I recently told a July Route 1 racer that I was worried about Route 5… We were a small group, less than 30 to be exact, and all of the other squads had at least 40 people. Most squads typically launch with 40-60 racers.
Well, yesterday I was at dinner with two of my friends. For some reason I opened my Facebook app and I saw one of my squadmates’ newest update… “My route is being disbanded due to the lack of racers signed up.”
Excuse me, what?!
Insert panic, shaky hands, LOTS of emotions, and the thought, “I’ve really got to stop telling people the things I think up in my head!!”
I maneuvered to my email as quickly as I could. There it was. It wasn’t just one country being changed this time, Route 5 became the “The Route That NeVer Was.” All Route 5 racers were asked to select a different July route because there simply were not enough people signed up to launch 5 different ones in July, and we were the smallest squad. My sweet friends took time at dinner to read over the different routes with me, and we all immediately knew which one was best for me. The funny thing is that they never knew I originally was trying to choose between my old route and my new route to begin with, so without further ado…
I have officially changed to Route 3. I will now be traveling to India, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Botswana, Swaziland, South Africa, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica. Check out my new route here!
I will still be visiting some of the same countries, and I’m SUPER excited to travel to Nepal and Haiti. I’m sure I will share exactly why that is at some point.
Please keep The Route That NeVer Was in your prayers. There are lots of different feelings about our current situation. The hardest part, in my opinion, is knowing that there isn’t a route with enough space for all of us. Although most of us have not yet met in person, we have been communicating and getting to know each other, so it’s still hard to part ways. I was so impressed with this group of people, as soon as the immediate shock wore off, we began cracking jokes and talking about our next steps. I am so thankful for them.
PS: Check out my last blog about my March & April Fundraisers!
**If you’re curious “The Route That NeVer Was” has an uppercase “V” because it represents 5 in Roman numerals. Also, one of my squadmates had done some figuring and determined that we would have been V-Squad once we got our letter name.
