Behind the Scenes

In a vain effort to break away from the traditional approach to doing things at the last minute, Great Balls of Fur have been busy behind the scenes plotting, planning and organising. It is only right and proper that I share with you our efforts here on these electronic pages, and to keep you in the loop about where we are Mid April on things other than the furring of Dennis.

The first ongoing task is bringing the vehicle up to standard mechanically, and this therefore slightly increases our chances of making it the 10,000 miles. Fortunately, between us, we have some good contacts, so we thought nothing of it when we asked our mechanically minded friend, Scott Fulcher, to get his minions to look at the fur engine. Even if there was a garage out there that specialised in making rusty, quarter of a century old, heavy goods vehicles roadworthy, this would not be up to the levels of experience and expertise in this field that Scott and his team have.

At the time of writing, they have done an MOT style inspection on the vehicle. Surprise surprise, they found lots of rust on there and lots of leaking oil, but conveniently, not much else wrong with it. The next step is for them to rectify these problems, before we get a proper MOT done, and then after that to carry out a complete service. Suddenly, our chances of making the finish party seem a little more realistic. Thanks Scott!!!

Ongoing task number two is to decide which route we take into Mongolia. A fairly important subject, you might agree. There is a very good reason why we are taking so long on this. It is that there is a large number of fur balls in the group; each with their own ideas about route to take and with their own attitude to travel. The more conservative amongst us want to go predominantly through Russia. The more eccentric want to travel through the Ukraine to go up Mt Elbrus for a spot of skiing. The more idiotic of us want to go through Iran. Whichever route we take, a decision has to be made soonest because we are no approaching the deadline for starting the visa ball rolling.

Ongoing task number three is publicity. Obviously we have this website, which comes out top if you Google great balls of fur and Google Mongol rally fire engine. A considerable achievement in the cyber world. We also have a Facebook group up and running, Great Balls of Fur - The Return.

It has been suggested for a while by our media man that we get the help of a patron to publicise the event. Once again, Mr McShane comes out trumps because, subject to managerial stuff, we may well have our first. Ladies and Gentlemen may I present to you Miss Laura Critchley, the new Forces Sweetheart, singer songwriter, collaborator with The Sun and Help For Heroes Patron. Watch this space.

Ongoing task number four, the big one, is sponsorship, donations and fundraising. Currently, we have the Just Giving links from this website and the Facebook group. We are also sending out sponsorship request forms to our friends and family. Should you require one, please email this site.

The big fundraising event that we have planned is chez Matthew near Salisbury, on Saturday 30th May, 2009. Details are yet to be finalised, but the idea is that we have a fancy dress party (naturally) along the theme of fur and fire, with a raffle, BBQ and some live music. All are welcome. Watch this space for more details.

Ongoing task number five concerns what we do with Dennis after the finish party in Ulaanbaatar. This has been ongoing for some time. This year the Adventurists, at the behest of the Mongolian government, introduced the 10 year rule whereby teams' vehicles cannot be over 10 years old. Dennis is 26 this year. Consequently, we are going to have to pay a hefty as-yet-unknown deposit at the border crossing into Mongolia to say that we will take it out again.

The options for what we do are plenty. Do we take the hit and lose a hefty deposit? Do we try and convince the Mongolian Authorities that it might actually be worth something to them and thus can we have our money back? Do we try and sell it in Ulaanbaatar? Do we just dump it on a big hill and see if it is still there on Google Maps in 3 year's time? Do we drive it out into Russia? Do we ship it back? The options, as I say, are plenty.

So that, dear readers, is where we are up to. Keep reading these blogs and looking at the website to see what we are doing, find out more about some of our events, and even see if these ideas mentioned above develop into anything at all.