We are currently in Los Angeles, California for some debrief and China training. The trip here was quite an adventure. It all started Monday morning at 6am, when we get into our “privado” shuttle from Panahachel, Guatemala to the border of Mexico. Apparently, private and leave when you want in Guatemalan means your shuttle is connected with the Lime and Yellow Teams’ shuttle, and you have to cross the border at the same time. Race also means drive as slow as possible as to not get too far ahead of the other vehicle and stop so that the driver can get breakfast. Oh and 4 1/2 hrs really means 7hrs.
After we get across the border and into Tapachula, not only did our “private” shuttle slow us down, but they didn’t even know where the bus station was! Several direction stops later we show up at the bus station and are glad to be back in Mexico where the bus lines have movies (in Spanish), air conditioning, and reclining seats.
We hopped on a 17 hr bus to Mexico City in hopes of getting to the airport early enough to go standby on our airlines morning flight to L.A. Hitting some Mexico City traffic put us 17 minutes too late to get on the early flight! As we are walking around the airport seeking out options of getting on earlier flights we run into the Brown team! Luckily their flight wasn’t till the next morning and standby was too much for them to change. We felt pretty confident of first place getting on our flight at 6:30pm that night.
Now the goal of this race leg was to get to the Santa Monica Pier to stop the clock. We had to arrive by 10pm as to not aquire a penalty for breaking the past 10pm driving rule on race legs. Our flight was scheduled to get in at 8:30pm Pacific Time, thus giving us 1 1/2 hours to get through immigration, customs, grab our rental car, and make the 20 minute drive to the pier.
We started getting a little nervous this might be tough when our flight left about 30 minutes late from Mexico City. However, good time was made up in the air and we landed just about 15 minutes late. Immigration and customs went smoothly. Then our shuttle driver to the rental car place totally understood the concept of a race. As Katherine told the rental car guy that we were racing, in their vehicle they were about to give us, he worked as fast as he could to get us processed.
We jump into our white minivan about 9:40pm, throwing bags in as fast as possible. As we take off we realize the car is on empty, but there is no time for a gas stop so we pray that God gets us there! God answered prayers as we got to the pier, jumped out of the van, ran down to the ferris wheel and took our picture at 9:57pm! Right on time and clinching first place this leg!
Being in L.A. has been a lot of fun for our team. We have been staying with Katherine’s parents since we got in 4 days before debrief/training starts. We have been sure to not waste fun for one second while we are here. Thursday I got to fufill a life long dream of getting to see Bob Barker in person and witness a live taping of the Price is Right!!! The getting up at 3am and standing in line at 4:15am paid off! After the day of waiting in line to get a number to wait in line to get another number, we finally got into the studio about 2pm. We were row 4 behind the contestants! Although we didn’t get called to “come on down”, all our efforts were totally worth it to see all that goes on behind the scenes! Check out TPIR on March 27th and see if you can spot us in the crowd!
Our adventures didn’t stop there! The next day we were blessed to get free admission to Disneyland and California Adventure through a friend of a friend’s sister who is friends with Gary and Katherine. Don’t try too hard to figure that out…the point is we got in free! We were there from park open to park closing. We rode almost every ride at Disneyland, all the major attractions at California Adventure, and were still able to catch the 50th Anniversary firework show and then Fantasmic! Our team thoroughly enjoyed our day, even with the pouring rain in the morning, which luckily kept away the locals, and kept all lines under 30 minutes!
We are about to go downtown to the Dream Center in L.A. where we will start China training and debrief. We will be in the States until Wednesday, March 8th when we fly out to China and start the next part of our adventure! Pray for us as we have left behind a culture where dogs try to eat me and go to a culture where I may have to eat dog!
Posted by Sarah
