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
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