Off roading and posing...

Today we finally got to take some cheesy photos, posing with our Rusty Rhino (The SJ410). See image below. Hopefully this will personalise our fund raising and promotion to encourse more donations to our selected charities.




Apart from our amateur photo shoot, we got to do a little bit of off roading, it was good to see what the Rhino was capable of doing. It seems to wobble and bounce around on road, but take it off road, and its a totally different beast. It seemed to plough through most things and that is without a great set of tyres on there.

Some more work needs to be done on the car and we have some modifications to make, but everything seems on track! MOT due up in a week or so, so once that hurdle is passed we can focus on the off road mods.

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Adam

Is Charity Ever Not Charity?

Is doing something for a good cause not as important when you are doing something for yourself at the same time?

Being honest, one of the main reasons I participated in the Mongol Rally is for the experience. The ability to see new places, meet new people and mix with different cultures in a way that is not normally possible.

Does my enjoyment or my ability to experience these new places and people devalue the charity work being carried out?

A few people have made some comments to me about this, but I don't really understand why. I agree that it is not as selfless when you are doing something for yourself as well as benefiting a charity, but surely that doesn't devalue what you are doing? To the recipient, whether you are enjoying yourself or not, the charity work in whatever form it takes, is something that is much needed.

I would say that any charity work should be enjoyable, even if you are not experiencing something new or doing something you enjoy, there would still be enjoyment and satisfaction from knowing you are making a difference and helping.

It is a no lose situation.

I'll quite happily admit that I'm not doing the Mongol Rally just for charity; of course I'm doing it for the experience. I'm also very happy that I can choose and help a number of charities through this experience. It would be naive of anyone to think otherwise...

Feel free to post your comments.

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Adam

Press coverage?

I've been trying to sell my flat recently and I was apparently a lucky winner in a competition (I thought that only happened to people on TV & Radio). I won a commission free sale of my flat through my estate agent.

The promotion featured in the local Wanstead & Woodford Guardian. When the estate agent asked me to place a comment for the promotion, I thought I could use this opportunity to promote our justgiving.com donation website.

I asked them to publish our site URL on the promotion page in the Guardian (it was worth a try). However, it appears that the point was missed. As you can see from the statement in the photograph, it implies I'll be using the funds saved "towards" my rally car which isn't quite the case since we already have our rusty rhino!

A fine example of an attempt to promote our cause, but failing miserably!

Still, I'm very pleased and grateful to the agent that I don't have to pay any fees ;)

See pic below (click to make larger) and the bit under the title of "Woodford Green Office Winner"




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Adam

New stuff arrived!

Bought a few things for the trip...

Got a *ahem* few compasses. I think Adam has some sort of thing for them judging by the overkill...



Got a team t-shirt. Quite impressed by the quality so willl get another one shortly...



And the much needed jerry cans for times where there are no pit stops. Rusty and dirty, perfect :)...



Still hanging on for the much awaited maps!

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Alex

Fund raising progress (part 2)

£200 isn't bad. On addition to that is the tax relief, which adds a fair chunk.

Thought I would post this as it gives a guide to how we are doing. This is for the Mercy Corps




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Alex

Fund raising progress (part 1)

It has been a week since we launched our justgiving.com fund raising websites, and we've raised just under £200 between the two sites.

It is looking fairly promising, although I must admit, the start-up donations were from Alex and I, but someone had to get the ball rolling! :-)

We are focusing mainly on the Mercy Corps Mongolia site at http://www.justgiving.com/themongolrally2007, once we achieve our fund raising target here, we'll start to advertise the Hopes and Homes for Children site more aggressively.

Today I sent out an email to some friends and family in a bid to get some more donations for either Mercy Corps Mongolia or Hopes and Homes for Children, I hope the emailing proves fruitful. At the very least, it will raise awareness of our event. I think fund raising is always more effective when you talk to someone about the event in person. We'll have to see how it goes...

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Adam

The Route

We wanted both a challenge for us and the rusty Suzuki as well as having the experience of seeing different countries and terrains. It would be pretty boring to take a route through well known countries or to try to take the shortest route, so we have come up with this:



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Alex

Charity please!

So I mentioned in my last post that we made the rally, but I haven't explained why we are doing this.

There are two reasons, to raise money for a couple of very worthwhile charities while having as much fun as possible exploring some less conventional places in this world. Sometimes everything feels so near and so touched by tourists, I think this will be a unique way of experiencing new places and cultures.

The charities are Mercy Corps Mongolia, whose overall goal is to support rural communities to provide a better quality of life for rural residents. The donations are collected through Mercy Corps Scotland (HQ) and then distributed.

The second charity is Hopes and Homes for Children, whose aim is to give hope to the poorest children in the world - those who are orphaned, abandoned or vulnerable - by enabling them to grow up within the love of a family and the security of a home.

So please please please support one or both of these charities by visiting our fund raising websites at :

http://www.justgiving.com/themongolrally2007 (for Mercy Corps)
http://www.justgiving.com/themongolrally07 (for Hopes and Homes for Children)

And without trying to sound too cheesy, every donation however small, makes a difference.

Thank you :)

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Adam

First blog entry

Well I've finally got round to setting up a blog. We should probably have done this earlier! Just a quick post to outline what is happening with Team Rusty Rhinos.

Team Rusty Rhinos is made of Alex and myself (Adam) and we will be competing with a 1985 Suzuki SJ 410, which we bought for £300 in February 2007.

And most importantly, I can confirm that we have been successful in entering the Mongol Rally 2007.

There are only 200 places in the Mongol Rally 2007, the first 50 were almost released on Wednesday 7th March, but the Mongol Rally servers went into meltdown, so they released 100 places on the 9th of March.

From about 6:50pm on the 7th of March, both Alex and I were frantically hitting F5, F5, F5 waiting for the places to be released. We probably contributed to the first meltdown on the 7th (Sorry, I'm sure we weren't the only ones!). At 7pm, places were indeed released and my browser claimed there were only 54 places left out of the 100, 46 places went in a split second! Anyway we secured a place, and apparently the 100 places were swallowed in under a minute!

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Adam