Day 212 : An Audience With Mickey Mouse

National Lampoons: Legendary film staring comedy genius Chevy Chase dragging his family on a road trip across the USA to Wally World. After disaster after disaster they arrive to find Wally World closed, so he kidnaps the park employees to ensure his family get their dream Wally World experience.

Follow That Fire Engine: Legendary global road trip driving a silly red truck from London all the way to Disney Land!!  After driving over 23,000 miles, through 25 countries, the stage 7 crew roll into Disney. The crew are treated like celebrities. Martha had her own parking spot and was dressed up with Disney Balloons. Two Disney employees (Reece and Kris) escorted us around the park where we had back stage passes to all the rides. For a morning it was like being celebrities, not just passing queues but going in the back entrances and having rides to ourselves!!  We met the Disney Fire Department, Mary Poppins and screamed far too much on the rides. Like being Beckham for a morning

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An Audience with Mickey Mouse: This is where life on the truck just gets plain silly. Mickey Mouse is the governor of Disney. The big cheese. He is a busy mouse so we got “our people” to speak to “his people” ahead of time to arrange a meet. As the crowds gathered outside his house (he lives next door to Minnie) we were snook around the back to meet him in his dressing room. I will be honest, the nerves got the best of me as it felt like we were meeting the Queen or the Pope. We had our questions lined up and I am sorry to say that we have even dragged the big M into our burger debate. Sorry Walt.

Magic: Big big thanks to Disney (and Brooke) for our magical day. Disney rocks, fact.

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LA baby, LA!   When in Rome and all that, as we rolled into Venice beach late afternoon the crew decided to blend in with the locals. Well we tried. Myself, Amy, Brooke and Jimbo opted for hiring blades, Rob and Ben bikes. Problem #1 : I have never been on blades before. Problem # 2 : Venice Beach is not the best place to learn as everyone is awesome. Problem #3 : I had no padding for my ass. Outcome : Broken ass.

Venice Beach is everything it is billed to be. An extreme eclectic mix of eccentric characters from weight lifters to hash doctors, street BBall players to artists and skaters to musicians. A colourful collection of people  seeing the world from a multitude of angles. Up rocks the fire engine and five muppets to add to the crazy count.

Hogg and Brooke: Thank you so much for your hospitality and apologies for turning your house into a circus for a couple of days.

Mind boggling : YET another day where we had to pinch ourselves to remember how very lucky we are. So many people are helping us along the way and creating a serious amount of magic. Frankly we are running out of superlatives as every moment of every day raises the bar of life experiences yet again.  I look forward to one day sitting in a nice chair reminiscing of the days I met the Eagle Hunter in Mongolia, overtook the largest traffic jam in history in China, lead a convoy of fire engines across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, bungeed with a bin on my head and the day we had an audience with Mickey Mouse. Love life, drive a fire engine around the world. Woof.

Steve

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