I assume you want the long story…
Once upon a time, I dreamt of driving a motorized rickshaw across India.
Let me explain. You see, there’s this group of well-intentioned madmen up in England who call themselves The Adventurists. What they do is invent and organize continent-scale rallies that are to be undertaken in the most ill-suited of vehicles for the job. The purpose of these aberrant excursions is twofold; to throw oneself into a ridiculous (and oftentimes dangerous) set of circumstances in search of true adventure, and to raise buckets of cash for worthwhile causes. So you have things like The Rickshaw Run in India, or The Mongol Rally, in which teams drive from London to Mongolia in a car with an engine less than 1 litre in size. My new friend Stephen has successfully undertaken the latter.
To be perfectly honest, Stephen and I don’t really know each other all that well. But I imagine that will change over the course of spending three weeks in an ambulance together.
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Monthly Archives: August 2011
The Team is Four Strong
How would you decide to join me on the Timbuktu Rally? How well would you need to know me and my team? How much time would you need to think about it? A 3 week journey in a moving tin can is no joke. Well apparently Mike, whom I met at the Adventurists event, needed only two cups of tea, three glasses of gin and tonic, and four at hours the bar to decide that driving through the Sahara Desert dodging the Taliban, evading buried land mines, and negotiating with corrupt cops would be a nice way to spend the winter holidays. He accepted my invitation to join me and my team on the Timbuktu Rally. We are now 4 strong.
Mike is an artist. On this team he’ll stick out like a sore thumb. He’ll be the only one who’ll think ”logs” are wooden, “tail” relates to animals, and that “root” is something underground. We don’t know much about Mike. But we’ve all agreed that the fact that he decided to join us makes him pretty much the bravest out of the bunch. We’re looking forward to being saved by him when the Taliban comes after us.
Onward to Timbuktu.
High Tea with the Adventurists
Last year, pre mongol rally, high tea with the adventurists sounded pointless, frivolous, and totally pompous. Why would anyone fly out to Colorado for a spot of tea? Ridiculous. But post rally? high tea with the adventurists meant a gathering of like-minded fellows who would drive a 50 dollar used car 10,000 miles from London to Mongolia. I’ve never been to an event like this but I’m sure it’ll be an opportunity to swap a horrific Azerbaijan story for a ridiculous Tajikistan story. The assembling of all these people could be nothing less than an epic event. And with that, I decided to attend the 2011 Adventurist High Tea in Philadelphia.
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