at :

I don’t think the other 2 got back to the room until 6 or so. Having gotten a decent night’s rest I got up relatively early to get to the town square for a few things. I needed more cash for one, and more importantly I needed to find some damn flip flops. Tbilisi is pretty big but our hostel ended up being just a few blocks away. I was told by the front desk people that there would be a place to buy shoes somewhere around there. There was and there wasn’t. I found 2 stores but they didn’t have my American size 13 freedom loving feet. The third store I found on accident and found to find a pair of hideous sandals that were a 12 so I bought those. Mistake.

By the time we left the room it was around 12, and we had a 2.5 hour drive to the northern part of Georgia since we were able to get a spot paragliding. Mileage ways the mountain area wasn’t that far away but the ride ended up taking around 3 hours because you have to wind up and down the mountain passes, which takes forever because you have to keep downshifting to give the car a little more power but then immediately slow down as you hit blind turns on the way down. Fun to drive though. We ended up driving to almost the top of one mountain because as you can imagine, you have to be really high up to jump off and float around for a little while.

The view was incredible. The launch point is off of this round hill which you get to hang out on as the guys are setting up the parachutes. There’s actually a ton of people up there, mostly watching the paragliders fly off. All of our “pilots” were Russian oddly enough. Ryan’s guy didn’t speak any English whatsoever other than the word “run” when it was time to jump off. The ride was super cool, worth every penny. Georgia is an incredibly green country and all the way to the top they are covered in grass or something.

We wrapped up the jumping off mountains thing around 6, and then had a slight dilemma to solve. We are supposed to be in Baku, Azerbaijan by Friday morning in the event we need to go get our Turkmenistan visa because they are only open 9-12. It’s Wednesday night. The drive would take 10+ hours and that doesn’t factor in the 2-3 hours it would take to cross the border. We didn’t want to make the whole drive that night, but at the same time we didn’t want to have an insanely long day Thursday, not to mention having to do the border thing when it’s hot as hell outside. We split the difference and decided it would be best to at least cross the Azeri border, camp on the other side somewhere for a short bit then wrap up the drive in the morning. Before hitting the road we found this restaurant at the top of the mountain and had some damn good food. The chicken with hazelnut cream sauce was on point.

Crossing the border into Azerbaijan was our first real taste of ridiculous bureaucracy. They only let about 6 cars through the border at a time so there was a lot of waiting around. We passed the time by busting out our huge magic marker and drawing all over the car. When we finally got into the border area we found out why it takes so long. While military guys are looking around your car there are 2 windows you have to bounce back and forth between, and I have no idea what was happening while I was being shuffled around. It doesn’t help that the locals at the border will absolutely try and cut in front of you or stand uncomfortably close and weasel their way in. At one point in the process I was told we had to pay a $10 road tax fee as well as $15 for insurance. Cool, we hand him a 20 and a 5. That totally short circuited him but thankfully Mitch had two 10s. The second to last step involved walking to a separate building with all of the random slips of paper they keep handing you and go pay the $15 insurance. The guy at the cashier window says $15.70. $15.70. When I’m at home in the States I don’t have 70 cents on me… After going back and forth for a few minutes he finally took a few Georgian $1 coins and said we were good. I don’t know why the fee went up such a small amount, but I must say if he’s embezzling he was doing it poorly.

Ryan drove us to where we thought we could camp but it was all industrial with no grass. We took a few random turns until we found a country-ish looking road to set up shop there. At this point it was 3am or so and we were hoping to be back on the road by 6-7 when the sun came up. Mitch and Ryan didn’t even bother setting up their tents, they just pulled out sleeping pads and slept outside while I curled up in the back seat. Turns out it wasn’t really a country-ish road and there were quite a few cars that drove by for the next few hours, but everyone was tired enough not to really notice.

 

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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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