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Leaky power-steering column in the middle of Kazakhstan? Not a problem for a professor at York College of Pennsylvania.
It was the car that most concerned David A. Fyfe. *
The assistant professor of geography at York College of Pennsylvania had purchased the dilapidated Toyota Celica a few weeks earlier for only $150, sight unseen. In a few short days he and his onetime mentor, Tracy H. Allen, an associate professor of geography at the State University of New York College at Oneonta, would fly to London, kick the tires on their "banger," and drive it onto a ferry to cross the English Channel as one of 20 teams participating in the 2010 London-Tashkent Rally, a 5,000-mile drive across Europe and Central Asia.
The $150 price ceiling is one of the few rules of the London-Tashkent, which was first run five years ago as a poor man's rebuke to the Dakar Rally, the legendary off-road event that critics say has been corrupted by high-dollar corporate sponsorships. The London-Tashkent (which neither begins in London nor ends in Tashkent) is a rally, not a race, Mr. Fyfe emphasized. He and Mr. Allen have planned to pause along the way to see some of the haunting sights of the former Soviet Union, most notably the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the shrinking Aral Sea.
This year's drive is expected to take two and a half weeks. Teams were to meet up last week for a spin around the...