How the team came about....

I'm a bit behind on blogging, but I did want to send out a little more background information before the real trip begins.  I wrote this entry last week and am just now getting around to putting it out there.  Hope you enjoy!

We leave for Goodwood ASAP, so expect more details soon...
           

Finding 2 people who were willing to take 4-6 weeks away from work and follow me on an ill-advised traipse across two continents was a challenge. Of course, all my adventurous friends piped up saying that they wanted to go, but one-by-one they all came up with the reasons they couldn't - can't get the time off of work, don't have enough money, what if war breaks out?, etc., etc. I was even inviting some of the guys I met on Tinder. :)  Eventually (and much to my father's dismay), I had just decided that I was going to go by myself. I'm comfortable travelling by myself and I figured there are enough teams going that I could just end up caravanning with other teams and making friends along the way.

However, at one of my holiday gaming days, a gaming friend seemed really keen on the idea, but piped up with the normal "if only I could get time off of work" excuse. I pushed him to just tell his boss about it and see what he said. Unsurprisingly (to me), he said that John would be crazy not to go do this and gave him some time off. Yes! I have a teammate! From that moment on, John and I started meeting regularly to look at maps and scour the internet for visa rules and travel advice. We still felt we needed another teammate and we kept asking everyone we knew but no one was willing to really commit.

So, I did what we all do nowadays... posted on Facebook. I made a short, little post asking if anyone out there wanted to join along and I got the most surprising answer.

I've never been close with my family - I'm a bit of the black sheep. Or maybe it's better to say the Purple Polka Dotted Sheep. Growing up, I saw the world so differently than them that it was a struggle to find my place in the family. The worst of it was my older brother, Brad. As siblings tend to do, we started bickering as soon as I could talk and never stopped.  One of my earliest memories is of him playing an old comic record (Superman vs the Werewolf, I think) that had a werewolf howling on it. I must have been 5 or 6 and it terrified me! Of course, that meant he had to play it over and over. When we were in high school, I heard him lament that "why can't Jenni just be normal?", so, of course, I grabbed my black lipstick on the way out the door for him to drive us to school. We never really knew each other as people - just as "that person" that we lived with. We interacted as little as possible and once we became adults, we went our separate ways - with only the rare communication and sanctioned family vacations to connect us.

So guess who pipes up and tells me he wants to go on this trip with me??

My first response was "Only if we record it for reality TV"!

But he was serious - he had already approved it with his wife - he was in! I never once thought to say no.... of course I wanted my older brother to go with me. Despite the fact that we've never been close and never got along, he's my BROTHER. He lived with my mom and I growing up when life was a challenge. He witnessed the decade long duel between my father and I while I was in my teens. He knows, first hand, from whence I came.