How long did the drive take?
About three months (Jun 1, 2007 – Aug 14, 2007) after graduating from UC Berkeley with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. I drove a 1980 Mercedes Benz 300SD Turbo Diesel, from Los Angeles to the southern tip of South America where the roads end (and/or begin) in a city called Ushuaia, Argentina. I did it by myself… the financing, planning, and driving 15,000 miles (14,143 miles). I was 23 (I’m 30 now).
Did you ever think about giving up and going back?
Yes. Like the times when my brakes didn’t respond coming down the mountains of Mexico and Costa Rica. Or when I got robbed in an alley in Panama and lost 15 pounds in 2 days. Or when I was harassed by Colombian officials. Or when I came within 2 inches of driving off the Andes. Or the time when my turbo blew in Peru. Or when my reverse gear transmission permanently failed in Chile. Or when my engine finally died in Argentina and I had to get rope-towed 300 miles to finish the trip (287 miles to be exact). That should account for the majority of the times that I thought about giving up, but there were other days when I thought about going back for more psychological reasons, which I’m sure those the aforementioned events contributed to.
What was your reason for taking the trip?
There wasn’t one single dominating reason for taking the trip. I can provide a more comprehensive list here.
1. Rare opportunity – During my internship at IBM, my mentors told me to take advantage of the summer time after graduating from college. They said that those months that I can take off are really rare to come by once you start your professional career, and I wanted to take advantage of that opportunity.
2. Experience different cultures – I already knew I wanted to travel after college, because becoming a US Army veteran during Operation Iraqi Freedom as a 19 year old in 2003 opened my eyes to different cultures in the Middle East (Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, but not Iraq) and East Africa (Djibouti and Kenya). Quick note: I never did get shot at or mortared at, although more than half of my platoon did.
3. New continent – I had already been to Asia, Africa, and Europe. And my brother lives in Germany, so Europe didn’t appeal to me as much as it appealed to my college colleagues. One day, I was looking at a map looking for places to go to and realized I’d never been to South America… so why not consider driving there?
4. My initiative – People at UC Berkeley and at IBM knew me as the guy who went to war with the Army. But I never felt that I deserved that recognition. Sure the experience was a unique one… I was in the middle of my Freshman classes until an unexpected phone call one Friday afternoon, and on a one way flight to war by that Monday morning. But I never felt that it was something I could call as an accomplishment worth of recognition since I didn’t initiate it. So whenever the military conversation came up, it made me feel uncomfortable. I wanted to be known for something I initiated.
5. Prove the doubters wrong – The more I talked to people about driving to South America, the more I heard people doubt me. That encouraged me even more to go. I thought it was doable; moreover, I thought it was worth at least trying to do even if you don’t get to the finish line.
6. Measure my perseverance – Once I was deep in the planning phase, I became more motivated by the opportunity to test my perseverance through this experience. I had always believed that I could be dropped anywhere in the world and not only survive but thrive within any cultural context. So in some sense, I wanted to prove to myself that I was who I thought I was by persevering through difficulties while traversing through different cultures. I wasn’t completely naive; I made amends with everyone I could think of before I left, knowing that a billion things could go wrong and that a million things will go wrong. But I just wanted (needed) to know what the limits of my perseverance was.
Driving to South America helped me accomplish all of that. None of these reasons by themselves would have been significant enough for me to go. But when I considered all of them together, I could not not go.
Did you accomplish your goals?
My goal was simply to make it to the end of the road at the southern tip of South America. Yes I accomplished my goal. As for the first 5 motivations that made me have that goal in the first place, I got to do all of that, too. Ironically, accomplishing my goal meant that I didn’t find out the answer to motivation #6; I still do not know the limit of my perseverance. But I now know for a fact that if I’m in a situation where a billion things could go wrong and a million things do go wrong, I can at the least persevere through that.
Does the journey relate to your plans after seminary?
I was an agnostic when I made the trip in 2007. I became a Christian in 2009. So I didn’t have a Christian motive for going. But perhaps I can still take my experience and apply that to some future ministry after seminary, though I do not know whether God is calling me to youth ministry or missions at this point. Much of how the drive relates to my future after seminary would be psychological; for example, I don’t worry too much about having to assimilate into new cultures in a missionary setting. International missions is a distinct possibility that I’m seriously contemplating because I do not struggle too much with premonitions that may potentially be hindrances for others.
There are not too many of us that have made the drive to South America. But, having exchanged handful of emails with some of us that did, I know that we all thought the same thing when we got there: “how am I going to top this?” So back then as an agnostic, I started to plan how I am going to sail around the world by myself, though I have since then abandoned that endeavor. I suppose one of the ultimate ironies of all of this is that at that time when I made the trip I wanted to be known, if I were going to be known at all, for something that I initiated and accomplished on my own. But now that I’m a Christian, I want to accomplish that which I did not initiate and that which is not my doing; I want my name to decrease as God’s name increases, so that his name, glory, and renown covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. That’s the ultimate goal that I have in this journey I’m on now and for many more miles and years to come. Living to that end until my life ends would easily top any of my other past or future accomplishments that I can conceive of. And I look forward to meeting God when I persevere until the road ends (and begins) and hearing him greet me in the same way that the banner in Ushuaia did: “Welcome to the end of the world, and the beginning of everything.”