Four Idiots in the Arctic — Maps and Design

At the very end of 2021, me and three other idiots bought a 24 year old French car for $500.

In February 2022, we drove it to the Arctic.

It was dumb. And fun.

You may recognize Rico above - he is known for his great ideas, like going with me to Belarus in 2020. Oscar, another friend I met while living in Canada has popped up before (here), and Jeroen, rounded out the group.

Oscar

Jeroen and me in my silly sweater

The three of them worked for the month of January preparing the car for the arctic, mostly by doing silly cosmetic work like repainting it with house paint, and adding racing stripes.

In mid-February, I drove up to meet them, and we departed Amsterdam towards Sweden.

An early morning start from Amsterdam, for the 12 hour drive to Gothenburg.

We had a couple worries when we saw fluid gushing down the chassis, but realized we had overfilled the gas tank, so crisis averted.

In Gothenburg we did some more preparations to the car to make it ‘Arctic Ready’. Mostly we added stickers.

The real Day 1:

We left Gothenburg at around 8:30 and drove north, where the driving rain slowly turned freezing, and the roads froze into ice. By the late afternoon, the sun had already set - not that we had ever seen it behind full clouds. The freezing rain turned to snow. By the evening the snow was hard and accumulating fast.