days of waiting. It was the multitude of those
insha'Allah words, meaning "if Allah wills."
Those sounded to me a bit too passive and
that fueled my unease and unwillingness
to agree to this plan. And of course, there
was also the purely financial viewpoint.
How much interest will every handler in the
chain add on to the basic price of the part
when he hears that some "European tour-
ist" desperately needs help in the middle of
the desert?
only way of solving the problem and surren-
dering to the hands of almighty Allah, I gave
one more thorough thought to the situation
and carefully searched for the existence of
any other reasonable solution. And curiously
enough--stressed, exhausted and annoyed
as I was--I found an idea that might work.
and restarted the work under the beam of my
headlamp. After sawing some longitudinal
cuts into the once threaded, now melted part
of the stub axle, I assembled everything back
together, including the new set of bearings.
After that, I bent the outer parts of the stub
axle back and hammered them against the
some pressure on the outer bearing races
to hold the hub assembly in place, secur-
ing its adequate operation in non-extreme
conditions. It was around midnight when I
finished the job and after a short test drive,
finally went to sleep, content with the out-
come and happy that our Land Cruiser was
drivable again.
further exploration of the depths of the
Mauritanian desert was out of question,
of course. We adjusted the plan accord-
ingly and instead of heading north to El
Ghallaouiya, we turned in the opposite
direction, towards the 650 km distant capi-
tal of Nouakchott. Reaching it, we had no
trouble finding a new stub axle and other
needed parts. We took a day off to rest and
then properly repaired the axle the following
day. The fourth day after the breakdown, we
hit sandy tracks again, this time in magnifi-
cent Banc D'Arguin National Park.
odds are always high for things to go
wrong. Even on the most aggressively built,
meticulously prepared and carefully oper-
ated vehicle, some part can malfunction
were replaced around 45,000 km ago (one
year) but they were inspected and freshly
re-greased just before the expedition. Would
a redundant approach--replacement of the
bearings--prevent the failure? Probably but
not necessarily.
more then 200,000 km, so I don't think the
choice of not replacing them was the prevail-
ing factor. The fact is that the bearing failed
prematurely. This could be due to some sort
of manufacturing error or equally possible,
my error when I reassembled the wheel hub
after the pre-trip inspection. It could as well
be some third, barely imaginable factor that
played a crucial role as well.
time, stray in a non-optimal direction. When
stuff hits the fan, it is our ability to control the
situation, to effectively limit the damage or
even to push things back to the right course,
that make all the difference. If I hadn't had
spare bearings and tools with me, there
would have been nothing I could have
done to put the vehicle back into a drivable
state. Similarly, if I hadn't had knowledge
and mechanical experience that enabled
me to improvise the repair, we would have
remained stranded, completely at the mercy
of local mechanics. The solution-finding
process and eventual repair would have
been performed at a much slower pace and
according to similar experiences of other
overlanders in this area, would have cost us
much more dearly.
from every trip are not the times when all
is under perfect control, when everything is
evolving according to the plan. It seems that
the most permanent, the most durable traces
left in our memories are those that were
threaded by the moments of greatest emo-
tional charge, be it from excitement, surprise,
joy or other, darker but at least equally pow-
erful emotions: despair, hatred, danger (per-
ceived or real). It's those moments--or more
accurately, the memory of those moments--
that drive us to do what we do, to go where
we go and to continue with our quest of
"looking for trouble" while at the same time,
hoping we won't find it.