Brad Smith is an accountant who’s about to do the most un-accountant thing in his life.
The Port Coquitlam number cruncher and two of his buddies have signed up to do the Rickshaw Run, a 2,500-km traverse — in two-and-a-half weeks — of India, from Jaisalmer in the north to Cochin in the south, in a seven-horsepower motorized rickshaw.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Three guys will be packed into a glorified tin can on three wheels powered by a single-cylinder, two-stroke engine of dubious reliability finding their way through the chaos of the world’s second-most populous country.
“And we have no map,” Smith, 24, said.
Nothing could be further from balancing ledger sheets in an office all day.
It was Smith’s childhood friend, Nik Stimpson, who got the wheels rolling on their crazy idea. While living in London, U.K., he’d heard about the thrice-annual event that is put on by a group called The Adventurists, who create slightly unhinged challenges in developing countries, including India, Mongolia and Sri Lanka, to raise money for charities. Half of the approximately $1,500 each team must raise goes to an organization called Cool Earth, which works to preserve rainforests, while the other half is designated to the charity of the team’s choice.
Smith’s crew is raising money for the Terry Fox Foundation.
Despite the good causes, at first, Smith and another friend, Allix Duncan Grant, dismissed the fantastical notion.
“We’ll die on this trip,” said Duncan Grant, 23, whose most adventuresome travel destination to date has been Iceland.
But as the trio talked and pondered, they couldn’t shake the idea. They’re all young and not yet encumbered by the commitments of a family or mortgage.
“Let’s do the crazy stuff now,” they remember thinking.
And when Duncan Grant, who works in the aircraft industry, said he could probably find his way around a single-piston motorcycle engine, they paid the $800 deposit for their rickshaw, which will be refunded if the vehicle survives the trip.
With seven months to go until the trio embarks upon their backroad adventure through India, they’re already preparing. Duncan Grant is studying YouTube videos to bring himself up to speed on the rickshaw’s mechanics. Smith, the logistics expert, has booked their transport to and from India and is immersing himself in country’s cultural quirks.
“You want to respect that,” he said. “As a guest, you don’t want to disrespect anything.”
He’s also busy coordinating their fundraising effort, which launches Friday, Sept. 28 with a pub night at the Cat and Fiddle in Port Coquitlam that includes a silent auction and a 50/50 draw.
Smith said the Terry Fox Foundation was an obvious choice as recipients of their fundraising as they are from the Canadian hero's hometown and grew up with the annual run that is Terry's legacy. Their lives have also been touched by cancer as relatives were lost to the disease.
“It’ll be an honour to talk to people and spread the message of Terry Fox,” Smith said, adding they’ll have some T-shirts to pass out and hopefully a flag to fly from their rickshaw, which they get to customize before departing Jaisalmer after a two-day training session.
But beyond that, Smith said they have no idea what to expect once they’re on the road.
“No matter how much planning we do, we have to accept whatever happens,” he said. “It’s fun to go with the flow.”
That's a sentence, Smith acknowledges, that has likely never been uttered by an accountant before.
• To learn more about the trio’s planned adventure, as well as their fundraising efforts, go to www.tukcancer.ca.
