you can see him winding it up in this shot.

Marsh pools are sometimes an unfortunate side effect to our blasting activities but they only have a half-life of 1000 years or so, we believe that somebody will make a lot of money cleaning them up for us in the distant future, this is one of the ways we are contributing towards a stable and economically viable system. We have sold off a number of waste and damage futures over time to support our activities.

Antwon Spastique is currently supplying us with geothermal imaging equipment from a small lab he runs in Hong Kong, he happened to be in Siberia at the time on a long overdue vacation so we met up to exchange pleasantries and so forth.



These are some shots of our outdoor office at Tiksi, it has all the mod cons, gym fridge, tv although we could only get some dodgy siberian musical nudie game shows and a 24 hour golfing channel. Petrus became hooked on betting on the Siberian handicapped golf championship, which took place on the banks of Lake Ozhogino every year at this time.


RV problems - the roads in this region are more theoretical than anything else and anyway our driver Fehlender Gehirnmann is a bit over excitable, I told him to go left but he gave me the middle finger and went right, I never could stand that jeep anyhow.

This is Fehlender Gehirnmann explaining to the insurance agent why he chose to sink the jeep.

First blast test - this is a light pyrotechnic affair just getting the impact measuring equipment warmed up. We put Fehlender Gehirnmann's suitcase next to the charge, you can see his trainers flying up into the left-hand corner of the image. He had to wear cheap russian clothes for the rest of the trip - they were all synthetic and made him itch but it serves him right the bastard.

The blast sights, we were very pleased with our blast craters this time we are getting a consistent and fairly massive crater each time now and the project is looking promising, the feedback we are getting from Bernard Trier and his colleagues at Munschk Centre Du Recherche Comprimée Avançée De Carbone is to go deeper and harder to try to trigger some larger seismic shifts.

This is a deepcrust crater from our last visit, we are particularly pleased with it's slow rate of collapse.

This is a new device that is in early stages of testing but could turn out to be quite productive in urban situations. We call it the filtre venu massif effect and it works primarily in conjunction with liquids, it needs a surprising small amount of equipment to produce these kinds of effects and we have managed to keep the side effects well concealed so we are hoping for a public license for it soon.

This is the sunset after the day of principal blasting had been completed, I thought this view across Lake Ozhogino was spectacular, probably enhanced but some unstable isotopes floating around in the atmosphere as a result of our activities, which fortunately there is no real way of measuring so it usually is not ascribed to our activities.


After a tough day in the field what better way to unwind than watching the masked wrestling guilds contests at the Tiksi community center and downing glass after glass of yellow cabbage wodka and nibbling on dried musk rat feet.

The Tiksi surroundings are pretty bleak they have winter for 280 days of the year and the rest of the time it is just cold. This is the Tiksi High street

This is a picture of the local cow eating some mud and shit.

This is the courtyard of our accommodation, if you look carefully you can see the chef with his shotgun looking for something to shoot and call dinner. Aside from a single cow and a few musk rats there is not much formal agriculture in Tiksi.
What ever we don't want or don't think is safe we just chuck in this rusty old drum and leave it behind for some one else to clear up.

Tahiti Working Holiday

project tracking station

Our Hq Tahiti Harbour

Our Accomodation

lookout point

air based testing of secondary drop off point

Tribal dancing (nice for the tourists)

coastline

Post Drop Piscatore testing samples - (over ripe)

Autumn filter testing inland Tahiti

seismic testing zone

Switzerland, working holiday

Rons Recent trip to switzerland, it was mostly neutral, with some high's and lows.

We stayed in Das Großartige Hotel on the Straße äußern Sie Unsinn, that was the usual two star affair with a metal band staying in the room above us, so we didn't get a wink of sleep.

I went upstairs to complain after the second tv set was thrown out the window at about 3H30 am, and was given this photo of Gert Handschrift the lead guitarist from the band Die Zombieesser, as an apology and the they invited me in, the next thing I remember it was 3 o'clock the next afternoon. I just had enough time order my regular hangover cure, the raw egg with equal parts Tabasco and Worcester sauce in a martini that my grandmother used take after she had been out dancing all night with the Russians.

Luckily I made it in time to meet with my swiss agent on the banks of Lake Geneva, from there we made it by yatch and on foot to our offices high up in the Swiss Alps

This is a pic of our HQ high up in the swiss alps.

While we were working on our plans that you can see here, our colleague Rodney was conducting reconnaissance missions to find a suitable site for our seismic experiments.

Rodney, incognito.

This is X a person who from time to time supplies us with some useful logistical equipment, he likes to meet us at night because he has a peculiar skin condition and can't ever go out in day light, otherwise he is quite charming.

Here is a picture of the results of our Swiss Seismic experiment, initially it appeared quite successful compared with our recent swiss ventures but, we are awaiting the results from our labs to confirm this, we hope to have them by early 2008.

This was a picture of some unfortunate side effects of these recent experiments, no body count this time so it seems like our methods are improving.

After all this hard work I took a break and had a look at some of the overwhelmingly beautiful swiss scenery and contemplate some of the more challenging mountains for some later projects

A few calm days drifting around Lake Geneva

The Eiger's Mount

The Matterhorn