well…
said “puddle” is lake colorado along the route fairly early in stage 2. there is a slight left turn really close to that sea.
imo, that thing is too large to be considered a puddle.
also:
when i am home in two hours, i can add a photo of said “puddle” on google maps
I found the sea on GoogleMaps…
I would hardly call a pond of 30km² a “puddle”, tbh…
for reference:
this is where they crashed in relation to stage two progress on @Mr.Computah ´s map overview.
Thanks for the nice maps of where the car crashed on stage 2! They would have come in handy when I was writing up my RP flair… Being at the back of the race requires me to write whatever I can from the scraps left to me by the other, faster teams! 
The hardest part for me is knowing that @VicVictory is currently beating me… I’ll get you next time, Team Canon Fodder! NEXT TIIIIIIMMMMEEEE!!!.. 
sorry for that…
should have included them in Connor’s explanation…
i am just gonna assume you siphoned out the fuel and used it to make some (although short-lived) fire with it
also:
i am at the far back myself.
i have just been quicker to write RP, limiting faster teams in actions
i.e.: they cannot burn up a car if i reach a non-burnt one
(you should be even further at the back, so you can burn it if wanted)
Ahhh… I re-read your post here and I’ve managed to contradict your account of the crash rather badly!
Corrected account of Team Shitbox Brothers demise
Team Run N Gun
We were able to make it to the base camp at Caranavi, which is more than can be said for Team Shitbox… We came across the carcass of their coupe, knee deep in the waters of Lake Colorado. A number of locals from the local village were trying to pull the car from the water, as the car’s engine was contaminating the lake with oil, fuel and coolant. Ben and I helped the locals drag the car from the water, using the front winch, and I took the time to check the cabin for any hope of survivors. Someone had been here before us and opened the drivers door so I was able to see the rather gruesome sight of two dead bodies, suspended in their racing harnesses, leaking brains, blood and excrement everywhere…
We couldn’t just leave the Shitbox brothers to rot, so Ben used the Alpaca and some locals to mount the Saetta upright on a bed of stones while I collected the Team’s paperwork to hand in to the Police at Caranavi; anonymously, of course! Once we’d finished setting the car on it’s pyre, Ben used a rag shoved into the fuel tank to set the car alight. I’d kept the bootlid, as it was flat and undamaged, and carved:
“Here lies the final resting place of Team Shitbox, killed by the ones we loved…”
I then set the headstone down by the pyre and we set off again, our mood sombre and quiet, for a great team had fallen and if they could die at the hands of fate then anyone could, even us…
TO BE CONTINUED
@Elizipeazie, I think that was a far more fitting send off for the team, plus it shows more respect for the locals, well worth the hassle, IMO 
also shows more respect to Ana and Alejandro
this bootlid carving thing
like it 
I think one team owner will not like this… Especially after he laughed seeing another team face the same fate. There’s a saying in my country that goes something like this; “don’t do to others what you don’t want done to yourself”.
I’m no Mei Ling when it comes to sage advice, but this one could fit in a Codec! 
TEAM HILLBILLY ROLLERS
26th OF AUGUST 2018
MARIE: How do you like my driving this far?
ANDREAS: Better than someone would have thought anyway! I didn’t know you were so skilled in offroading, passing all the obstacles like a dream! I am impressed…for the first time in my life considering anything you have done.
MARIE: Speaking of passing…haha…look at the Mitrus, we are soon…WHAT THE???
JANNE: What are you yelling about?
MARIE: WELL, I AM IN NEUTRAL AND HOW ABOUT THIS?
Marie is waving around the loose gearstick in the air…
JANNE: Ehm…something definitely is wrong here!
It turns out that while converting the Celestia gearbox to the Rexetta, someone had done some less than perfect welding on the linkage, warping some of the rods. Being in some really weird angles, and with some hard beating on the gearbox, it ultimately lead to the rods to the gearstick coming loose.
JANNE: Well, I used the powers I had to bend the linkage somewhat in place, but the bushings is all gone now, so count in that the gearstick will feel very sloppy.
MARIE: Yeah, it feels like the genitalia of a 90 year old man…
ANDREAS: I don’t want to know anything more. I REALLY don’t want to know anything more.
Except for this little mishap, the team soldiered on through the jungle, and the once so hated Rexetta was starting to grow on them. It was like if some kind of friendship was formed between them and the corny little SUV.
(Insert 3 hours of the two idiots laughing at their penises like Beavis and Butthead, helped by mild hypoxia)
Previous Post - Stage 2 - “Death Road Duel”
“Well, looks like this is that time.” Jake said from behind the wheel, the altimeter on the dash slowly climbing, and climbing, and climbing. “Glad we took this from a junked airplane before we started this race.” Cody opened the glovebox and fished out the Viagra, with a stupid grin.
“You know, I’ve never done this before.” Cody said, laughing at the absurdity.
“I have. Not for altitude, either. Freshman year of college, I thought it’d be a great idea to use this for… Let’s just say some extra ‘staying power’ during the after-party with my girlfriend. No, she wasn’t impressed when she had to take me to the hospital after four hours. Can’t believe I’m taking one again, though at least this time, it’s for a better reason than ‘If I can bang my gal all night, I’ll be the envy of the dorms.’ Get the water, we’re gonna need it.” Jake said, chuckling.
The two of them downed their iconic ‘little blue pills’ and continued on, the Travette singing its way up the mountain, turbocharged inline 3 roaring away in Drive, the added boost keeping them from losing power.
“Shame we’re rear-wheel-drive, we’d probably make better time if we weren’t spinning the tires so much.” Cody said, though he noticed the Dirt Warriors were slowly falling back. “Wonder what’s bothering them.” Cody said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder at the car behind them.
“Altitude, most likely. Wouldn’t be surprised if we’re driving a bit of a rarity, a turbocharged car. We may only have 100 horsepower, but we’ll still have probably 80 at 15,000 feet. Maybe. I can’t remember my altitude power loss conversions. Someone else with 100 horses would be somewhere around 20 or so, which means the higher we go, the better our power gets compared to theirs. That goes for anyone going for ‘No Replacement For Displacement’ in this run.” Jake said.
They found that the higher they went, the more hilarious everything was. “I feel like that time I walked into Marcus’ room while he had it full of smoke. Everything’s just… You know.”
“Hypoxia. That’s what you’re feeling. Luckily, Luke packed us a little gift under the back seat.” Jake said, pointing to the backpack on the floor. Cody grabbed it and pulled out the contraption within.
“Why is a welding torch a good gift?” Cody asked, with a loopy smile. Jake took his right hand off the wheel, grabbed the torch, then opened the Oxygen bottle ever so slightly and pointed it at Cody’s face. It took only a couple seconds for Cody to come to his senses, then said, “Remind me when we get back to only give him a minor ass-kicking. Who knew his portable oxy-propane welding torch would be a life-saver up here?”
“Just remember, we have to share, and there’s only maybe a couple minutes worth of oxygen in that bottle. And don’t make the mistake of opening the other bottle, you’ll end up with a lung full of propane.” Jake said. “And that’ll fuckin’ kill ya.”
At the end of the stage, Jake parked the little Vheego Travette and helped set up a rudimentary camp. Cody checked their status, then said, “Lost two more. Not surprising, either.”
“What’s surprising is how far this little shitbox has carried us. Proof that a Rental is the right choice, perhaps, or just sheer dumb luck. Either way, let’s rest up what we can, prepare for the next stage.” Jake replied.
August 27th 2018; 4:34; morning
Sleep for Operation BIRD is getting worse.
With only two hours of sleep, they pack up their tents and head off earlier than intended, with the plan of catching up on sleep in the car.
In the city of La Paz, road signage proved to be confusing.
The team is sitting at an intersection, trying to figure out where to go:
Connor: “My navigational program suggests turning left here.”
Tonsom: “You sure about that? That sign [points at random road sign] says to go straight. So we are going straight.”
Trying to avoid major conflict, Connor follows order, but after half an hour of driving, Redwood manages to point out their location on a map:
Redwood: [to Tonsom] “Frank?”
Tonsom: “Yep?”
Redwood: “Remember the sign we went straight?”
Tonsom: [
] “Don’t you tell me he was right…”
Redwood: “He was right.”
Redwood marks their position on the map with a permanent marker and hands said map over to Tonsom.
Tonsom: [
] “WHY THE FUCK DID YOU NOT TELL ME?”
Redwood: “I only found us on the map just now… and Connor did tell you at the intersection…”
Tonsom: “You know that i do not trust this piece of plastic one bit!”
Connor: “I would suggest both of you to calm down. We did take a wrong turn, but that does not mean we are stuck here now.”
Redwood: “He’s right. Mistakes are made to be corrected. Soo… How about correcting the mistake we made?”
Tonsom: “Alright then… Connor, you know i hate you, but just do your thing and don’t get us killed. You got that?”
Connor: “Got it.”
The car turns around, now on the correct path to their destination. The next few hours remain rather uneventful. Some commuting on the highway at the speed limit, the crossing to Chile and a bit of a climb towards the volcano. Redwood and Tonsom managed to catch some dairly decent sleep until…
some time on the climb
POOF. flopflopflopflopflopflopflopflopflopflop…
Connor stops the car on the roadside.
Connor: “Our front right tyre has blown. We should replace it.”
Tonsom: [sarcastic] “Oh my god… i would not have known what to do if you weren’t here…”
Connor: “Then it is a good thing i am here.”
Tonsom: “Still dumber than i thought…”
Redwood gets out and changes the tyre for the spare out of the engine bay (yes, the Mimas has more than enough soace for it). Then hhe gets back in the car.
Connor tries to accelerate, but the Mimas happily spins the newly replaced front wheel.
Tonsom: “Lock the diff you fucking idiot.”
Connor flicks the switch to lock the diff and the Mimas easily gets moving.
early morning a day later
The car comes to a halt at the destination, all other occupamts asleep. Connor shuts down the engine, apllies the parking brake and waits for the morning.
She’ll becoming round the mountain: aka I couldn’t think of any other title for this.
Everything was going too smoothly, thought Martin. Said thought had been running around in his head for the last day now, as the Estate Roamer pluckily - but braggadociously - ploughed on through the heart of South America. Mind you, it was far from comfortable, thanks to James’ erratic weight saving modifications, with the bucket seats starting to becoming an irritation.
With Martin at the wheel, James was playing co-driver whilst Steph caught some sleep on the back seat. Navigating under pressure in the thick Bolivia jungle had been a real mental strain, though it was nothing compared to having to stick his head out of the sun roof to guide the 2 tonne behemoth over the death road.
“There’s another” said Martin, as they blasted pass the wreck of the Paginza. “That was nasty” he remarked.
“Just a bit” said James observantly, grimacing at the mangled metal and huge lines in the dirt where the car had drifted out of control.
Southend ploughed on.
Hours later and across the border into Chile, the climb was now really on. Seb had woken up too.
“I’m telling you, I’m not taking this viagra” he said jokingly “I don’t care how much it helps, I don’t want wood I can’t deal with up here”.
“Ay! Finally delivered some good slang” said Martin, smiling back at him through the rear view mirror has he negotiated a particularly bumpy turn. “But that’s not what the doctor would say”.
“What, that he wouldn’t take viagra or that he wouldn’t deal with it?” replied Seb.
“The viagra” replied Martin, not taking the joke. “It’s a genuine way to deal with the altitude”.
“Yes but I want a genuine way to deal with my hard on, and I don’t see any cocktail bars around here” said Seb, thinking back to his last one night stand.
James sat quietly in the passenger seat, still wearing his army surplus shirt and now sporting his favourite gold Avitaors, with a pair of binoculars glued to his face. He brought them down after a while. “Commie fuckers” he grunted.
“Eh?” said Seb, looking over to him.
“Bastard green shit box is miles ahead of us now” said James, once again in a low voice. He was referring to the AAU Cross-4X that was now nearly 20 minutes ahead of them. However, thanks to the complete lack of anything up here in the Andes, he could see the car as it twisted up the mountain road miles ahead.
“Are you trying to impersonate Colonel Quaritch again?” questioned Martin, thinking back to that time back in first year when they’d all crammed into Martin’s dorm with their other flatmates and drunkedly watched Avatar.
James’ expression completely. “No, no…” he said defensively but with some embarassment.
Martin glanced in the rear view mirror and caught Seb’s eyes, giving him one of those looks. It’s the shirt, isn’t it they both thought.
Right, there’s an announcement I need to make. I made a mistake inputting the data in the spreadsheet during Stage 2. If I haven’t fixed this already by the time you’re reading this, you can see this in Norman’s and Leo’s entry, which suddenly travels two hours to the past in the second half of stage 2. This happened because I had to split the stage in two, which made me make a mistake carrying the times over. I’ll fix the second half of stage 2 and stage 3 as soon as possible; death rolls will stay the same for fairness. Sorry for this once again 
EDIT: It’s fixed now people! Show must go on!
jgotta correct the time stamps then…
still better than not saxing anything at all
Previous Post
The final moments of Team Shitbox
GAR2: Ep. 3
La Paz, Bolivia. 27th August 2018.
We received our next waypoint early in the morning so we set off, intent on avoiding La Paz peak hour traffic. After leaving La Paz without incident, we motored along the highway, heading towards Chile. The organisers warned us to avoid altitude sickness and take the supplied viagras so, since Ben and I were no longer spring chickens, we didn’t hesitate and took the required dosage immediately. After a number of hours of monotonous driving, punctuated by lonely little towns and villages, we saw our first casualty for the day… An unknown team driving a Paginza 622 had terminal suspension failure and was out of the race!
Ben was gesturing that we help them, even as I was turning off the highway, and we offered the team a lift to the Chilean border, where they could get transport home from there. Since they had no good alternative, the Paginza team accepted the ride and were unceremoniously bundled into the cargo area, along with their ID papers and personal belongings, and we pushed on to the Chilean border.
(OOC: @Der_Bayer, feel free to contradict this action if you want to RP things another way, I’ll just edit it out later on!)
After the border crossing, where we said goodbye to our itinerant passengers, we got stuck into the climb up the side of the volcano. Unlike many of the teams competing in the GAR, our 4WD had a turbocharged engine. This meant that we were able maintain our pace long after the other teams were gasping for air. This sort of driving was what our car was designed for and it was reflected in our sudden competitiveness compared to the last couple of days racing. As we were climbing the slope, about halfway, Ben spotted a green 4WD tumbling down the mountainside… Team Mud Masters, out of their comfort zone in the mountains, had lost control when their driver suffered a blackout and the subsequent, disastrous, roll down to the bottom of the mountain had put and end to their ability to continue on with the race!
We arrived at our basecamp at the top of the volcano where we were treated to the most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen… Ben and I just sat and watched for a good ten minutes before setting up camp for the night. It was a shame that six teams had fallen prior to the completion of day three and would never get to share in the beauty of this moment…
RIP
Team Paginza 622
Team Mud Masters
TO BE CONTINUED
Again the Dirt Warriors made it to the end of the stage, despite having to deal with altitude sickness in the Chilean highlands. As Geoff and Stan sat down to have dinner at camp, the latter delivered some terrible news to his running mate, who immediately proceeded to look on the bright side of things:
“Two more teams have dropped out by now. One of them was in a Paginza; the other drove a GA700.”
“We don’t have to worry about them again, then…”
“…but worryingly, they outlasted the Shitbox Brothers, who crashed out in the stage before this one - and had their car blown up soon afterwards for good measure!”
“What a horrific way to go out - planting and detonating a car bomb on an already wrecked car with its crew still inside is a barbaric way to add insult to injury, even if the crew had been killed by the initial crash!”
“Maybe they were desparate to stop anyone else from examining the secrets of that car… But we’ll never know for sure.”
And so the Dirt Warriors went back to having their dinner, knowing that this race was as thrilling as it was brutal.
Team Two Idiots
“Somethin’ is up with this engine…” says Scott, with his now partially broken arm
“The engine is not getting enough air, because of our higher altitude.”
“Shoulda installed V-Tec yo.” said Scott
“I can’t live anymore…” says John, completely mind blown at how dumb Scott is
A Few Hours Later
As they start getting altitude sickness, they get a message
“Viagra… let’s take it…” says Scott
“Whatever makes me feel better than this shit…”
They take the Viagra…
“I feel the same, and some extra pain down there…”
“Worst advice I had ever received, hurts so fucking bad…”
At the explosive volcano lava thingy
John sets up camp and receives notice of 2 casualties
“We lose people often don’t we?”
To Be Continued by two idiots
Ah, you guys and Team Canon Fodder need to meet on the trail… then we can have the battle of four idiots!
Show intro musiiiiiiiiiic!
Jack: Hey hey hey, welcome! This is yo boy Jack Aston, live from a motherfraggin’ volcano! That’s right, Stage 3 of the 2nd Great Automation Run is in the books, and as usual we have all the ups and downs, but mostly ups, of this insane race.
Sadly, once again we have to report casualties. Team Mud Masters, comprised by Puerto Rico’s Jousseppe “Kadeem” San-German and Rick “Semir” Lopez, lost their lives during the Guallatiri climb when the GA700 fell down the road and rolled over several times. Rescue crews have found the car, but sadly it was too mangled to prevent another tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers are with the drivers’ families.
We almost had a second casualty; the drivers of the Paginza ended up with a broken suspension they couldn’t fix, and were lost nearly the Chilean border. Fortunately, the great dudes of Team Run ‘N’ Gun stopped their car, and offered them a lift to the border! Now this is sportsmanship, people. These guys have earned a round of beers on me, that much I can say…
Hugh (thinking to himself): Ben… That’s an unsual amount of kindness for someone running for his life. But that’s good. No one else needs to shed blood from circunstances outside of their control. This race has claimed enough lives as-is.
Jack: The key moments of this race were both before and during the volcano climb. The race’s dark horse, the infamous Modesty Machine, got lost in the city! Well, they were lost in the city’s traffic jams, to be exact. This cost’em a lot of time, as shown by their drop to 5th. Operation BIRD also had issues understanding the city layout, as they too lost time due to wrong turns at Albuquerque.
The freeway put new blood on the podium; the Mitrus, former 4th place, is now in 3rd, while the Pajura capitalized on the MM’s issues to grab 2nd place! The R3200 and the MM complete the top 5, on what has been one heated battle.
Another guy to look out for is Team Southend or Bust. These guys in their Hollywood tractor have moved up to 6th, even despite a botched run up the volcano!
As for yours truly, we’re stuck in 31st place. Not a fine run, but we have survived to tell this story. And as usual, you too can read it by following us on social media, or watch our ongoing series by subscribing now and getting a discount for the Last Stage Special Show! We will provide more info on that after stage 4, so keep those eyes and ears peeled.
Will we catch up to other guys? Will the lead change yet again before the final stage? Does Viagra really work to cure altitude sickness? It does but let me tell ya, you better find a dock for your anchor if you go there, if you catch my drift. Until then, keep following us for the suicidal, genocidal, daring… GREAT AUTOMATION RUN 2!!!
