After ingesting our body weight in Baltika beer, Team Dino is getting a slow start on leaving Moscow. All we have to say is this: Why do Russian women keep laughing at us? Is it our clothes? Our hair? Our manly odor?

Anyway, off to Kazakhstan, with an exhaust system held together by faith and zip ties. We shall be convoying with Team Barton, who will help us split up all the needed bribes. We hear $20 is good times, but we have a bag full of smokes and Latvian vodka to do the trick.

Holy sweet hockey sticks! Just where in tarnation is Mr. Dinosaur? Moscow. I’ve just gotten done surveying Red Square, that totem to all things communism. It was big. And colorful. And Lenin’s tomb was dark. And ominous. You can only spy his embalmed body on the weekends, so I guess he’ll have to wait until the next time I drive halfway around the world.

The last couple days have been rife with insanity and ludicrousness. Due to a drenching thunderstorm, we never made it into the Baltic Sea. Instead, we met up with fellow Rally-ers Team Barton and slept in a Latvian forest surrounded by used condoms and torn T-shirts. It was some sort of Latvian sex field, but no one arrived to sate their animal desires while we slept.

Oh, and before I get too far ahead of myself, Mr. Dinosaur has grown to four. Yes, four people in our Subaru Justy. Jon Nash, a member of the Red Heroes whom we met in a parking lot shortly after the race’s start, contacted us urgently. His car died in France, and he hoped to snag a spot in our Dino-mobile. Because the Mongol Rally isn’t crazy enough, we agreed (kind of). Next thing we know Jon is flying to Riga to join our team.

“Did we tell you that you could come along?” we asked.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s why I’m in Riga.”

The more the merrier, we say.

Now we are four. After spending the night in a sex field, we high-tailed it to the Russian border. It was a nightmare unparalleled. We spent nine hours at the border, trying to navigate Russia’s Byzantine immigration system. Butch female security guards laughed at our passports. Men laughed at our Russian skills. And after we finally made it through, we laughed at ourselves.

“Oh, shit!” Andrew said. “We left our auto registration back at the border.”

Yes, Mims, Andrew and Jon had to walk back across the Russian border to secure the auto registration, the only document we have that shows the car isn’t stolen. Without it, jail would be imminent. But the gods were shining on us, and we retrieved our precious papers.

We spent the night in a scary, mosquito-laden field, then made a startling discovery the next morning. We ate breakfast at a truck stop, and as we were getting ready to re-enter the car, Andrew noticed something frightening.

“Our exhaust has detached itself from the muffler,” he said. “And the pipes are only an inch above the ground.”

This was bad. Very bad. But where other folks would’ve headed straight for the auto shop, we employed zip ties and metal rings to cinch our exhaust system back into place. It worked! We are magic! We took off down the road, pausing at several roadside vendors to buy blueberries, mushrooms and an entire smoked eel. It accidentally exited our car while we were driving 65 mph down the bumpy highway.

“Eel down!” I shouted.

Mims pulled a U-turn and we saved our smoked eel from being run over. Tonight we will sleep in Moscow again and tomorrow, we will hit the road. Next stop: Kazakhstan.

Ah, the power of communication. In the future, perhaps Team Dinosaur should be a bit more meticulous about looking at our visas. We thought we would be heading to Moscow today, but everyone’s visas don’t kick in until Saturday. Instead, we’re staying in lovely Riga another day, eating the hell out of dumplings and making plans to jump into the icy Baltic Sea.

“It will be too cold for you,” said Daniella, our host last night whom we found on the Web site Couchsurfing.com. “I am Latvian, and you are…not.”

We took that as a personal challenge. Consequently, we will be leaping into the agua today and shriveling up in new Eastern European ways.

Ladies and gentlemen!

After driving through the night on Polish roads bumpier and far more unsavory than anything we’ve met to date (imagine two lane roads, with cars creating a constant third lane to pass down the middle), and you have a taste of last night’s white-knuckled adventured.

We slept in a field somewhere near…somewhere in Poland, then high-tailed it through Lithuania and into Latvia. Latvia! We’re searching for a hostel, and tomorrow evening we will embark for Moscow. Lenin’s body awaits! Now to find a hostel and a shower…

Team Dino is finnicky! After telling people for months that we’re going to be visiting the buxom, cell-phone-loving folks of Scandinavia, we came to the cold conclusion that:

a) Scandinavia is expensive
b) No other team is idiotic enough to venture that far north

Though breaking down in that icy, Arctic paradise might be a dream for some, it wasn’t to be our reality. We’ve bee-lined east and are currently in Krakow, enjoying strong Polish beers and the company of our friend Marcin, who has graciously given us a spot on his sweet, sweet floor.

Now Team Dino is at a crossroads: Do we head north and discover the myriad wonders of Estonia, or do we head south and see what’s up in the Ukraine? The Dinomobile is still operating at top thrust, but we hear tale of roads turning to rocky mush once we abandon the E.U. Here’s to uncertainty! What should we do?

After a week of car trouble and two solid days of driving we arrived in Prague ready for a much-desired rest. The price of goods here and the exchange rate for Czech Crowns was once again comparable to prices in the U.S. Our first order of business was to stow the trusty (rusty) Justy in a car park and go to the Mongol Rally meet-up party.

As we pulled into town, we spotted two other teams from the rally and with much waving and honking we took turns pulling ahead of each other on the highway. When at last we came to the Prague city center, we all followed the car in the lead to the location of the party. It soon became apparent that none of us had any clue which way to go, and we ended up losing them and driving around for a while, occasionally passing other teams until we eventually found the location.

We parked the car in a 24 hour car park and proceeded to the party. It was at a fancy restaurant called Cafe Dinitz in the center of town. The bar had been hired out exclusively for the party and everyone inside cheered as each team arrived. Two agitated blonde Czech men behind the bar perspired heavily as they tried to meet the pilsner demands of 300 excited Britons. We chatted up several of our racing colleagues. I don’t think any of us had talked this much about cars in our lives.

After the excitement waned and the tiredness set in, we headed off to find a place to rest our bones. Realizing that we would only really get a few hours sleep out of a hostel, we opted to sleep in the car park with our car. We were not alone in this notion. That night, the floor of the parking garage was transformed into a temporary campsite for us racers. Many people, including myself, were passed out in their cars and the rest, including my teammates, had strategically positioned their sleeping bags between the oil slicks. It was surprisingly comfortable.

The next day, we awoke to much hooting and honk-horning as many of the teams left the garage. We scraped ourselves off the concrete and proceeded outside to the fresh, carbon-monoxide-free air.

Rather than driving right away we decided to take a break for the day, wander around Prague and get a good night’s sleep. And so we did. We booked a hostel for the night and immediately took showers to wash off the man-filth followed by a breif nap. Then we went around the old town for most of the day and finally enjoyed a nice dinner with some other ralliers at a Georgian restaurant recommended to us by some American ex-pats.

Now I am about to enjoy my much-needed rest on my humble yet horizontal hostel bed. Next stop: Krakow, Poland!

Oh, my sweet Jesus: Mr. Dinosaur just entered the Czech Republic. Following a bit of a border snafu (“Passports, please,” the guards said, with just enough in their voice to let you know that they’ll perform a cavity search if need be), we’ve crossed into the our fifth country in a bit more than a day.

How’d this happen? We must thank a man named Assad. Or as Mims says, “I’m totally gay for Assad.”

This industrious chap is what’s known as a mobile mechanic. He travels to your car to fix it. But he didn’t want to come to our car.

“Too far,” he said on the phone, “but if you bring it by my place I’ll have a look.”

So Andrew and Mims did. Assad was our last hope. Our only hope.

“Your car will be ready Saturday morning,” he told us. Saturday was also the race start. And Andrew and I were mildly hungover as we set off to secure our chariot. We reached Assad’s neighborhood and called him to pick us up and bring us to our car.

“I’m just finishing up the radiator now,” Assad said. “Give me a few minutes.”

Five minutes turned into 15, which became 30. It was 11:30. The race was starting in an hour. Mims was at the starting line, securing our paperwork and twiddling his thumbs. Finally, we heard a roaring engine. Assad appeared with our Justy.

“Come on,” he said, and we hopped in his car and went back to his house. He parked our car with two wheels up on the sidewalk—his garage—and started wrapping our muffler with muffler tape. Assad was fleet of finger, and soon he had finished our car and topped off our radiator with water and coolant.

“Your bolts broke off when I took the old one out,” he said, “but these should work.” He pointed to black plastic zip ties, securing our radiator in place. I gulped.

“Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure they won’t melt,” he said. We paid our fare. He showed us what to fluids to pay attention to, and off we went. Andrew and I zoomed through London, a twisty, windy, motorists’ nightmare, and arrived at Hyde Park at 12:59 p.m. The race started at 1 p.m.

“We’re late,” we told the security guard, who ushered us inside…just as the other cars were pulling out.

We saw Mims snapping pictures. He leapt for joy, or as much as a man of his size can leap, and we piled into the car.

We left London. Then took the car train to Calais, before motoring up to Brussels (hometown of Jean-Claude Vandam, the muscles from Brussels) and eating spicy grilled lamb. From there we snuck into a campground and set up a tent, where we slept a sweet sleep.

After eating pastries in some quaint little Belgium town (and sipping coffee besides 10 a.m. drunks downing Belgian brews), we conquered Germany and are now in the car nearing Prague. Tonight we drinks beers! Tomorrow, sweet heavens, we have no idea.

Mims is snoring. Andrew is pushing Mims to make him stop snoring. And I am wide awake because I’m so nervous. The Mongol Rally is upon us in just a few hours…if we have a car. Andrew and I are heading to our mechanic, Assad, in just a few hours to survey his work. He’s finishing up repairs on our Justy: new radiator, welded exhaust pipe, fixed engine gasket, new spark plugs, a change of oil and several new filters. We found Assad on the UK’s equivalent of Cragslist.org, Gumtree.com.

Amazingly, he was super into helping us out, and he’s only charging us the bare minimum to basically overhaul our car. Thank bejesus we sold T-shirts, because that’s paying for these necessary repairs.

In other words, the Dino-mates are all sleeping off massive benders. Last night was the going-away Mongol Rally bash, and we drank our collective weight in Fosters beer and danced to Blur, among other British delectable. The highlight was meeting other teams who have shamed us with our lack of preparation.

A fellow Justy-driving team, suitably dubbed “Justy,” told us they are taking with them five spare tires, an extra head gasket, radiator and clutch.

“A clutch?” I asked the Luxembourg and Swiss duo. “Why the hell do you need an extra clutch? What will you do with it?”

The Swiss man with stubby hair smiled. “Someone in Mongolia,” he said, “will be driving that car 10 years after we get there.”

Now that’s logic we can get behind.

Have you every heard of the phrase “blowing exhaust”? Neither had I…until yesterday, when Andrew used that term to describe our car’s lack of an exhaust system.

“It just goes…everywhere,” he said, waving his hand around to indicate great swirls of certain carbon monoxide death.

Lesser men would buy gas masks or, perhaps, ditch their car and buy a brand-new one. However, Mr. Dinosaur is not filled with lesser men. We are real men of ingenuity, with credit cards not yet turned off by increasingly curious creditors wondering why we’re spending so much money at UK auto shops.

Andrew and I just spent much of the last two hours beneath our trusty, rusty Justy. We sanded away all the rust from the catalytic converter, turning our hands a brilliant shade of ocher (thank sweet Jesus for last month’s tetanus shots). We then patched the holes in our converter with spackle of some poisonous provenance.

And you know?

“I’m stunned,” Andrew said, examining the auto’s exhaust pipe as the car ran. Smoke spewed forth, and the car’s death rattle was diminished.

“We’re mechanics!” I said, as we high-fived one another’s filthy, misguided hands.

Less than 38 hours to launch, my dears. Mongolia! Or bust (ed car).

Must have experience dealing with clueless Yanks.

Please contact Team Mr. Dinosaur immediately. Cheers!