We have taken the Fight Against Boring to a new level by participating in a rally from London to Mongolia. The rout covers a distance of approximately 11,000 miles traveling through 20 countries in a zig-zagging mess of a line. Our A to B goes through the whole alphabet. We decided it was completely appropriate (of course by that we mean in-appropriate), to choose a 1999 ford fiesta as our golden chariot. Although 72 horsepower doesn’t sound like a startling amount, it’s actually borderline too powerful! When your blood comes from the same stock as Secretariat, anything over 65hp is asking for trouble.
The aim is to drive for charity. We partnered with CoolEarth.org to donate a portion of the proceeds of select shirts to said charity. There is no winner in this rally. The mission is to arrive at the finish line, support a good cause, and have the time of your life. This coincides perfectly with Baja Llama’s values and we thought participation was as good as mandatory.
The Team –
Jeff anderlite – Baja Llama co-Founder
Jason Anderlite – Brother and head of fundraising
Kevin Crabtree – Head of getting from A to B
James Carter – Head movie Director – That’s right – we’re making a short travel documentary worth watching. STAY TUNED!
We arrived in London on the 9th of July with a moderate amount of supplies and a healthy appetite for adventure. We took an Uber to Newbury from some second rate London airport to pick up our new ride before starting the journey.
We spent hours at the end of the very strange, yet perfectly suitable Viking Hotel. We sprayed the car American Red, White, and Glorious Blue. We spray painted the top white, red on the sides, and blue for accents. We were smart enough to buy a bad ass back perforated window decal depicting our route with a map and an erratic line from city to city. We also had our head artist Jess add some flare with our logos, website, and our typical rally cry #FightAgainstBoring. The other stickers for the hood and side were miss ordered of course and came as window stickers that would prove far too week to adhere properly to fresh spray-paint.
And bam – we were off. First stop: Paris. We smashed through those anciently designed and far too narrow streets with a breeze strong enough to knock our top heavy, delinquent asses over. We stayed in the center of town and found parking right outside our hotel as the semi final World Cup matches were going on. What a great start to this ludicrous adventure. Too easy as i like to say. Loud music was luckily part of our London exit strategy, so we had pre-installed a ridiculous sound system complete with amps, speakers, subwoofer, and cd player. This propelled our thunderous entrance into the romantic city. Itching for some Germany fun, we left 2 days later for Berlin.
Day 6 was a dreadfully long. That 16 hour ride from Paris to Berlin feels like a normal day for us now. We stopped in Liege, Belgium to get amongst the historical and classically medieval town for lunch. The food was sub par – our attitudes were not. We scampered out of there scraping down the highway as we tend to do. Unfortunately our sump guard was put on about 5 inches too low – making our ground clearance when fully stocked about 4 inches. Scrape scrape scrape all the way to the bank.
Driving for extended periods of time has some significant effects on people and their interactions. We have learned that extended periods of time together in that small car can make people more on edge. I would say we have done a great job as a team navigating the mind and working well together.
We made it to Berlin! Stay tuned to hear more updates on our journey towards Mongolia. This is certainly only the beginning and things will get more interesting from here. Full blog with more details of each day will come later.
#FightAgainstBoring
