Thursday morning:
We purchased our first car! eBay Motors UK and a few international phone calls later, and we are now the proud owners of a 2003 Fiat Punto Active 1.2 liter with 40k miles on it. 1 down 1 to go!

Then we dashed off to a sponsor meeting with F5 Networks.  They are excited about the car, and found us a place to park it near London!  They’re providing us with a lot of logistical support in addition to a communications platform, and will be helping us wrap the cars in logos, add gear, etc between now and July.  They even gave us racing jerseys! We are super excited about the collaboration and support F5 is providing.

Thursday afternoon:
We got our Russian Letter of Invitation.  And then we ran into our first Russian bureaucratic snafoo.  After downloading our visa applications from the Russian consulate website and diligently filling them out, I was told at the consulate in Seattle that those forms… the ones I JUST DOWNLOADED from THEIR website, are out of date.  We had to pick up their new forms and fill them out. I would formally like to invite Russia to the internet, and let them know they can upload their latest visa application form to their website BEFORE they print them out and make them available physically.

Thursday night:
We got off to a late start departing for Boulder, CO.  Kim and Jean and I loaded into our Honda Element bound for I-90.  First obstacle: I-90 eastbound ramp from I-5 was closed.  We aren’t even out of Seattle and we’re taking detours.

Friday:
We drove all day through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming & Colorado to Estes Park to meet up with other rally teams for Afternoon Tea with The Adventurists.  The drive took a little longer than expected, but we finally made it.  The mad dash continues as we are taking off now for Tea, will update with photos/video/etc when we get back!

70 days and counting down!!

Thanks for hosting Rob!

With luck I played well enough to make it to the final table with high hopes of taking the whole pot down to go towards our rally cars.  I couldn’t quite hold on though, and was the first elimination from that final table.  I was taken out by Austin the Eliminator, who proceeded to confound and then beat each successive player. 

Nice poker face Austin, you've got us all beat

Along with all the other generous donations throughout the night we are now ready to purchase our rally cars.  Thank you to everybody who came out and showed their support!

See all our photos on Flickr.

We can’t thank everybody enough for their generous support.  These donations, both financial and in kind goods, along with all the enthusiasm and energy in the room touched us personally and provided us with a boost of confidence to continue working hard to make this endeavor a reality.

With the help of The Snow Leopard Trust, as well as items donated by the local Mongolian community, we held a silent auction which proved very popular. Crafts handmade throughout Central Asian republics from Mongolia to Kazakhstan were auctioned off with proceeds benefiting not just us, but also going to The Snow Leopard Trust which is protecting the endangered snow leopard in that region.

We were especially excited to present the Mercy Corps story and talk about them at our fund raising table because a few people from their local office came down after their own holiday party and joined us for the night. Donations for Mercy Corps have continued to pour in through our FirstGiving page after the event!

The Morin Khuur performances by Urtaa and his student Robert were a highlight of the evening.  They played both traditional Mongolian music and contemporary pieces that everybody was more familiar with.

This first event was a huge success by any measure.  We had so much fun and can’t wait for our next event.  With everybody’s help we are well on our way to Mongolia! Check out more photos of the event at Flickr.

See you at our next event!

- Team Baatar Hero

Starting around some time late last year we knew that we wanted our next big trip to be Mongolia, but when we started planning we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.  Our original plan was to take the Trans-Siberian Railroad across Russia and trek by horseback over the Mongolian steppe.  We also wanted to be involved with some kind of volunteer opportunity during part of the trip.  After a few months, in the course of my research, I discovered this video of the Mongol Rally.  Adventure. Culture. A good cause. It took us about 2 seconds to decide this was how we were going to Mongolia.

Little did we know that we had just scratched the surface of such an epic undertaking.  We’d have to raise thousands of dollars for Mercy Corps; arrange visas and permits; acquire a vehicle; outfit said vehicle for a 10,000 mile journey over mountains, desert and Siberian tundra from London, UK to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia; and all of this before we’re even out of the starting gate.  We soon learned that all of this would be moot if we couldn’t even get into the event.  Apparently there is quite a queue just to register.  Last year all of the available spots filled up in just a few minutes.  So we joined the mailing list and waited to find out more details from The Adventurists about when to register.

The summer crept by, and we watched this year’s rally unfold. We planned a mini-rally of our own through the American West.  This was in part a way to get to my cousin’s wedding in New Mexico, in part a vacation to parts of the US we had never seen, and finally, partly a test of our endurance.  A 3,800 mile drive (granted, over well paved roads) in 7 days would surely test our ability to log long hours in the car together and start memorizing whole episodes of This American Life. Also of course this would provide for us our first obstacle: word came down from The Adventurists, registration would be on the 2nd to last day of our road trip… at 6am PST no less.  So it was that we had to make sure we stopped at a hotel in Salt Lake City, UT with a reliable internet connection and wake up  at 5am this morning to register.  We had a feeling that we would want to assemble a team larger than could fit into 1 car, so we registered 2 for the event.  This meant we had 2 laptops hitting their website as it slowed to a crawl under the traffic that bombarded it from would be adventurers around the globe.  Kim and I both thought at several points in time we were getting frozen out before we could complete the registration, but we somehow were both successful before all the slots filled up.  Before we could celebrate, we packed ourselves up, jumped in the car, and I drove over 900 miles in 14.5 hours from Salt Lake City to Seattle, if for no other reason than to somehow prepare myself for this crazy journey.

Now we are back home, and the reality of what we’ve undertaken is setting in.  Now the planning really begins.  We must finish forming our team, Baatar Hero! We need to start fund raising.  We need some cars…

First step down… about 9,999 more to go.