Yesterday Challenge organiser Sjoerd van Stokkum said “this was by far the heaviest day of this years rally”, we added “so far” to his quote and published the story of day 2. Today was day 3, and gosh were we right. Almost every team had trouble with the police today. Lithuania and Latvia were not bad, the police was nice to the Challengers and liked some goodies from the goodie bag and pictures of them with the cars. But then the Challengers entered Estonia and they encounter something described by Sjoerd van Stokkum as the German police ². Every single car was pulled over and many of them were booked or taken to the police station. Two of them, Team SFPD & Miami Vice have to stay in jail till tomorrow morning when they are brought to court.
Other news: the ML400 CDI is fixed and driving again. But the powersteering problems caused a big delay so they arrived in Tallinn long after the others tonight. The team that arrived first in Lithuania yesterday, Team Batmobile, had a flat tyre today causing a 3 hour delay. One team managed to fill the gastank with Diesel and had to be towed to the checkpoint by the assist Jeep Grand Cherokee. All together quite a day! Hopefully Team Bert & Ernie manage to enter Estonia tomorrow, Jan Riedstra is released from the Polish hospital and Team SFPD & Miami Vice are free to go! Tomorrow is day 4 of the Challenge 2006, stay tuned!
What you don’t say about the police stopping every car is how fast they were driving when entering cities…In the Estonian city of Pärnu, one of the car was finally stopped (after the driver repeatedly ignored warnings to stop from local police) drinving 133km/hour where 50 is allowed… Ahum… That’s bored rich kids want to have fun is their problem, but violating the law is also their responsability. No tears here…