Flight over & first day in London

Tuesday, July 13th
"Ever put a hammer in that loop?"

We checked in, removed travel watch from our Visa cards, paid for the the all you can drink VIP lounge and knocked back a couple vodka sodas hopin' to pass out on the plane. Everyone had said there goodbyes and I even managed to squeeze out a surprising number of tears. Nick was rockin' a foxy pair of Gap carpenter pants trying to assert himself as manliest and handiest team member. In the end I'd say it was more like a four way tie for least handy.

After my first Vodka-induced nap I woke up pretty excited, London in ~7 hours!!! Finally a chance to forget about the stresses of the past few weeks, ie. worried about my fam, worried about starting a career, fighting with a boy. Yech.

When I awoke from my second nap we were flying into the sunrise. I passed out again by listening to Portishead.

Wednesday, July 14th

Arrived in London the morning of the 14th and started to navigate the London Underground. We made it to King's Cross station and finally located Clink78, the hostel where Andrea and I were staying. This was my first hostel experience and... well, it didn't turn my off of the concept, but it was hardly luxurious.

We stashed our bags in the luggage room, which required forcing the door and then hawking our stuff into enormous piles of black and navy luggage. We hoped we would get it back but were too sick of carrying it to be really concerned. After freshing up we headed back to King's Cross to find Platform 9 3/4, much to Nick's embarrassment. King's Cross is huuuge so we had to [sheepishly] ask one of the underground staff to direct us. She knew exactly what we wanted before we even got to her. We proceeded to take a bunch of silly pictures. I even shot a sexy Harry Potter one thinking of my buddy Deborah but, alas, my camera is gone forever.

Next we made our way to a pub and had a few rounds of beer and cheese toasties. A toastie is kinda like a grilled cheese except not very good. Our server at that first pub was friendly though and [accidentally?] didn't charge us for one of our rounds.

After the pub we followed Nick and met his buddy Tim at his beautiful flat on Dingley Road. When we arrived at Tim's we immediately passed out. Andi and I shared a couch and slept like this (I've tried to reproduce what I drew in my journal, for some reason I found this extra hilarious):



Suffice to say once I awoke from my coma I had to spend several minutes getting my blood to circulate back through my body. All my limbs had pins and needles.

Once we were all mobile again we headed out in Tim's area which I think was called Islington. We started at a legion bar first, where we were joined by Tim's buddy Voitek (sp?). The legion closed early and the next bar was very cool looking but pretty empty. There I encountered my first example of Xtreme Londoner PDA - serious 45 minute on the couch tonsil hockey in a decently lit room with only one other group of people. They must still live with their parents.

The next club we went to was sweet, I believe it was called Mother, or maybe mother bar. The music was well chosen and Tim and Voitek wanted to dance, so us inhibited Canadians sacked up and drank enough liquor to get looooose. The boys at this bar were a little bit grabby, but Nick was kind enough to cockblock for me for the night. We had loads of fun that night, my best memories were definitely Nick and I's unofficial dance off to Blow Ya Mind and disco dancing with a hilarious Aussie boy.

Voitek went home relatively early but the rest of us closed down the club then walked back to Tim's place, making brief stops on the way for Kebab (that keb-aaaaaaab) and photo ops with old Irishmen. Tim called Andi and I a cab and we finally crash at Clink around 4am. It was an excellent day, totally worth how terribly it compounded our jetlag.

EC

Signing on for my adventure

This year I embarked on The Mongol Rally 2010. This is a non-race from London, UK (with starts from Barcelona and Milan as well) to Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia. It's organized by The Adventurists UK and has two purposes: to be an amazing adventure through tough terrain and some of the least tourist-y regions of the world in a wholly inappropriate vehicle and to raise money for development charities like Mercy Corps Mongolia and The Christina Noble Children's Fund. Once [IF] your team and car make it to Ulaan Bataar the car is donated and auctioned off, and teams are free to make their own way back. There is not time limit and no prescribed route. Nor is there much in the way of official Adventurists assistance along the way.

It wasn't me who came up with the idea to participate, but a couple of my close childhood friends, Andrea and Dancy Mason. On a few weekends when we had all convened in Belleville for family BBQs in the summer of 2009 the girls tossed around the idea or putting a team together and I was SO on board. It sounded like exactly the kind of wild adventure I wanted to cap off my university career [in fall 2009 I started teacher's college at OISE/UT, hopefully my last year of school ever]. Once September rolled around the Mason girls' call for team mates was all over Facebook. My only fear in signing on was being able to afford the trip, but after consulting some of my wisest and most fiscally conservative friends I felt confident that I could work my ass off to save the money, and any debt I incurred would be totally worth it.

I joined the Facebook group and signed a contract. By our first team meeting in October there were 6 official members of the team. Our name was The Great Canadian Beavers. By then I had picked up a job as a cashier Steve's Music Store and was babysitting a couple of my little cousins to start saving. By November I had started a second job at Mostly Math Tutoring in North York. It made for a very busy school year. I kept a schedule on a chalkboard in my bedroom and it was almost always packed with colour coded nonsense reminding me of the five or six things I needed to do every day. There were a lot of days when I came home after my roommate, Wafaa, had gone to bed and left before she was up in the morning. I missed her lots.

Over the course of the year we dropped two team members but managed to get our act together, mostly thanks to the work of Andi and Dancy. Nick, our team's token male member, and myself, were a little out of the loop at times. In May Dancy purchased our car, a red Vauxhall Agila, over the internet. With the help of a couple Scottish teams, it made its way to a garage outside Glasgow to get as rally- ready as possible.

At the end of June I finished work and Andrea, Nick and I booked tickets to London for July 13th. Dancy would fly to meet us a week later in Glasgow. The week beforewas jammed full or prep and was pretty stressful. Especially since I managed to somehow land a TDSB teaching job for September literally a week before I left. The highlight of my good byes was definitely the party my Aunt Karen, Aunt Paula and Grandma threw for me. They sent me off in true Dickie form with excessive amounts of food, too many people crammed in the kitchen and very generous donations to help me along the way.

I'm going to write posts to document my travels, based on the journal I kept while I was away. Unfortunately, my trip ended prematurely when my purse with my passport, visas, cash, credit cards and camera was stolen in Romania. Last I read, my team has made it to Mongolia but aren't expected home until September 7th. I am happy that the remaining Beavers have been so successful, even if they're running a little late, but I can't deny that I'm also a little jealous.

XO

EC