Thats me! OK I´ll throw in some fotos different to the ones Mike has shown.
The day started with a hangover followed by a breakfast with Mike and Jaques.
Out in the furthest reaches of the carpark, one French team was busy putting the final 12,000 stickers on their bikes.
A quad (well somebody has to ride them dont they)
Its amazing how many time the body work came off these bikes. Lots of last minute adjustments, maybe some failures too?
Heres our very own Mike Werner, blogger extraordinaire, capturing all for posterity:
Odd one this, small American buggy next to a row of enormous Russian Kamaz trucks.
Arty shot. The weather just gets better and better. Most of the day between 12-15ºc.
Andy Caldicott, KTM Australia. This guy seems to always be smiling and he reflects very well also, which is nice.
Just to return the favour - here we have Mike and Jaques, helping to fly the almost non existent BMW flag.
Today this is about as close as I got to Nani Roma! Such a shame that he went over to the dark side!
Everything was quiet until the Repsol Mitsubishi team arrived. Lots of cameras.
Nani Roma is wearing the red shirt with a hat.
...uh, that doesn´t help too much -he´s leaning on his car #320.
This years only sidecar entrant in the Parc Fermé. Lets hope he becomes the first ever to finish!
Oh la la - still the best car in the competition.
Here´s your man again iin the park fermé, so he passed the scrutineers eventually. Hes a man with a sense of humour.
The parc fermé is quite impressive - lots of vehicles. You really start to get a sense of how big the Dakar is and the operations that go on behind the scenes.
There were a couple of blue BMWs there a French guy told me they belonged to a couple of Gendarmes. He´dprobably just been hitting the Pernod, who knows?
The two BMWs I most wanted to see weren´t there:
Simon Pavey (102) and Nick Plumb (103) had a few hours left at the stage. As I type this there are 20 mins remaining. Might pop down in a mo to make sure that they made it!
#99 belongs to Clive Town (UK) and #100 to Patsy Quick British womens enduro champion, who ruptured a spleen in a previous Dakar and was lucky enough to find a military field hospital nearby.
and the last one for today. Sense titol...
The prologue starts tommorrow...
Happy New Year!!!!!!
