Heaven Can Wait I'm Busy Birth of the Ultimate Challenge Why am I doing it. Stay active, like a challenge, driving around the world, - Heaven Can Wait, I'm Busy

BIRTH OF THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE

Why am I doing it?
Well there are three reasons. The first is I need to stay active and I like a challenge and the thought of driving around the world, would for me, be the ultimate challenge. Throughout my business life I always worked hard and put in long hours, I started my working life as an apprentice floor layer and in those days you had to do five years before you got the full rate of pay. As a qualified floor layer I was never short of work and it was not long before my brother and I were working for ourselves. I guess you can say from this acorn grew an oak tree. As a family we were never far away from one charity or another and on occasion helping people who were struggling with life. However my transition through life has not been without its near misses, to be truthful there has been four times when my life should have ended but it didn't, maybe I'm just lucky I survived, so perhaps its time to do something, to put something back by organizing a charity fund raising event that is big enough to involve people of all ages and all walks of life.

I am not a full time charity worker and I did not know how to go about organising a project of this size. Pondering on the problem for a while I came up with a solution, I would run it as a business project with decision making, accountability and budget control. The aim is to drive this fund raising event forward in the same way I would in business, the only difference is in business I would call it a project. Every charity should have a name and because I aim to enlist the help of the energetic retired army, so I felt the most suitable name for this charity is Heaven Can Wait, I'm Busy.

The second reason is we want to prove that what we are proposing is possible and safe for anybody to follow on after The Ultimate Challenge. An around the world challenge could become a Bi-annual fund raising event. First, however we have to get back in one piece ourselves. Let's see what happens, if it works out OK we can then think about how we can put a Bi-annual event together.

The third reason is all about raising money for children’s charities at home and around the world. The Ultimate Challenge is just the first in our fund raising programme, but has been organised specifically so that the journey will be filmed.  We hope to sell the film While We Have Time to a TV company and release it on DVD, thereby providing longer term proceeds to the charitable fund Heaven Can Wait I'm Busy.

Why drive around the world?
"Heaven can wait, I’m Busy" needs to focus itself on an event that we all can be involved with. The Ultimate Challenge, a journey around the world was what we came up with. At my age it would be simpler to sit back and read the papers each day, talk about the garden and so on, make a donation to charity and leave it at that, it is someone else’s problem. For me it is different, I can’t sit still long enough. Driving around the world is for me, the ultimate challenge, turning a dream into a reality, a journey with a beginning, an end, a start and a finish.  Enduring the hardship and confinement that I will experience driving and living in a little basic Suzuki Jimny. No luxury, no frills, just me and the Jimny and the journey ahead. Covering a staggering 26,500 miles through sixteen countries, three continents and across two oceans, capturing the entire experience of a lifetime in film.

Why a Suzuki Jimny?
They have a reputation for robustness and reliability, and at a price we could afford. We also wanted to do the journey with standard vehicles that have only been prepared to protect the most vulnerable parts, and not be converted into an iron rock buster, so other than that we will be using the standard off the shelf Suzuki Jimnys. Secondly, we didn’t like the idea of doing the journey in big luxury 4x4’s with all mod con’s and armchair type seats, if they break down you can’t fix them, we didn’t want people to think that the journey was a jolly for the boys. No, it needs to be seen that we will feel the bumps and there is no fridge in the back full of cold beer. Thirdly, and probably the most important, if we sustain damage, break something, or it just stops, we will probably be able to fix it, with the help from the Suzuki worldwide dealer network that is!! It is not often a Jimny stops on you, but if it does, don’t lift the bonnet, check you have fuel first, that’s usually the problem. Seriously though, we needed vehicles that we could rely on, the last thing I wanted to do is start the journey with vehicles that I was not sure of. My job as Project Director is to bring everything together, so that we depart as scheduled at the end of March 2013, journey around the world and return with the crew safely and without any major damage to the vehicles.

Why a start date of March 2013
We began our planning late 2010 and it takes time to prepare, plan and organise a project like The Ultimate Challenge. The team working on the preparation also co-ordinates the effort of individual team members to ensure that the project plan and timetable is adhered to. The Project Director and the team will be responsible for negotiating sponsorship, fund-raising, publicity and promotion, establishing contacts with media and press, journey crew and film crew training, equipment acquisition, maps, route planning and transit documentation etc. Our estimate is that it would require a period of approximately 20 months, that takes us to 2013.

Secondly, if we go too early we will encounter snow and ice which will give us problems early in the journey and possibly ice at crossing points. By leaving late March we should benefit from improved weather in the early stages allowing for the routes to open up before we get there, I think March 2013 is about right.

Whose bright idea was While We Have Time?
Retirement is a period in your life when you are supposed to take things easy. That probably applies to people who look forward to it. Great if that’s what they want and I wish them well, but retirement is not for me. When the almighty finally gets his hands on me I will be retired long enough then but he has to catch me first. I have worked for myself since the age of 21, worked on past retirement age and was happy until people started telling me it was about time I retired. I hated the thought of it. At 68 we had an offer for our family business and I was stubborn enough to tell them what they could do with it, but in fairness to everybody they were right, the time had come to let go.

Having had retirement forced on me I kept body and mind active by carrying out building renovation work, I enjoyed it, knowing that I could still do it. Since I was young I've never been far away from one boat or another and one of the trips I said that I would like to do was to sail a boat from Southampton to the Mediterranean. So I brought a boat, got a crew organized, prepared the boat for the voyage and set sail. We were aiming for the Island of Lefkas in the Ionian Islands of Greece. What with crew changes and diversions due to bad weather the trip took us six weeks, two weeks of which I was plagued with gout brought on no doubt by the brandy the crew made me drink!

I had pretty well run out of things to do when fate stepped in to lend a hand. In October 2010 my wife and I and our very good friends Dennis and Marion were staying in Lefkas Greece.  To make sure that we didn’t sit still for too long we decided to drive to a place called Meteora where the historic monasteries are located. I had driven for about three hours or so along mountain roads, the higher we went the worse the roads got, anyhow starved of decent roads to drive on we were pleased after descending a few kilometres to come across a roundabout with a sign pointing to a slip road and Meteora via a brand new motorway, smiles all round. We were on our way driving along the slip road to enter the motorway when we came across a police car blocking the entrance indicating that we had to wait, it was just as well that the police could not hear what was said in our car as it is unprintable.

At that point, I saw coming from my left, a truck with a flashing light travelling at speed followed by what looked like some sort of convoy. As it got closer I could see that the convoy comprised of cars of every description, sit out in the cold Bentleys, Vintage, Classics, Black taxi cabs etc, you name it, it was there. We got out of the car for a better look and the site was unbelievable, each car had displayed on the drivers door PEKING TO PARIS RALLY. I stood there dumbstruck, watching the procession pass, I will never forget it. We got back in the car and continued on our way. The discussion about what we had just seen ended and my passengers slipped into oblivion, but my mind was racing, I had found what I had been looking for. A few weeks later we were at home in the UK and received an invite to dinner with Denis and Marion and on the wall along side the dining table is this huge map of the world, I could not take my eyes off it. I decided then that I would not be satisfied with taking part in rallies, I am going to take on the ultimate challenge and drive around the top of the world. That decided all I now have to do is to find a way to tell my lovely wife. WHAT A CREEP!

Having convinced myself to drive around the top of the world, I now need a reason for doing it. There are hundreds of charitable causes that need support, I don’t suppose we can help them all, but as we progress with the project and get the show on the road maybe we will be able to help in some way.

Les Carvall – Heaven Can Wait I'm Busy Founder and Project Director