With the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge now right around the corner, I've spent these days still running to make the dream real.
Looking back on the five years behind the scenes of all this.
And… working flat out right up until just days before departure, closing things out, one thing at a time…

Making a dream come true sounds like something sparkling and glamorous, but honestly,
what's behind it is genuinely fascinating.
Maybe I can only say it's interesting now, looking back…

If you'd like to see this story on video, here ↓

Behind the scenes of the challenge

Once I decided to take on this challenge, I ended up working more than seven different early-morning part-time jobs at once…
There are seven days in a week, and I barely had a single one off. Juggling two jobs a day, then going back to my main work after that —
including travel time, there were plenty of days with no lunch break, no rest at all.

But you know…
working every day with no room left to think about anything extra actually kept my mind steady.
That's… strange, honestly (laughs).
People end up thinking too much when they've got nothing to do. So I moved instead!

Early-morning part-time work turned out to be incredibly efficient!
While everyone else was still asleep, or sipping coffee and taking it easy,
I could turn every single minute, every second, into money for the rally instead.

I've heard plenty of people talk about building a morning routine,
and my morning routine was: a part-time job!

I did everything I possibly could.
Insisting on work I could do starting early in the morning meant factories, fast food, places with flexible hours.
The purpose was crystal clear: keeping the rest of the day free for my main work and the rally.

And thanks to that, I actually started building confidence — thinking, hey, maybe I really can do anything.
The fast-food job put all my past experience in customer service to good use, and it was genuinely fun,
and the housekeeping job taught me how to properly clean a house.

Plenty of people lump the whole world of classic cars together as“a rich man's hobby.”There are plenty who see it that way.

There's a whole range of things within that world of rallying, but the world of rallying I actually took on as my challenge
was nothing at all like that.

Plenty of people mocked me for it! Plenty of people told me to take on a challenge that actually fit my station, and drifted away.
Apparently there was even a whole movement of baseless rumors, true and false mixed together, actively discouraging people from supporting me.

I felt frustrated plenty of times… but I never fought back against what got said behind my back.
All I could do was show it through what I actually did…

And even so, whenever the fear crept back in,I'd write down what I was feeling on my hand, crumple it up,and blow it away.

At some point, so I couldn't hear the dark voices trying to grind down that passion, I got deliberate about choosing where I belonged, and who I kept close. I decluttered ruthlessly, and just kept quietly walking my own path forward.

I can say it now 🔥
Because I had a goal, because I had a purpose,I could do anything!

It's easy to say with words, but I'm someone who actually saw it through.

Even work I wasn't used to, once I kept at it, I got just about good enough to be useful (laughs),

and every single day working alongside the young students at those part-time jobs, loved and loving them back, was genuinely fun…I left a message, one by one, at each of my part-time jobs, before setting off on this adventure.

Just as I wrote in those messages… I promised I'd come home with results I could be proud of, so from here on, I'm not thinking about anything else at all… just, endlessly, gratitude ✨