First look

Today we got to see our little beast of a machine for the first time. It looks awesome! Apparently the painters had a bit of a difficult time with our rickshaw since the upload to the Adventurist’s website wasn’t so clear. They should have just had us email in the template as it was clear as bell on that! Even with a few of the details missing, it still looks great. People kept coming by all day taking photos of our rickshaw. Ahh..

We had a few bits and bobs to sort out. They didn’t put the chakra on the Indian flag, left out the stars on the US flag, left out “kab” from our name and seemed to have spelt “Horn OK Please” as Horn ON please! Haha. The painters were on hand and were awesome. They just whipped out stuff right away. We got our cigarette lighter installed so that we will have ipod power – yeah!

Stacie, her brother Mike and his girlfriend Aliya arrived today to help out and to send us off on the 1st. Stacie was there to help put on all the stickers while Mike and Aliya pretended to drive while having their photos made. In the meantime, Stacie and I went to decorating the rick with all of our Indian god stickers, rickshaw run logo stickers and Mercy Corps. I think we might still need a few more, but for now it’s looking great.

Paul wondered around talking to people about mechanics and trying to show off his mechanics skills! Haha. Apparently we are seen as the ‘experts’ since we actually took 4 hours of lessons! But watching some of the teams do test drives made us feel nervous as some teams were already great (well… great as in seemed to be able to go fast – however one team did almost get it on 2 wheels already!).

Our little rick apparently had a flat tire on the way to the docks today – I only know because the spare tire was missing which should be replaced by tomorrow. Crossing our fingers b/c I am certain we will need it! One team’s rick was already broken down today and had to spend ages getting the mechanics to fix it. Uh oh!

Tonight we then met up with a group of teams at a local restaurant/bar for chit chat about it all. So far it seems to be a really mixed bunch although most still seem like they are from the UK. We met a team of Australians, a few Canadian teams, a Dutch team, another American team and lots of UK teams. Really diverse crowd as well, with all ages, types and sorts. Looking great so far.

Lots of discussions about routes being had.. most still seem to be heading up the coast for a bit at least, but seems that they all want to cut through to Varanasi at some point, so who knows what we’ll end up doing. For now we are sticking with our first day’s plan of going to kanchipurum and attempt to make it to Tirupathi. But kick off isn’t until 12 noon, so chances of us getting very far on day one are not looking great! We already found another team who have the same plan for day one, so perhaps we’ll be with them for a bit.

One little hiccup in the day…. Our hotel keys were pick pocketed from my purse L We were at the Ganesh temple oohing and aahing over an elephant standing out front when I felt someone rub up against me. Usually this is a ploy to divert your attention and steal from you. Of course I immediately looked down to realize my purse was open. I saw that my big blue wallet was still in there, so I just zipped the bag and carried on. Only 3 hours later when we got back to the hotel to dump some stuff did I find that the keys were missing! The hotel keeps them in this little wallet type thing, so I imagine that the pick pocket thought it was a money wallet. SHEESH. I rarely loose things. I often think I’ve lost something, but rarely actually lose it. I was so embarrassed and feeling mortified, but thankfully Paul is such a trooper and didn’t make me feel bad about it – we were just happy it wasn’t my wallet or else we’d have a big mess on our hands! The hotel aren’t so happy with us anyway as our group originally had two rooms booked and she wasn’t told in advance that only one room was needed.. so this just about put her over the edge. Luckily Paul is really good at calming people down and taking nicely and quietly whereas I just get frustrated and get grumpy with them!

But all ended up fine. Now it just feels a bit like we are staying with relatives where we have to knock on the door or call them to wake them up so that we can get into the house. I hope they give us some keys by tomorrow!!

Tomorrow we will again be with our cute little rickshaw finishing the pimping and getting last minute supplies before attending the big New Years Eve Party. Should be a blast. I can’t wait to meet the other teams and actually get to test drive our little beast. ONE day til launch!!! Photos to come soon – time for bed now.