Pimp thy rickshaw: All pimped up and ready to go.

“Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.”

— E.B. White

Or, I might say now to Mr. White, in a rickshaw…

But the rickshaws that Citlalli and I, as well as seventy-odd other teams, will soon be driving across India aren’t your standard three-wheeled affairs. Not content to do anything conventionally, the Adventurists give you the chance to “pimp” your rickshaw.

Although this isn’t quite as simple a process as it sounds–it involves downloading a template of the paintable portions of the rickshaw, placing it in Photoshop and then saving it as a PDF (all of which my amazing sister Brooke took care of for us!)–what it does mean is this: no one in India will miss us as we drive past. No one at all.

After we send our designs back to the Adventurists, they then pass on our plans to painters on the ground in India, who somehow have our ridiculously pimped-out rides waiting for us when we arrive. How cool is that?

But what’s the idea behind the design?

I absolutely love situations with friends that sound more like a joke: “A Dutchman, a Frenchman and a Brit walked into a bar…” Our Rickshaw Run team is something like that–“What do you get with a Mexican and an American who met in London and go to India to drive a rickshaw?” Yeah, a little bit strange, isn’t it?

And so to honor our serendipitous friendship, Citlalli suggested blending the Mexican and American flags–not only as a sign of solidarity, perhaps, but to trace the path of our friendship through the world.

We ended up revising that idea to incorporate one Mexican flag, one American flag, and the Union Jack thrown in there for good measure, as it was in London that we met. The front of the rickshaw features part of a world map, with red dots on Mexico City, Virginia Beach, London, and India!

“This time last year…” is my favorite game to play.

The first Christmas I spent away from my family, I went to the French Alps with some new friends I’d met in London on a ten-day snowboarding trip to a resort called Risoul. I can still remember one night in particular, in which I was sitting in our room thinking, “If you’d told me this time last year that I’d be spending Christmas in the Alps with five Kiwis, I would never have believed you…”

Much the same thing goes for the Rickshaw Run. When I think about where I was this time last year–still living at home, having waitressed and nannied all summer to save up for London–I never could have known that in a year’s time, I’d be on my way to India to drive a rickshaw 3,000km across the country with an amazing new friend from Mexico…

Oh, what a year can bring!