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The Gambia RPCV Todd Borgie of Berkeley is expedition educator of a team of nine adventurers who are driving around the world in four Land Rovers to raise funds for Parkinson's disease
The Gambia RPCV Todd Borgie of Berkeley is expedition educator of a team of nine adventurers who are driving around the world in four Land Rovers to raise funds for Parkinson's disease
Global Rovers combat Parkinson's
By Linda DavisBy Linda Davis
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
A team of nine adventurers from around the country, including a Danville man, are driving around the world in four Land Rovers to raise funds for Parkinson's disease and to promote global awareness.
Through potholes and jungles they've traveled, exploring the bridge on the River Kwai, Thai "wats" or caves, Bolivian marketplaces and a desolate, precarious Chilean highway with drops of 4,000 feet.
They have eaten alpaca, and have photographed Ronald McDonald in a Buddhist pose at a restaurant in Bangkok.
They left San Francisco in November to drive 50,000 kilometers and explore 34 countries, documenting their trip in journals, photos and streaming video for the Drive Around the World program.
Expedition leader is Nick Baggarly of Los Gatos, a Royal Geographic Society Fellow and Silicon Valley engineer. Naval aviator Nancy Olson of Arlington, Va., is field coordinator. Former Peace Corps volunteer and teacher Todd Borgie of Berkeley is expedition educator; Rolf Potts of Thailand is a travel writer. Borgie's father was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease; Potts' exploits including piloting a wooden fishing boat 900 miles down the Mekong River.
Justin Mounts of Los Gatos is a trained emergency responder, has motorcycled through the Alps and is a pilot and mountain biker.
"I'm an adventure capitalist," Mounts proclaims in his online resume.
Joining the team is Neil Dana, son of Danville's Joe Dana. He heard about the expedition from his friend, Adam Burgess, a UC San Diego grad who is filming the trek with assistance from two other members.
Each traveler brings different skills to the team. Dana, 31, is fluent in Spanish, having lived in Costa Rica for four years.
"I was able to talk our way out of a few troubling spots in Mexico and throughout countless borders all the way down to Argentina," Dana wrote in an e-mail from Bangkok to the Times on Friday.
He graduated from UCSD in 1996 with a music degree, and has lived most of the past seven years abroad. He's always been a kid who relishes life, his father said.
Neil was adopted by the Danas as an infant from the Children's Home Society in Oakland.
"We loved him right away. He slept eight hours at night," Joe Dana kidded.
Neil Dana's passions are music, photography and surfing. He has followed the surf around the world, run a surf tour company for three years and lived with a family on a remote Caroline island in the West Pacific for several months. He gave up surfing for the expedition, for which each member had to pony up $10,000 toward expenses. Land Rover and other sponsors underwrite other costs. Money is raised for Parkinson's through online or other pledges gathered by expedition members; 100 percent of the pledged money goes to conquer the disease.
"We have been on the road for eight months now," Dana wrote. "We are in Bangkok, heading for Laos, then through China, India.
"It's been an amazing trip so far, and we have not had any serious problems, although we did get fired at with shotguns in Thailand when we were camping on unknown private property in the jungle."
The team is following longitudinal lines and will circumnavigate the globe north-south. From San Francisco they traveled south to Mexico, then Central America. They sailed on a container ship from Panama to Ecuador, then south along the Andes to Tierra del Fuego, the tip of South America.
From there, the cars were shipped to Australia. The group then continued on a southeast Asia loop, exploring Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.
They will travel to India and Sri Lanka. then turn northward through Nepal, China and Kazakhstan. They will drive isolated parts of Siberia to the Kamchatka Peninsula, where the cars will be shipped to Alaska.
The longitude expedition bills itself as the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's disease.