Mongol Rally Starts Here!
wow hello, a bit nervous about this blogging stuff but if Adam can do it then here goes! ha ha.
Let me start right at the beginning so your all up to speed on who’s who and what's what.
There are these three guys Adam - James and Jack, They are crazy and have decided to take on the Mongol rally in 2016. For those of you that don’t know what that is its a short journey, consisting of 10,000 Miles, combining 2 Deserts. 5 Mountain ranges & 16 Countries. Starting here in the Midlands through Europe into turkey through Kazakhstan and its off to a place just north of China to Mongolia! see why I said they are crazy?
So this Rally is not for the faint hearted. But actually its for a super good cause and we aim to raise lots of money for charity. in fact you have to raise money just to enter - here are the rules
1. Your car must be small and really crap. Ideally with an engine smaller than 1 litre and costing less than £1000, although engines up to 1.2 will be accepted.
2.You are completely alone. There is no back up. No support vehicles. No set route. If you get in trouble, you sort it out yourself. If it was easy, it wouldn't be an adventure!
3.You must raise at least £1000 for charity. £500 of which goes to Cool Earth. The rest can go to a charity of your choosing. (For us, The Alzheimers Society)
In a bid to get as much help and sponsorship as they could Adam was on Facebook one lonely Friday afternoon and decided to try his luck and sent Car Friend a message asking for sponsorship. So in true Car Friend style I looked into what it was and being the kind of people we are I messaged him back asking to give me a call. So I (Gem) get a call from the lovely Adam and he asks us for some sponsorship! I told him that we would be delighted to help him. Then I decided to tell him we come from a racing background as in we build race cars!, not only that we build endurance winning race cars. We could help him with preparation and fabrication, parts and labour, a workshop and all the tools to get the car ready for the journey, a place off road that meant they don’t have to give money to the tax man to tax it for a year before they go and we will insure it for them! oh and if they need us to we can pop out to collect it and bring it back to our garage too!
We are all quite giddy at this point and due to race commitments that weekend we asked him to pop in on the Monday and we could meet and talk through some details.
We had a little meeting on the Monday - mainly watching you tube videos and Matt and Adam thinking of ways they could make the car look as silly as possible and taking things slightly to the extreme but all in all we got some great ideas. Matt will be the brains and the awesomeness behind the car - the boys will continue to mock each other - still work and get a degree from various parts of the country, I - Gem will work with everyone to get on the fundraising and try and speak to suppliers to get part costs as low as possible and make sure they lads behave most of the time!
It starts here - the boys have got the wheels in motion quite literally and have managed to get a car - a VW polo donated - yes donated from Wilson auctions in Telford which is just amazing and without a car the whole thing would quite literally be a non starter - and its due to land with us at some point next week so keep your eyes open for more updates.
One final thing - we need your help! either in the form of a donation from your hard earned cash or if your a business and you have something we can use in a raffle or can auction off to the general public to make some money, or if you can donate time to help fund raise or do a sponsored silence, give up something you love for a week and get others to sponsor you for going it - whatever you can think of if it helps raise money for an amazing charity then please please please help where you can!
Keep your eyes peeled for amazing updates - buckle up, hold tight its going to be one hell of a journey!