Day 8, 4th November 2000.

Boy do we feel like shite this morning so we vowed, yet again to make tonight an early one to make up for it.  Chris called the dealership and we were told that the oil had broken down due to high temperatures caused by the condenser fan being completely shot and the front end being full of oak leaves... (don't you love new england in the fall).  He also suggested that one of the turbo seals may be leaking.  Parts would not be available until the following day but he said if we kept the A/C off we'd be fine... fortunately it was bloody freezing again and we only had need of the heater.  Manuel and Walter, from Nissan, are pictured.. thanks guys for getting us back on the road.

We spent the morning driving uphill to reach Flagstaff, Arizona at 7000 ft above sea level where we were met with snow storms hence today is snow day... we were both surprised to find snow in Arizona.  The day, otherwise was rainy in the morning which meant our pictures of the desert look more like pictures of lakes.  We stopped for lunch in Flagstaff and started our descent into Phoenix.  We dropped 6000 ft overall of which 4000ft we did in 50 miles, and even some of that was uphill. The scenery on the journey was stunning, beautiful desert and big old cacti.

 We arrived at Darrell's in Phoenix in the early afternoon to find Carl,  Darrell, Kyle and his housemate Brian doing some construction.  Being inept at such things and given they were finishing up we decided to sit down for some 'hair of the dog'.  Later in the evening we went to the Manzanita speedway to watch some absolute lunatics driving high powered cars around a dirt track.  This was, as you would expect, accompanied by a few beers.  When we got back, Lance had arrived and was desperate to build a bonfire in downtown Phoenix and so he did.  We finally got to bed at 3am, so much for another early night!