Almost4x4

Hello Everyone

Before I start my report I would like to thank the CREW members for coming at 1:30 in the afternoon and finish the setup before the event and for being behind to rap up the things after we finished. Also I would like to thank @Laarni for taking the time and effort to give all the challengers a gift or more .

The event started with usual instructions with 19 challengers ready to go. I was at the starting point ready with some surprises under my sleeve but it seems that some of them read the trip reports. Well done for all the preparation you did " guys/girls " but I will be waiting for you on the other side

Usually, I drive around to do rescue and watch the challengers in action but this time because we had enough marshals/explorers to support, I was in the audience area watching and chit-chatting . "Good times fly like fruits" I think that was the case for the audience and we had to go to the starting point to get the results.

We were lucky to have some breeze in this event so after the challenge, most of us went to set back, relax and watch the sunset with air compressor


Thanks for all who joined us in this event and looking forward to see you soon

Shamsi

Hello everyone,

Eggs in the basket is really great event, where you get challenged for your GPS skills and being able to read the terrain on your own. The terrain reading in this area is a great thing to do, but a big challenge. Seeking the flow is difficult as of all small bowls, sharp dunes, soft sands, steep edges, etc.
This really makes it a great challenge no matter the level you are driving on.

During the briefing, I noticed on my paper that I had to start third in line, so quickly putting in the coordinates and off I went. Noticed that it was not my best drive and I made several mistakes in some approaches. However made it out in one piece, all eggs still in tact and challenge completed brought me to the finish, where a good laugh was shared and everybody was chitchatting about their experience.

Absolutely great event and to all people, I would say: It is an absolute must to do this in your off-road career, it is a wonderful experience which brings you a lot of knowledge, confidence and experience in your backpack!

Thank you to the whole organization and people assisting!

See you next time

Tom

Event started very well, great number of cars and drivers on attendance, a sign of a healthy club.

I was given point 4 alongside Arminion and Ammar, one of the furthest from the starting point, once we reached we set up our chairs and shades and waited for customers.

They did not take long to start coming, personally what enjoyed the most was to see how happy and smiley all of them were when they came out of their cars to greet and get their stickers, fantastic atmosphere for what it is always a special day that stays in the memory of the challengers.

Main "action" at your post was provided by Kevin (Desertwrangler), I noticed when he came to get the sticker something wrong with his front right tire, asked him to check when back to the car and yes, pop-out on the last crest he did before reaching us. He worked extremely well by himself in the difficult conditions, just being reminded every now and again by us the observers to drink.

It was not to be his day, pop-out fixed and his car would not move from neutral, not "a jeep thing" but funnily enough something that both Arminion and myself had experienced in the past, explained the issue and fix and Kevin started to remove parts to be able to reach the source of the problem, another not easy job, to be honest I did not think that he was going to manage to do it, he proved me wrong, a lot of perseverance, you could tell how badly he wanted to finish the course, which made it even harder to see when he got crested in the last check point, we could see him digging from our position, what a hard day for him.

I guess that situations like this teach always an important lesson, he was going really well (4 out of 5 and very quick, I reckon top5 finish), small mistake for taking a crest a bit too hard and, as it can happen so easily in the desert to anyone of us, a day when everything was running smoothly becomes a nightmare, I think that is the reason why the "almost journey" is so important, you don't only learn how to drive, you also learn self-recovery, how to fix mechanical issues, ... As Shamsi said once "prepare for the worst and you will be OK", well, he is right.

Many many congratulations to all the challengers, just having the confidence to tackle a terrain like this, with yesterday's temperature and by using your GPS shows confidence and growth as an offroader, well done to everyone!!!

See you on the sand soon.

Hello everyone!!
First of all thanks to the organization for taking care of everything for this memorable event.
I was waiting for this event since last year as I attended as audience.
So finally the day came and we could enjoy and have fun. I had to do only one rescue to @NahorJP at the first dune just because he was blocking the way to the entrance at the game. I had no option
After that I did not find any other challenger stuck. Of course it was so challenging to prove that we can do it by ourselves, driving the car and the gps skills!
Until 3rd point it was fast pace but after that I found so many obstacles so I had to do second and third tries, reverse, self recovering just letting the Jeep digging by itself.
I’m so proud to finish this game because actually was my main purpose no matter the timing. the minion was also in really good condition, but I must admit that I forgot to take care of it after the first dune so when I finished and they asked me about the egg I was thinking OMG! But a miracle happened and it was still “alive”.
Thanks again to everyone who did this possible. Marshals, crew, all the observers and time takers!!!⛱
Special thanks to @Laarni amazing job with the minion-eggs!!!

Hope to see you soon!!
Flor.-

Hello Almosters

What a day it was...! Hot, challenging, eventful however great fun.

First, about my self:

I was unable to get a slot as challenger since my drives were less than prescribed level. I thought to request @Shamsi to include my name as I think I am ready for this event. And result was expected, the kind hearted nature of @Shamsi gave way to including my name in the challengers list; for which I am sincerely thankful.

Second, on the event day, I was driving FJ for the first time so this was the only thing which I was a bit worried; however found out that FJ is a dynamic machine, as it proved itself on the event day. However, I am a jeeper at heart and have decided to keep and use both vehicles, as both have their advantages and disadvantages, which I shall share later.

Preparation:

On the request of challenger, @Shamsi scheduled a training and introductory class on GPS with the assistance of @brett while the venue was arranged by @rapailo. The class gave all of us great insights and a learning based on theoretical and practical examples based on personal experiences of @Shamsi. @Tomvanhouten delivered an excellent presentation on basics of map reading/ navigation, while @Shamsi focused on GPS configurations, use of Garmin's default mapping software and linked it to narration of practical experiences in the field.

We had a practice run on EIB format in another area (CM drive area) based on previous trip reports with some of club members headed by @Tomvanhouten and graciously supported by @Carlos and @James who did all the prep work. Let me clarify one thing, it was a mutually arranged event between the newbies, and club management had no part to play in it. It was purely a case of self initiative, as we were all zealous to come out as qualified members at the end of event.

Day of Event

As everybody mentioned, the event was well organized and here is gist of what happened:

- Arriving at meeting point, deflation, flag fixing and some chit chat
- Initial briefing, nominal roll calling for challengers, observers, crews, time takers and marshals
- Segregation into different groups, separate group of audiences led by one of marshals to observation point
- All challengers were led by @Shamsi to the start point in a different convoy, while all others parties went with their respective leaders to their assigned locations.
- At the start point there was another briefing specific to conduct of challenge, including safety, discipline, dos and donts.
- All challengers were given two pieces of papers, one which had color stickers to be pasted as per sequence of points given in second paper. Please no sequence matched with the other papers, so no one can follow the other.
- Every paper had a serial number, which determined the slot of a particular challenger for release from start point; for me it was 5. Please note that these serial numbers were not pre-determined but randomly allocated.
- Total time for a single challenger was allocated as 1hr15 mins from the time he crosses the start point to once he handed over his papers with 5 color stickers and coordinate and sequence sheet to finish point crew.
- Approximately 15-30 seconds were allocated to each challenger to line up at the start point, get raw eggs beautifully painted on minions theme by @Laarni, and go towards his first point.
- A word about eggs, those who did not read previous reports this came as a surprise, while for others they came well prepared how to safely carry these eggs during the drive as breaking of same will disqualify you.
- Once you cover all your marked sequenced waypoints, while you present your two papers to the points men and get a colored sticker on your papers you head towards the finish point, where the designated crew will be again presented with two papers the close your time and determine your qualification or disqualification based on:
- having five color stickers as per sequence allocated
- not having to loose any vehicle parts or accessories during the challenge
- return of intact surprise raw eggs handed over at the start point intact, the same were returned to us as gift, since these were WORKS OF ART

Lessons Learnt

1. GPS device is a must, go for GARMIN. Do not rely on GPS on your mobile phone
2. Attendance of GPS Training Class will give you an edge
3. Practice at your own, how to enter the waypoints and how to navigate to same
4. Come prepared on the event day "VERY IMPORTANT"
5. Listen and Follow the instructions at all times
6. Remain on lows or highs, cross over dunes, when you think you are near to the sequenced waypoint (where you get a sticker and sequence verification). I remained on lows, even if I was drifting away the marked point, and then I started crossing over the dunes when I was almost perpendicular to waypoint. What you will loose in time will make up in speed.
7. Remember, you have to be pro-active enough to introduce yourself, take your papers to the points men and get it verified, do no expect then to be pro-active (this is against nature of game)
8. Do not test your driving skills, do not be ambitious, game is about navigation skills and remaining within the allocated time slot, which is more than enough. So no need to panic.
9. Carry a lot of water (if its summer) for yourself and others.
10. Wear light clothing, bring a jungle hat or anything or sort to keep your head covered, COVID precautions to be exercised at all times, carry a capable shovel to dig you out of trouble and lastly wear sunglasses (they look )
11. If you think that while traversing a dune, you engine is giving up on you, sense it and reverse. No need to take a risk and bog yourself down. Just reverse, give it a second try or change the direction of negotiating the dune.

Lastly, I wish to especially thank founder of club @shamsi for arranging such a memorable event, the Marshals, the crew, observers, time takers and the audience who added such a value to the event.

Apologies for a long trip report, but I wanted it to be as one of the guidelines for next event participants.

Thankyou Almosters

Hi everybody,

EIB was a tough drive for me as I was defeated by the soft sand and the heat

Before even reaching my first waypoint I got stuck and after assessing the situation I tried to recover myself by shoveling like hell, but it was completely useless as the car did not move a single inch. After 20 min or so @Rashidjass showed up and gave me some recommendations (thanks for that!) but still the car did not move. When everything was lost an angel called @Lenny came to help me and after a couple of tries he managed to take me out. Thanks a lot Lenny for your generosity and sorry because your lost a lot of time with me.

After 40 min I was finally resuming my drive but I was completely exhausted…and not only me, my cell phone refused to continue showing gaia gps app because it was overheated (I forgot to remove it from the support and got cooked)…so, I needed to cold down it and coming back again on track.

Reaching my first way point and the second was ok, no issues, but just after leaving the second one I made a stupid mistake and got stuck again, partially crested and with a pop out . At the same time, I heard Shamsi saying on the radio that 10 min left or something like that, so I said to myself: Try to get yourself out of here even though you will not finish. So again, shoveling a bit more but with much less energy but nothing happened as the more sand I was removing the more sand was going down and refilling. At the end, I was helped (sorry but I don’t remember your names...you were taking care of waypoint no.1) by pulling me out from the stack and helping me on fixing the pop out.

So, as you can see instead of a drive I was taking a free work out without any need of gym membership.

Anyway, I am super happy to see that all my brothers and sisters finished the drive in one piece specially @Flor who has proven herself that she can make it as the others.

Recognizing my frustration, I will not give up and I will do the drive again, same waypoints and sequence, and will finish it whatever it takes and for that I will try to convince some of my mates to come with me

Finally, thanks a lot to @alshamsi_m , all Marshals and support team for organizing this amazing drive.

See you soon

Carlos

What a wonderful and very special day!
Thanks a lot to the organizers and crew for making this possible. This event is where my off-road career started when I came to cheer and bring moral support last year to @ivantorrellas and Cindy. Took a few months after the event before getting a véhicule but it was really a decisive moment for me. The drive back to finish line as a passenger of @alshamsi_m in its Jimmy was something!.

One year forward and here we are! I am a challenger!
The day of the event, I was coming a little stressed as I never navigated by my own nor used any of the gps I ended up having in my car. But I was confident that I would find someone in the caring almost familly member who would explained it to me.
@ivantorrellas lended me his garmin Montana but finally following the advice of my gardian angel of the day : @CARLOSS , I decided to use Gaia on the android screen of my car. In 5 minutes Carlos taught me how to enter way points and which icon to press to get the redline appear in an easyway to follow and hop: I was ready! Once again Thanks a lot @CARLOSS for taking the time to explain me how to navigate :)
I started in 11th position and got the great pleasure to have to go to point 4 to begin with. I was thinking: aie aie, Shamsi mentionned that this point was interesting…what does this mean…?
All in all, going very slow but choosing carefully my trajectory, I reached the first point, and then the 2nd, etc…I was quite surprised by myself to find all the points more or less following the magic red line! The ditches were numerous but yesterday was not the day for me to visit them :) great experience and fun!
Thanks a lot @Laarni for the beautiful eggs: I got two and they both survived, will keep them as a great souvenir of this day.
Thanks a lot Almost familly! And see you in the sand!

Hello Allmosters,

Many things went wrong from my last drive with the club till the day before Eggs in Basket(EIB). I wouldn’t like to go into the details of everything here, however I believe these can be helpful for anybody in the club thus I will try to summarize quickly before getting to the EIB trip report. Excuse my long report and buckle up.

As most of you know I got an FJ cruiser around 3 months ago, from a well known certified used car dealer in UAE. I got it from a dealer to limit my risks, since the market looks a bit scary for me and I was not really experienced with cars. The biggest selling point was 1 year warranty on all non-consumable parts of the car. Before buying, I asked them if I could take the car for a third party inspection, but it was told to me that all cars are inspected at their own workshop and thus they provide warranty and they won't let a third party to inspect. With that thrust and also due to the hurry to get the car ready for Liwa drive, I got it and directly took it to @Rashidjass for minimum requirements installation(skid plate and kill switch). On the drive from the dealer to the garage, I was able to feel that the car leaned to one side and also the steering wheel was not completely straight. However, I thought that steering is an alignment problem and leaning is due to the heavy tank of FJ on one side plus the heavy driver… However, after @Rashidjass installed the minimum requirements he also drew my attention to the same issue.

I took the car back to the dealer's workshop and asked for an investigation. It took us 2 months and nearly all suspension related parts to be changed on the front left hand side of the car but the problem was still there. During this period I was taking the car on Thursday from the workshop and dropping it on Saturdays to be able to join the drives. Since the problem was not solved, I decided to take the car directly to Toyota Service and explained all the history. After a few checks, they decided to conduct a laser reading on the chassis of the car. And the result is that the chassis was bent. Yes, a certified car dealer sold a car with a bent chassis.

After realizing this, I requested them to buy the car back. It has been a painful process, still ongoing but finally we reached an agreement. Lessons to be learnt from this is, never fully trust anybody and do your own checks and take your time. If you are not really experienced, find somebody who can help you to check a car and identify the possible problems. @Booy was there when I first took this car to @Rashidjass and he immediately spotted the damages on the left hand side of the car. If I had somebody like him with me before getting the car maybe I would be out of trouble in the first place.

Thus, I missed several drives in the past month and been away from the sand. EIB was my return to the sand with YETI V2. It was quite stressful because I didn’t know if they could deliver the car before the EIB date. Thank god, @sparrow offered me to use her Jimny in the worst case scenario so I had a back up plan.

Apart from all above self relaxing, slightly complaining and educational content for future car buyers. Let’s talk about EIB.

I got YETI V2 on Thursday evening, skid plate installed and tires changed already. EIB would be my first drive with the new car(even if it is exactly the same as before). I was planning to go to the meeting point a bit early to not rush anything since I was feeling a bit nervous and maybe play with the car a bit. However, I had to resolve some technical problems with the car before heading out. Thanks to @Rashidjass , I played with some fuse box games and it was resolved. Thus, I couldn’t make it early but just on time. After deflating and seeing the usual suspects, plus people from all levels etc. I was feeling much more comfortable.

Briefing was short and clear, we needed to navigate through 5 points in different orders and go to the finish point after collecting all the stickers. Helping each other is allowed, but ignoring the stuck friends is also allowed, the decision is yours.

We all lined up according to our order waiting our turn to be thrown in to the technical area on our own. On top of the first dune @alshamsi_m is waiting with his surprises. I read the old trip reports and I felt like I knew what to expect and prepared myself accordingly, but it was just an ignorance of our founder’s capability of surprising. When he did his move, I thought "damn I wasn’t expecting that. Now what to do???" And he was shouting “Go, go, go, go!”. We have a saying for these kinds of situations in turkish and the literal translation is “a shouting bear behind your neck”.

Yeah, a bear was shouting on our necks but we had to stay calm, assess the situation and move accordingly. I decided to take things easy and slow. For me it was better to be last than getting in a situation where I need to dig under the heat wave. Tried to stay as high as possible, If something looks tricky and could create a problem just try to find another route. Thank god, I didn’t have any problems, not even any second tries(I guess I’ve been too over cautious) and collected all the stickers in the right order. Area was amazing, many little bowls, soft sand, sharp crests. With a car like FJ(low visibility) it is hard to read that terrain and follow the high points as much as possible. I wish I had a Jimny in this technical area, it would be a blast.

One critical note is, it is better to use the GPS with satellite images than the topography. I took the most time when I was getting out from my last point to the finish point and the flats were actually just 2 dunes away however, I couldn't read it on my map due to the lack of satellite images and tried to find my way in the technical area till the end point instead of the flat.

It was a relief to see our rescuers from newbie drives(intermediates and advanced drivers) on the points and have quick chitchats. Apparently they were also happy to see our smiling faces.

Thanks to everyone who made this event possible. But the main thanks is to this whole club which took us from zero to be able to navigate ourselves in a respectively technical area in only 6 months. Special thanks to the founder @alshamsi_m and all our amazing marshals who spent their valuable times to train us and teach us, thanks to all our intermediate and advanced drivers who looked after us, rescued us and shared their knowledge, and all my very best oldbie friends who were always there and kept showing up for any problem I faced.

P.S. @Laarni i thanks for the amazing artwork you have done on the eggs turned to minions. They will stay in our house as a great memory of a great day!

See you in the sand!