“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

Robert Frost -England

Note: This is Shane's version of the Georgian drive. --- The country of Georgia is known for its wine, epic skiing, and natural landscape.

Actually, that isn't true. Novody knows anything about Georgia. When I was in high school Russia had a military tiff with Georgia that made it to the American news.

There is good news regarding Russia. Humans have started to repopulate the cities after what appears to have been a zombie outbreak or nuclear blast. We aren't sure the zombie pandemic is completely cured so most of us have cleverly disguised ourselves as the walking dead by drinking bottle after bottle of free vodka the night before.

To appreciate Siberia one need only spend 13 days driving across Kazakhstan. The transition from desert scrublands to mountainy pine forest is quite abrupt. However, it is hardly the first sign that you are in a new, fantastic world. Instead, it is small little things that become quite striking. Not only do you have maintained asphalt, you have painted lines! What extravagance! Stores suddenly have signs! How clever! Street lights turn on at night! Hurray!

The mind is blown little by little.

I will write about Russia.

A time will come where I will explain the effects of seven bottles of vodka given by a hospitable hotel manager. I will write about pool played with fifteen cue balls, the devastating realities of police stops, and tips on bribing and avoiding traffic officers.

Margaux, one of my TPMs at Amazon has claimed that our blogs can be a bit long and dialogue heavy. She recommends that we do short executive summaries at the top of each post. Let's try this:

Today we were mobbed by a crazed hoard of Kazakhi children.

“You better run you adorable little child. I'm going to murder you.”

Roberta Ettel

Disclaimer: Hans takes no responsibility for the viewpoints or actions seen in this blog. They are purely written by Shane and do not represent the feelings or opinions of everyone on the team.

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Sarah, matron of the Dixie Chickens, has many opinions about my team. In particular, about my teammates. She is of he opinion that Shane and Roberta are either imaginary or dead. This opinion likely comes from her never meeting the whole team. Whenever I saw Sarah, at any of the Europe parties, it was after Shane's bedtime. That is, after nine in the pm.

Sarah's other opinion is that we are doing the rally wrong, since the Marabby is normally peaceful and conflict free. The first four weeks of the rally were uneventful and calm. We gently trundled along, white doves cooed in the air, God was in his heaven, and all was right in the world.

Well, it is about 4am in the frigid Mongolian morning and I have attained full adventure. I woke to the sound of my greatest fear, my own stomach gurgling and bubbling with reckless abandon.

Oh please no, I begged the Bowel Gods. Have mercy.

Word spreads fast on the rally. Rumors abound. Teams leave cryptic Facebook posts. Information and misinformation run rampant, and are hard to differentiate.

But, one thing was for sure: 18 teams were waiting at the Mongolian border. Some had been there for three days.

We have traversed a third of the globe, armed only by a dozen CDs. This is the type of feat that would drive weaker men to insanity. Luckily, we have had a wide variety of music to ease the kilometers between London and Ulaanbaatar. Some notable donors, including Roberta's dad and Keenan, have helped entertain us.

So, with our impending arrival in Mongolia's capital city, it is our delight to announce the best and worst CDs of our journey.

We had spent the last night in a hotel in a city beginning with 'B'. A lot of southern Mongolian cities do. But this one was a capital city. Bayankonger or something. Perhaps.

In any case. It was a scant six hundred kilometers away from UB and the finish line. We had heard tell that the roads were paved and the driving decent. Of course, after the paved Atyrau to Aktobe hell road in Western Kaz, we knew better than to trust pavement.

I don't spend a lot of time blogging out in the Mongolian plains. Most times you will find me grasping my tent and leaning back against the harsh Mongolian winds, trying to keep us both on the ground. At other times you will find me in my tent, iPad at the ready to write a blog only to feel my air mattress deflate plopping me onto the rocky ground. But mostly, you will find me gazing into the distance at a country we have reached after six weeks of hard driving, a year of planning, and a lifetime of yearning.

I would like to apologize for the spelling and grammar in some of my previous posts. In a rush to get them up, I didn't proofread them. Later, reading them back to Shane and Roberta, I hung my head in shame.

The Android autocorrect is an interesting beast. It has a limited vocabulary, not recognizing dirty words. 'Piss' and 'pee' are out of its dictionary. However, it corrects 'damn' into 'damnable'. This amuses me to no end, and may influence how I use the term. 'Damnable' does sound cooler.

Teams had been rolling into UB for the past several weeks. Mr. Rob, founder of the rally, looked weary of the hotel lobby that he had spent so much time in, listening to the same slow jam versions of already slow rock songs that used to (perhaps still does) plague the office workers at G5. Few people listen to 'Imagine' and think, "You know what this song needs? To be slowed down by a large factor and played just on a piano without vocals." Few think it, but the ones who act on that thought should be shot.

Anyway, music notwithstanding, the lobby of the four-star Chinggis Khan hotel was packed with excitement. Dirt bag adventurers rolled in from the steppe, parking their cars in the VIP slots (which, actually, were reserved for rally cars). Just a few steps away, Mongolian wedding parties, shuffled in and out of the hotel. The backgrounds of their wedding photos will likely be cluttered with broken down Fiat Puntos, piles of used camping gear, and unwashed ralliers.

"Bring back the post rally slump. Bring back the post rally slump."

That's what crossed my mind as I was piloted through the streets by Pham, my young AirBnB host. I attempted to look calm and composed on the back of the scooter as we pulled into multiple lanes of oncoming traffic.

Note: In this multipart series we take the adventure back into the wilds of Mongolia. Make sure you read them in order so you can appreciate the story properly.

I had the weirdest, little, nagging worry that booking a week in the Mongolian steppes at an adventure lodge might turn out to be boring.

You might think that my boredom here at the ol' ger camp is of my own failing. You would be wrong.

"I would like to go on a day long camel ride." I told the ger manager.

Roberta decided it was time to leave the ger camp. She didnt say so exactly but something about the way she wouldn't leave the hard, rickety, double deluxe bed, told me this.

The yaks are all gone still, presumably having grown extremely bored of the ecolodge. Roberta is desperately trying to revive the iPad on solar energy so that she can finish her book.

There aren't many things in this world cozier than a ger. I may have ridiculed ours in a bout of cynicism, but they are quite attractive. Especially, ahem, if you shell out for the double deluxe luxury ger.

"I'm off on a bike ride, see you in four weeks." Some say that my emails to my mother are on the brief side.