Maxima's Column "Special Edition" 2004/01/19 First, please look at a complete view of Nissan's vivouac. You can see Nissan Pickups in far at the center and Nissan Rally Rail Team's tents (These are the same ones that I use.) in near the left side. (Please drag the bar below the picture to scroll the view) I will relate my experiences in this year's Dakar Rally with excerpts from my diary, and show you how my appearance changed during the rally! December 28, 2003 The night before my departure. I take a picture in my office in Tokyo's Ginza. What sort of effect will the Dakar have on my life…? I am keyed up before my big adventure. December 31, 2003 (New Year's Eve) I am at Clermont Ferrand for the vehicle inspections. I am surprised just how popular Vatanen and McRae are. The start tomorrow is finally upon us. January 1, 2004 I went to bed early last night so today I got up at 4 a.m. First I want to tell my readers about what sort of things I packed for Dakar and also I must rearrange my luggage, which has increased, so I spread it all out and take a picture of it. After that, I write in the hotel lobby while waiting to ambush some interview victims. However, later I find out, to my continuing chagrin, just how difficult it is to snare drivers. January 2, 2004 In the prolog last night, Kenjiro Shinozuka recorded the fastest time, just as he did last year, so today he started in pole position. However, during the second stage it snowed. Already, the hiking shoes I bought for the trip are muddy. Giniel's crash was probably a result of the high spirits of youth. January 3, 2004 At the airport, I check in at Liberian Airlines. At that time it is discovered that my luggage has no tags. During the haggling with the airline people, I somehow manage to get the tags. So I avoid losing the toilet paper that is the most important item on the Dakar Rally. January 4, 2004 I arrive at the bivouac in Africa. I start preparing to connect to the Internet, but waiting my turn for the special network settings results in the loss of half a day. Morocco is warm during the day and you are okay with a sweater, but the nights are really freezing. January 5, 2004 I have lunch as usual. I write at the media center. The competition vehicles will be returning at around 5 o'clock so I head to capture an interview. Ari and Colin give me the slip and I can get only the other team members. Representatives of the vehicle makers are not allowed anywhere near the stage so I can see only the airport and the bivouac where I work. It doesn't feel much different to any ordinary business trip. I have a chance to go up in a balloon and get a bird's eye view of the bivouac. January 6, 2004 The morning was quite cold. I went out to relieve myself at around 5 a.m. and got back into my sleeping bag. It was so cold I was still shivering even inside the sleeping bag. I go back to sleep. At around 6, the tent was billowing and flapping as if in a gale. It looked like it would blow away. I had just woken up so didn't know what was happening. The problem was the air blasting out of the jet engine of a plane. In the future I will pitch the tent out of the way of the jet engines. January 7, 2004 I draft an interview with Ikemachi and Mitsuhashi. They are a contrasting pair. Ikemachi is the older brother and Mitsuhashi is the younger brother. Ikemachi is breezy and cheerful, while Mitsuhashi is an introspective, nice guy type. It seems that Ikemachi's stopping to help Vatanen yesterday will become an issue. I'm sending back interviews with Ikemachi and Mitsuhashi to try and give them a higher profile in Japan. January 8, 2004 Busy making up for time lost in writing about other matters, I have neglected my diary for six days. Now it's already the 14th as I write this. At Tan-tan, Tidjikja, and Nema, we had lots of swirling grit and a strong wind so it was very unpleasant. It was warm enough to go about in a T-shirt, but even when you took a shower you were covered in grit and your hair was wiry. When you wiped your face with a wet tissue, the tissue turned completely brown. If wiping your face in Tokyo caused a tissue to turn brown you would be very surprised. But here it's normal. Our only hot showers were in Tan-Tan; after that we only had cold showers. In today's stage 8, Ikemachi did not return. January 9, 2004 In the morning, I went looking for Mitsuhashi but he still hasn't returned. Unlike Mitsuhashi, Ikemachi has started to have a good rally. His stopping for Vatanen has had bad consequences for him, but by stage 7 he was 48th overall, and at the close of stage 8 he had clawed his way back to 37th overall and 4th in his class. In stage 9, he was 23rd overall. Taking pride in strength in adversity, Ikemachi is moving up the field with tenacious driving. If he had not stopped for Vatanen, he would now be competing for the lead in his class. I told Ikemachi not to look back, but even I am regretting his action. Well, we can't undo it now. January 10, 2004 We have arrived at Bamako. What a good climate! There is no wind, and no sand flying around. For the last three days, I have not been able to peg the tent because four centimeters below the sand is a rock base. So it has been hard work looking for large, heavy stones to hold the tent down. Today, though, I was able to pound the pegs into the ground with a stone. But today was quite hot. I was pretty tired when I arrived at Bamako. While I'm not sleeping I'm packing up my things, waiting for the plane, or doing my work. It's a pretty busy schedule. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had anticipated that I might have a good vacation though… January 11, 2004 I arrive at Bobo-Dioulasso. Today I was happy about staying in a hotel, but that joy was short-lived. I was told: "If you want to stay in the hotel, there is a room for you, but it's smelly and you couldn't stand it for long. It would be better for you if you stayed in your tent." My joy and enthusiasm instantly drained away. Somebody had evidently covered the walls and floor of the hotel rooms with some pungent chemical, and that was creating a terrible stink. Probably they had wanted to clean up the rooms for the important guests. January 12, 2004 I'm so busy this doesn't seem like a rest day! I planned to interview various people before but couldn't find the time to talk to them. So with everyone hanging around the service area on their rest day, I thought I'd get all the interviews done at once. So I was running around doing interviews all day and didn't have a rest day. January 13, 2004 I return to Bamako. Today is a hotel day! Physical and mental fatigue are building up so I couldn't get much work done. I finished early and went to the hotel. When I reached the hotel I was invited by the drivers to eat with them. Suppressed my desire to have a shower and sleep, and joined everyone in the hotel restaurant. Sitting around the evening meal table that day were all the drivers and navigators in the Nissan team — an illustrious group. But I just wanted to have a shower and crawl into bed. After several beers I was shattered. After the meal, I had a shower finally, and the water was brown as usual. Then I had a bath and got to bed about 10:30. January 14, 2004 In today's special stage, the Nissan team came 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. I had planned to interview McRae but he had a shower, a massage, and went straight to bed. I still haven't got my answers. I'm good at putting the tent up now but today's attempt was a failure. Today I thought I'd found a good place to pitch the tent but around nightfall the motorcyclists, overflowing from the service area, came and sat down right by my tent. There must have been something wrong with the bike engines because they were revving them all night. It was pitch black so I didn't want to move the tent. January 15, 2004 I'm feeling despondent about going to Tidjikja. Just when I was thinking that I don't want to go there ever again, we received a weather forecast from there. There was heavy rain in Tidjikja and the ground is muddy and marshy. I had thought that Tidjikja could not be any worse than last time but now it seems to be even more hideous. I was thinking about how I would put my tent up and whether I should change my shoes, but when we got to Tidjikja the rain stopped. Here and there, the ground was wet, but probably because the desert is so absorbent, it was not muddy. Rather, because rain had fallen there was no dust and it was quite comfortable. The temperature was also nice and warm and it was pleasant. Today, I finally matched schedules with Colin and got my interview. Although I had quite a lot of questions, he went out of his way to answer them all. He is always a gentleman. January 16, 2004 I got on the plane and arrived in Nouakchott. I reached the hotel at 2:30 in the afternoon, arranged my things, and got the mud and dust out of my bag. When I was in my room, the door suddenly opened and the boy tried to bring other guests in. He didn't even bother to knock. The other guests were BMW's Luc Alphand and his navigator. There was just me in a twin-bed room, so I asked to be moved to a single. The new room was a large suite with three rooms, two toilets and two TVs. I was only intending to sleep so it didn't make any difference. January 17, 2004 I woke up at 7:30 in the morning. The plane was due to leave at 8:00. Robyn, the therapist, happened to be there and I asked to share her taxi. It would have been terrible to miss the plane. I don't know how many flights there are to Dakar a week. I took my luggage (over 50 kilos) and ran toward the airport. It only took 17 minutes from the time I got up, packed my things, checked out of the hotel, took the taxi to the airport (it normally takes 10 minutes), cleared customs, and reached the plane. I don't know how I did it, but I must have moved like Superman. When I reached the plane, my throat was dry. For an alarm clock I was using just my watch with an alarm, and must have failed to hear it because it was so soft, or maybe I unconsciously turned it off. Anyway, I finally got to Dakar. January 18, 2004 This is the final day of the Rally. With yesterday's results, Ikemachi's victory in the T1 class is pretty much a foregone conclusion. So we felt pretty light hearted. At the hotel, there was a Nissan press conference and Nissan announced a privateer support program. The press received this extremely well. I guess that was because a maker supporting privateers is very much in the Dakar spirit. Tonight there will be a Nissan party and with that, this year's Dakar Rally will be over. Thank you for visiting the Nissan site. And thanks very much for reading my column. The results of this year's Nissan pickups could have been better, but we will be back to challenge next year's Dakar. We look forward to your support again next year. See you then! Back