18 May 2024. At last! The 37-day adventure begins…
5 a.m., and we already had the luggage loaded and were fully ready to go!
From the hotel in Peking to the starting line at the Great Wall, following the assigned pace notes
for directions, the entered cars moved out in numbered order, one to the next, forming a convoy under police escort.
Back in 2019, I'd travelled all the way to Peking purely to watch the start of that year's Peking to Paris Motor Challenge, and told myself,
"next time, without fail, I'm the one standing here as a challenger!"
I remember seeing off the entered cars with that resolve in my heart.
Five years since then, and honestly, so much hardship along the way…
A global pandemic, economic troubles, relationship struggles, health problems… looking back on it,I genuinely thought, has a life ever been this packed with problems all at once.
It felt like every kind of hardship got dumped into one giant bucket and poured straight over me, mud and all.
It's hard to put into words — that's honestly the only way I can describe it.
But — here I am, genuinely standing in the exact same place!This time, standing here as a challenger!
Isn't that incredible? Giving myself credit here…
For the friends cheering me on back in Japan,
I went live: "Look at this! This is the starting line — I actually did it!"
A flag my friends made, with the character for “life” written on it, fluttered in the wind.
The “life” flag my friends sent me, someone who kept challenging herself even while fighting cancer…
The faces of everyone who'd cheered me on flashed through my mind, and the emotion welled up!!
…And!!!!!!
Somehow… things had gotten noisy around our car. Some kind of commotion was breaking out.
"Oh? Our 1929 Buick's popular, huh!" — thinking that, carefree, as I headed back to the car,
there was clearly a crowd gathered that couldn't possibly just be police or curious tourists cheering us on…
Apparently… a “red flag” with “kanji characters” on it, in China, no one could tell what it actually said,and it was being taken as some kind of anti-government activity,
or maybe even suspected as some kind of spy activity??? (laughs)
Wait, seriously?? That's what this is about??? I stammered in shock, hurriedly stuffing the flag away…
(Except, doing that just made it look even more suspicious… but right then, having
my start time held up over something like this was the last thing I could afford.)
…And that's when a hero appeared!!
The one who explained the situation and spoke up on our behalf, since we couldn't follow what was happening in Chinese, was —
a Japanese exchange student living in China, someone who loved cars and whose future dream was
to enter this very rally himself one day! Yes — never give up, and dreams really do come true!
I explained everything to that student — the full story behind my entering this rally, taking part while fighting cancer,
and the meaning behind the words on the support flag… in a rapid-fire rush, and he translated all of it.
He was so impressively forceful about it… I honestly couldn't quite believe he was Japanese…
I'd imagined a moving, emotional start, but between all that, it turned into total chaos! (laughs)
Which is exactly why there's no footage of the actual start scene.
Honestly, what happens behind the scenes is always the interesting part…
And then, just a few hundred meters from that start, tragedy struck!!!
There's still plenty more to the day-1 report!
Continued in day 1, part 2!