In a short few days, three of my fellow July 2011 racers will be pulling into my driveway to begin a carpool to training camp…I can’t believe it! With the original intent of leaving last January, this has been a long planning process for me. Now, I’m finally about to embark on the adventure outside of fundraising!
So what have I done in preparation for The World Race? Well I haven’t blogged much because I felt like I haven’t done anything worth reading. I didn’t think anyone would be interested in reading until I actually started the race. One friend/coworker expressed to me how much she didn’t know about foreign travel. She wanted to know where you would even start the preparation process for a trip like The World Race. Hence this blog, I hope you get to read this Shelly!
Aside from daunting responsibility of fundraising (which I am still in the process of, if you’re interested just click the support me tab to the left of this blog…thanks!) that includes t-shirt sales, coupon book sales, yard sales, and lots and lots of letter writing, there is much to do in preparation.
As soon as I was accepted to the race and realizing I only had a backpack, there was a lot of gear I was going to have to collect. Not only did I have a list provided by the World Race of mandatory equipment I needed to purchase, I had to educate myself on usefulness of camping items. When you are placed with a challenge of packing everything you will need for a year of travel across multiple climates, you learn the rule that “if it doesn’t have more than one use, it doesn’t make it in the bag.” Now as weight is becoming an issue with my bag I have bumped this rule to three uses for some items.
Although I have been trying to raise money for my trip, gear is something I have purchased out of pocket (which is a lot more than one would expect). My packing list will follow in a later blog as we get closer to launch.
Oh boy! This is where some people differ in preparation. I come from a family of military and medical background, if that has taught me anything, it is to always be prepared for the worst case scenario. That means after numerous trips to the county health department, I opted to take just about every vaccination suggested. What does that include? Well, Pre Rabies, tdap, Hepatitis A, Polio, Japanese Encephalitis, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, and a nice Malaria prescription of course!
As of now I don’t have U.S. health insurance, which wouldn’t make much of a difference since the insurance I used to have wouldn’t cover these vaccinations anyway. Out of pocket we are talking about $1,300. There is no way I would have been able to cover this cost without the generous donations from my Dad (thank you thank you so much Dad!).
No I do not have health insurance in America right now, but yes you will have to have health insurance for the race. Recently I had to purchase International Health Insurance, which cost around $325 (covered for the whole year). Power of Attorney and Living Will documents are also things we have had to address as racers.
Everything tiny bit of preparation we have done up until now has been getting us ready for training camp. This will be the first time our whole squad of 70 will be together. This is truly an exciting time. We get to finally meet the people we share a blog with and have facebook stalked for what seems like forever! We will be putting our gear we have accumulated over the past months to the test by camping in the mountains of Tennessee for a week. To my understanding there will be tons of team building exercises and bonding time before we are divided into our teams of 6 or 7, the people we will be closest with for the next 11 months.
3 more days W Squad!
