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I needed every single second leading up to checkout to gather the strength to go to the car. I did not drink enough water before bed so I was in rough shape. I told the guys I needed to drive first otherwise things might get unpleasant. Today we were trying to get to Tbilisi, which is the capital of Georgia. Leaving Batumi was interesting. Driving along the Black Sea coast for a bit the scenery was oddly reminiscent of somewhere like Costa Rica. Everything was surprisingly tropical looking which is unexpected, but then again I don’t know anything about Georgia.

The roads are truly chaos. Sometimes lanes are marked, sometimes not. Blinkers are rarely used, cars will straddle the lanes, non-stop honking to name a few. The biggest requirement to being a driver in Georgia is to operate under the following principle: If someone is in front of you, you have to pass them. If there are 2 people in front of you, but the first one isn’t passing the second one then pass them both. And so on. I’m not kidding, If you’re on a one lane road it is non-stop jockeying for position. They’ll do it not worrying about oncoming traffic or blind turns or hills. It’s insane. Also there are cows everywhere. EVERYWHERE.

An hour or so later we stopped in some random crappy town that seemed busy enough to have somewhere to eat. Their alphabet is completely different from ours so it’s really difficult to tell what is what, and everything kinda looks the same – old and run down. I spotted some little food thing that looked like a bakery ticked into a little building. Ordering anything in a foreign country is interesting, but especially places like here where the languages are just 100% incompatible. Goodman and I spotted some weird looking tiny pizza dealies which turned out to not be half bad. Best part was 2 huge bottles of water and whatever it is we ordered was less than $3 with the exchange rate.

Goodman had the great fortune again of having to drive into a big city during rush hour. So take all of the things I’ve said about Georgia drivers and multiply it by a lot. About 20 minutes away from our hostel we noticed our car starting overheat. Yay. Not really much we could do about it other than keep an eye on it and get to our destination asap. We had been driving for over 5 hours and figured the thing didn’t like idling in all the traffic. By the time we got to the hostel it was running uncomfortably hot. No bueno. Goodman went to check in while Mitch and I had a look. The good news was the cooling system was still pressurized when we opened the radiator cap. The bad news is there seemed to be very very little fluid in the system, which is a little troubling since we knew we filled it all the way up when we discovered the previous leak we had fixed. We’re speculating that one of the hoses is leaking but if that’s the case we can’t tell from where. Until we get it to a mechanic we’re just keeping an eye on it.

The hostel we stayed at is called Fabrika, and it was super cool. It was huge inside and really nice. The lobby and giant lounge blend together and it’s filled with all manner of people from who knows where here in Tbilisi for who knows what. It had a neat vibe. We found a big couch that wasn’t taken so we sat down to have a drink and figure out the plan for the next day. We were hoping to drive north and go paragliding in the mountains but we didn’t have a reservation. Thankfully we found a company quite easily and messaged them on WhatsApp and they had room for all 3 of us. Awesome! A woman across from us ordered a chicken caesar salad that looked incredible so we each got one. It was…not good but we needed food. We were all pretty tired so we headed to the room. I did some laundry and we all napped a little. Around 10 or so Goodman and I decided to check out what was behind our hostel. It shared a giant courtyard with a bunch of little restuarants and a few little bars. It was quite a hopping area, I imagine a lot of locals go hang out there to meet foreigners. I went to bed around 1 because I was going to try and wake up for errands in the morning, and the other 2 went to a casino a mile away. Apparently they got lost on the way there and the way back.

 

 

 

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    Day 47: Finish line +2

    Ryan and I decided to wander around in the afternoon and find some souvenirs. Somewhere along the way we heard some gibberish coming from a loudspeaker in the town square so we headed that way. Turns out it was A BREAK DANCE BATTLE! The guy on the P.A. just kept yelling “blah blah ALL STYLES.”

    For a town square middle of the afternoon break dance battle it ended up being incredibly lame. I’ve seen a better break dance battle start spontaneously at an LMFAO concert 7 years ago, so color me unimpressed. We walked around for a little longer and decided to find some food. Italian sounded awesome, we hadn’t had a solid pizza since America. We did find an Italian place, but we did not find good pizza. Google translate struggled to translate the all Russian menu but we ordered what was supposed to be a “meatlovers” or so we thought. Sorry for the blurry picture, but the pizza had possibly no sauce on it and was just cheese, ham and pickles? Silly Russia…

    Ryan had a flight out that night, so we said our goodbyes. What a fucking adventure.

     

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    Day 46: Finish line +1

     

    Uuuuughhh very rough start. I think I had a 10am appointment to take our car to the train yard and sign over the title but there was no fucking way that was going to happen. We had a very late night and a ton of beer. Rich and I stayed out until close to 4. I think I peeled myself out of bed around 1 and managed to get the car to the rail yard by 2 or so. Thankfully the appointment slots didn’t really mean much, the people there would take about 20 cars per day and it didn’t matter when – unofficially. One of our license plates had rattled off somewhere in Mongolia but I was determined to keep the other one but I had to take it off stealthily, which I successfully did. Then it was time to say goodbye to el Doblo. She done good.

    There were a couple Aussies at the yard at the same time so we all shared an uber back to the finish line. There was an awesome and empty massive bar there with wi-fi. The only thing left to do was to find a flight home. I had tried the day before but the airline sites were timing out for some reason. Getting home from Ulan-Ude isn’t exactly tricky but it requires flying to Moscow first, which was the part I was having difficulty with. The flights 2 days later were filling up and the tickets went from a little over $300 to $500 by the time I was able to book a ticket. Flights from Moscow were surprisingly cheap from being so far away, somewhere in the $500 range. Thankfully I remember to check the American Airlines website because it just so happened I had enough miles to fly home from Moscow for free AND first class the entire way. After 6 weeks on the road a little luxury was a welcome surprise.

    Mitch had flown home early that morning but Ryan and I were still in town along with the Birch brothers as well as Hendrick and Dave from Starsky and Dutch. We decided we should find a nice restaurant that night for dinner, which we did sort of. Honestly don’t remember a ton of details because as soon as my flight was booked I hit the beers once again to celebrate with more of the teams that were arriving at the finish. We hit a few bars that night and then unfortunately all had to say goodbye. Ryan and I didn’t fly our respective ways for 2 days (that crazy son of a bitch flew to southeast Asia after our trip) but everyone else left in the morning.

     

     

     

     

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    Day 45: The Mongol F’ing Rally Finish Line

    Today would be the last early morning of the trip. We got up a little after 7, prayed the cars would start, and then headed to the finish line which was about 3 hours away.

    I spent the first half of the drive thinking about the journey and what I would write to my friends and family on Facebook. I’ll admit that I was fighting back tearing up at the thought of getting there and how much the trip had meant. The guys let me take over for the last leg of the drive so that I could be the one to drive to the finish. Very cool.

    For being in the middle of absolutely nowhere Ulan-Ude is a surprisingly big city. It took a while to wind through the city and then all of a sudden we pulled into a big open courtyard and there it was.

    We waited our turn to drive up on to the stage and get some incredibly awesome pictures taken. After all we’d been through, after all the car had been through. I’m still a little shocked that the Doblo pulled it off. We had cursed it a million times and we couldn’t be ready to be done with it. To it’s credit though that stupid car made it. We limped to the finish line, but we still made it.

    There was a ton of paperwork to fill out, including writing our team info on a big board of everyone else who had made it. 45 days later. Out of around 300 teams we finished #108 I believe. As you can imagine we took a ton of pictures, and got a lot with our convoy mates. We have all been together since Turkmenistan.

    After that it was up to us to do with all our stuff. We sorted through everything we had looking for any souvenirs. Anything that was still in good condition we added to the donation pile. Mitch decided to take quite a big souvenir for himself, which he managed to do with an axe.

    We all booked a room at a hotel a few miles from the finish line, aaaaaaand then we started drinking and didn’t stop.

    For those interested here’s my finish line FB post:

    “This is a little surreal. After a year of planning and 7 weeks on the road here we are at the finish line of something I never thought I’d be able to do. The Mongol Rally has probably been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s been mentally exhausting, physically grueling, frustrating, and stressful. There were a lot of points where we could have given up. Our car is a 13 year old Italian car that has no business being where we’ve taken it. Our engine blew up, our fuel pump is patched together with bailing wire and glue, all of the suspension is gone. We’ve been stranded in some of the most desolate places I’ve ever been. But we didn’t give up.

    It’s also been an incredible and once in a lifetime experience that’s taken me through places I’d never see otherwise. We’ve met so many wonderful and hilarious people along the way and made some great friends. This picture is 100% worth the trouble it took to get here.

    Understandably there was a lot of concern for our safety and well being traveling through 20 countries. One of the things I wanted to prove to myself and everyone else is that the world isn’t as scary as we sometimes think it is. There hasn’t been a moment over the last 7 weeks that I’ve felt threatened in any way.

    While there is a small fraction that try to make it seem otherwise, this world of ours is absolutely full of good people. The amount of kindness and hospitality we’ve received from strangers is indescribable and unrepayable. We made it to the end in large part due to help from people who don’t speak our language and will never see again, who didn’t have to but many times went out of their way to help us. There hasn’t been any point where our nationality has been an issue. Whether it was the hundreds of honks and waves we got or sharing vodka with Russian border guards (one of whom may or not be in the mob, gave me his #, an open invitation to stay at his home and said he’d beat up anyone who gave us any trouble in Russia – thanks Stas!) most people don’t give a fuck about geopolitics and are just very appreciative that we came to visit their country. They were great representatives of theirs and we’ve done our best to be good unofficial ambassadors for America.

    From the bottom of my heart I want to thank my teammates Ryan Goodman and Mitch Walker for going on this crazy adventure. Thank you Rachel for being supportive of this dream of mine, being ok with me being away for 7 weeks. Thank you Robby and Nate for taking care of the office. Thank you to our friends and family for your generous donations to us and our charity. Thank you to our sponsors for helping make the trip a little easier. To a far lesser degree thanks to the cop in Kazakhstan who let me talk him out of a ticket, we all know not having your headlights on at 11 am is a stupid law. Last not least, thank you Doblo for letting us beat you up.

    So be nice to people. Be even nicer to strangers. And always bring a towel.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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