We detest sleepovers on highway car parks. The memory of an overnight stop on a French highway already more than 3,000km behind us, still resonates in our skulls. The never-ending din of a truck’s refrigeration unit just beside our sleeping area, was a terrible experience. It didn’t just result in a sleepless night, it felt like torture through means of sound. The effect of unwanted noise on a human body is terribly underestimated, except by the former guards of Guantanamo Bay. Living near a busy highway or any other source of constant noise, has a profound negative effect on one’s blood pressure, stress level and heart rate.
A handy Armenian repairing his beautiful old ZIL truck on the spot
Early one morning at another truck parking near Askeray, Turkey. We’re awake but give in to the temptation of lazing around in our mobile bed. A trucker starts his engine. Half an hour later it’s still running idle. A second truck starts their engine as well. The latter immediately leaves to join the highway. Both truckers seem to represent two levels of Turkic society: the modern aspect with its high level technological applications and the old part with its traditional habits, such as thoroughly warming up an engine before hitting the road. The old engine continues running stationary. Apparently, it’s still not warm enough for tackling the heavy headwinds throughout the vast and endless landscape of Anatolia. Or, maybe, this trucker is just empathetic with the engine. In a way, do we not consider any system that makes sounds of its own to be a living thing?
Regular inspections make one more confident with the mechanics of a car
A third truck engine is started. Each one has its own sound identity. One can hear small patterns or irregularities, each of them revealing tiny mechanical aberrations, maybe even upcoming problems in the engine itself or in ancillary units like the gearbox or the drive train. But, it’s clear, the era in which mechanics still listened to their engines is coming to an end. It’s the computer that will tell you if something is wrong, or will be wrong soon. Although I very much recognize the benefits of computers – and I’m actually typing on a computer myself – at the same time, I strongly believe that modern technology has this tendency to undermine a lot of our intuitions and intelligences. We are massively outsourcing a lot of our competences to technological subcontractors. The result might be that, at the beginning of what some call the new era of the Anthropocene, we actually witness the birth of Homo inhabilis or clumsy man. Who isn’t capable anymore of repairing things, let alone thoroughly understanding the technology on which he or she relies.
Although modern engines like the Iveco 3.0 Euro VI have become very complex, their mechanics still remain rather understandable. It’s more the electronics that make repairs too complicated for a lay person whilst on the road. The good news: statistically speaking, modern engines are far more reliable than older ones.
Clumsy man is proud that he is not able to fix his car. He doesn’t need to. He has the money to outsource all these fatiguing, time consuming and filthy chores to others. Which is one of the aims of the system in itself: making people ever more dependent on the inaccessible technology that has been sold to them. Clumsy man is hardly able to find his way in an unknown city in an intuitive way, let alone in nature. He gets enervated when things don’t evolve in an expected and goal-oriented way. The clock reminds him that he hasn’t enough time to take the time needed. He’s especially irritated when his phone’s battery runs flat. After all, his smartphone is his life-beacon.
Unrepairable: a stranded truck on the Afghan side of the Pamir highway
Traveling through poorer countries makes us aware how harsh conditions make people more handy, trustful and patient. Being faced with the way locals tackle challenging living conditions in remote areas, reminds me of my own awkwardness. One that is masked by the glitzy contours of the expedition truck that brought me there and all the electronic gadgets I took with me, because I ‘needed’ them.
As the things you prepared for or expected to happen don’t and the unexpected surely does, overlanding to remote areas becomes a remedy for becoming too clumsy. Be it while traveling with an old or a brand new vehicle.