It's Nacho's Fault That Sheena And Brad Won't Be Kicking It In China

Autoblog’s readers may have expressed disdain for a controversial attempt to score some free travel cash, but according to the Drive Nacho Drive page, they still tossed in $1,619.99. I seriously want to believe that one of the marks donors pledged $9.99, for reasons we may never know. (If you’re the $9.99 guy, holla at your boy here.)

The big question remains, however: did Sheena, Brad, and “Nacho” the Vanagon get the cash they needed to drive through China?

Well, the results are in, and they aren’t good for our intrepid trio. Over the course of a month, pledges totaled a staggering $13,174… but that was only 51% of what the Kickstarter would have needed to have been fully “funded”. Brad has announced that all the suckers donors will keep their money. This should come as no surprise to anyone who understands how Kickstarter works, but feel free to gape at the man’s magnanimity.

Without the $25,000 Nacho desperately needed to vacation in style, what’s a pair of first-worlders to do? Brad waxes eloquent:

This still leaves the question of what we’ll do after India. If we are to drive out of India, it has to be either Pakistan-Iran-Turkey, or Nepal-China-Kyrgyzstan. The former will be logistically tricky and politically restrictive if not altogether impossible, while the second – a Chinese crossing – would still be prohibitively expensive. We think we could cut a couple thousand dollars off of the $8,000 quote we received by spending less time in China and keeping the purse strings tight, but it’s still not in the budget. We’ll keep an open mind and hopefully it’ll work out in some way. If neither of these work, there’s always the shipping option

One option not mentioned: the “going home option”.

For now we push on, we drive the subcontinent and the Himalayas, we eat lots of good food, and we keep Nacho in tip top shape. Only one thing is clear: we have no idea what we’re going to do next. I guess that’s why they call it “adventure”.

I’d really like to bore you, the valued TTAC reader, with a three-thousand-word diatribe regarding the nature of “adventure”, the difference between having an “adventure” on the way to accomplishing a worthwhile goal and simply “adventuring” in the hopes that an end to the means will eventually appear and justify all that has gone before, and the sheer pathos of the self-consciously authentic yet genuinely meaningless life that so many people like Brad and Sheena (but not, it must be said, Nacho himself) are deliberately constructing for themselves, but instead I’ll offer a suggestion for Brad and Sheena.

I suggest that the two of you sell Nacho and come home to Oklahoma. People there are suffering and they need help. You’ve proven yourselves to be resourceful and imaginative. Use those talents to change someone else’s life. You might just find that you’ll find the meaning for which you’ve been searching. Before you ask: I’d love to meet and work with you there, but I’ve promised myself that I’ll finish learning all the Steve Vai solo parts from “Hot Dog and a Shake” before I do any more charity stuff. Best of luck to all three of you.