Mongol Rally Episode I – Preparation

Half of Team Great Job! doesn't know how to drive a manual transmission, so the other day the other half taught them.

Ryan and Michael of Team Great Job! inspect a map before buying it on June 29, three days before heading to Europe.

I have declared it zero hour.

For everyone who hasn’t yet heard of the Mongol Rally, I am leaving for Europe tomorrow afternoon with three friends/teammates to soon begin a long journey from London, England to Ulan Bator, Mongolia…by car.  The route is as unique as the 300 teams which are participating, and the one that we, Team Great Job! are driving will take us through Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan and finally Mongolia in a car with an engine that is barely one liter.  The roads will be extremely tough, but the experience will surely be one of a kind.

I’d like thank everyone who has donated so far, and urge everyone else to support our car fund or help Mercy Corps directly, Team Great Job!’s official charity.  Go to www.teamgreatjob.com for more information and to watch our hilarious promo video.

On top of the once-in-a-lifetime adventure is an opportunity to give something back – on arriving in Ulan Bator the Mongol Rally teams will donate their small vehicles to charity and fly back home to warm beds.  We’ve hosted fundraisers, ebay auctions, and even pooled our spare change into CoinStar, but generous donations have done much to cover a large portion of the cost of our vehicle and gas to get it the 9,000 miles to Ulan Bator.

Because of your help this adventure is just as much yours as it is ours, so with my camera and my words I will share as much of it as possible.  I don’t know of any internet cafes in Kazakhstan or Mongolia, but I will get as much of my media and updates to my colleagues at Meridian Collective as I can.  I will also mirror as many posts as I can on my personal blog at blog.willparson.com.

If everything goes to plan I will have blog posts replete with photos, text, and possibly audio and video as well.  Look for them at blog.meridiancollective.org.  The first entry will be on there tonight!  It will look a lot like this one, though!

Our bags are all packed and we fly to Dusseldorf tomorrow, so just sit back and help us keep telling adventure stories by donating a few bucks.

Most importantly, though, enjoy the ride!