Chris Saul's Blog

Sunday January 11, 2009

Dubai driving tips

Seabee has some excellent tips on how to drive in Dubai.

Things are much better these days, but there's still room for improvement!

Spoilt

Christmas and New Year saw us host my mother- and brother-in-law for just over two weeks. We had a great time - a fun mix of the usual Dubai tourist trail, plus plenty of relaxing and enjoying time together at home.

Sadly, there all the areas of 'natural beauty' we visited in the UAE had one thing in common - they have been, or are being, ruined by litter and graffiti.

Desert drive to Pink Rock - rubbish all along the root.

Jebel Hafeet - rubbish down the mountainside.

Walking along the beach - one cigarette end for every grain of sand.

Hatta Pools - rubbish everywhere, see the pics below.

Such a shame.

What bumps?

My brother-in-law, Riz, took this little video of me driving Mrs Saul's car over some bumps in Hatta.

As mentioned before, driving this car offroad is a complete revelation. The bumps look a little smoother in the video than they actually were - although the Wrangler would have bounced up them without any issues, I'd have had to pick my line carefully to avoid scraping the underside. Much more than this in the Jeep would not have been much fun for any passengers, either.

I simply drove up, flicked the car into low range and rolled up the bumps, the chassis hardly moving around at all. The video shows the car's air suspension raised and doing its job perfectly. Incredible.

Colonel David Smiley

I highly recommend reading this obituary of Colonel David Smiley.

What a career. Some highlights from the Telegraph's article -

"Over the years Smiley was to break more than 80 bones, mainly as a result of sport; on two occasions he broke his skull, once in a steeplechase and once when he dived at night into an almost-empty swimming pool in Thailand.

After the war, he held the record for the most falls in one season on the Cresta Run in St Moritz; bizarrely, he represented Kenya (where he owned a farm) in the Commonwealth Winter Games of 1960.

After war broke out, the Blues sailed for Palestine, where one of Smiley's first jobs, as a lieutenant, was to shoot his troop of 40 horses when it became clear they were of no use in modern combat."

For more info on his activities in Oman and what is now the UAE, these two articles are interesting.

After reading all this, I don't feel like I've achieved much in my life.