The Road to Reality

by Dianne Burnett

  My husband grinned like a content little kid. “We’ve come a long way, huh?”

  I nodded. Five years before, Eco-Challenge was just an idea that almost everybody had laughed off as far-fetched. But Mark hadn’t stopped pitching. And we kept finding new sponsors for him to pitch to. We’d made our dream a reality.

  In the weeks leading up to the races, friends and family flew in—welcome additions to our palace. Their company proved particularly refreshing for me, as Mark was deeply involved in logistics for Eco-Challenge. Although Mark’s recently widowed father Archie was well into his 70s, he’d made the journey from London’s East End to the beating heart of Morocco. And our California pals, Ben Bourgeois and his friend Jason, also joined us for two weeks, their good humor adding even more festiveness to the stay.

  Omar drove us around to the carpet shops, where we sat on the carpeted floor drinking tea and haggling with merchants, who explained the meaning of the woven designs as dozens of rugs were unrolled and displayed, followed by dozens and dozens more—a ritual that went on for hours, putting us into a mesmerized state. You can’t walk into a Moroccan rug store and come out empty-handed, and we didn’t.

  Afterward, we walked through the nearby square and got temporary henna tattoos—curves and dashes painted on our chins, foreheads, and arms. Just as we finished, the muezzin called out, and hundreds ran off for the mosque that towered in the corner of the Medina, while some knelt on prayer rugs pointed in the direction of Mecca—in Saudi Arabia. Others simply touched the tops of their heads.

  For those friends who could stay, the kicker took place in early October, when the opening ceremonies were held. Each Eco-Challenge had grown in scale, and the ceremonies that year took on an almost Olympian grandeur. Held just before the start of the race, the event brought together competitors, who paraded out, one team at a time, proudly holding their country’s flags. Moroccan carpets were laid out in between dozens of makeshift tents; Arabic music filled the air; belly dancers put on shows; platters arrived heaped with couscous and tajines; and hundreds of staff, sponsors, and competitors mingled during the big hoopla. It was the last chance to party before the race began.

  “… 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … go!” Mark, wearing an Indiana Jones hat, was standing on top of a Land Cruiser, yelling into a megaphone at several hundred competitors and nearly as many reporters.

  The air crackled with energy as hundreds of camels topped by hard hat–wearing riders barreled across the Sahara, followed by scores of Berbers, men on camels, and children running barefoot. It looked like a scene from Lawrence of Arabia.

  It was October—ten weeks since I’d shown up with the boys. We were in Essaouira, a port town of whitewashed buildings with blue shutters, where the desert meets the Atlantic. The ocean crashed behind us, and before us, the desert was a sea of sand dust as 53 four-person teams, who’d flown in from as far away as Chile, Norway, and Japan, shot off on dromedaries in the first leg of the ten-day, 300-mile event officially called The Discovery Channel Eco-Challenge Morocco.

  Arriving three days before and given a crash course on the topography by the race director—Mark—competitors had learned only that morning what the opening event would be. Most were experienced mountain climbers and kayakers, but few had raced camels before. More grueling challenges lay ahead: kayaking across torrid crocodile-infested channels, rappelling down cliffs, climbing up 13,000-foot-high mountains, and hiking through rocky canyons, among them.

  The competitors were kept in the dark throughout the ten-day event, learning about the next day’s challenge only when they reached that day’s final checkpoint. Navigation skills were crucial and compasses were key, but even with those tools, racers often stumbled off-course, sometimes for days. Beyond the physical challenges—partakers often said they’d never done anything more demanding in their lives—a major hurdle was simply keeping the team together: if even one person in a four-person team dropped out, the entire team was disqualified.

  Sharing binoculars with Mark’s dad and his friend Jean, I watched the race until the dust cloud disappeared. Our SUV raced after the camels across the hot, rocky desert, where we saw some racers being bucked off; in the distance, we could see ancient cities carved into the mountains, the same color as the rock. Even traveling in an air-conditioned vehicle, the journey was arduous, as we twisted through massive sand dunes and into the fringes of the Western Sahara. Crossing it on a pack animal sounded nightmarish to me.

  We stopped at the initial checkpoint, to cheer the first teams coming in, and then we stopped at the second, then the third. It took hours before we finally arrived at our destination—the Eco-Challenge tent city for staff, medical personnel, and the media. While competitors slogged it out and slept under the stars, often getting only a couple hours to sleep a night, the event staff stayed in relative luxury inside a centrally-located desert oasis.

  Each tent in the camp had its purpose, from the triage tent to the press tent. A billowing tent, known as HQ, was furnished with ornate couches, pillows, and gorgeous rugs; it was illuminated by Moroccan lanterns. While those participating in the race were living on dried food and power bars, professional cooks whipped up our meals in the kitchen tent. Just outside the camp, helicopters and Isuzus stood by for emergencies.

  After camping out a few nights in the tent city—journeying to checkpoints and back again—Mark suggested we all check into an “inn” near Checkpoint 9 in the Atlas Mountains, which rose between the Sahara and the Mediterranean. It took hours to drive through the formidable terrain, and the only light to be seen for the entire journey was in the star-speckled sky.

  Deep in the heart of Berber country, the sparse, bare-bones inn was lit solely by candlelight and lanterns. Given the hour, we immediately sat down to eat, feasting on yet another incredible Moroccan meal at a long stone table. There in our secluded mountain hideaway, we talked into the night about the magnificent country, the rigors of the event underway, and the entire over-the-top experience. How romantic, I thought, looking at the shadows from the flickering candles, to live without electricity for a night.

  Just after dessert, Mark’s phone rang: he was needed at HQ immediately.

  “Mark, you’re leaving us?” I asked. “Here? Alone?” Yikes! This place was literally in the middle of nowhere.

  “Don’t worry, Di, the innkeepers will take good care of you!” Mark reassured me. “See you guys at first light.”

  He waved good-bye to his dad, Jean, the kids, and me; then he sped off with Omar, leaving us in the middle of the desert with no modern amenities for miles. The innkeepers showed us to our rooms, which brought new meaning to the word minimalist. The furnishings consisted of a mattress on the floor, two small end tables, and one candle, which we used to locate the bathroom—a hole in the floor—that was down the pitch-black hallway. This “inn” made the tent camp look plush.

  The boys fell asleep immediately, leaving me alone to fret by candlelight. I flipped through a book, the words only symbols on the pages. They might as well have been in Arabic. Obviously, I wasn’t cut out for an Eco-Challenge. While the teams were roughing it—at that moment they were sleeping on mountainsides or in caves—I was petrified spending the night at an “inn.” Would we be attacked by Bedouins, be swept away in a sandstorm? The candle flickered ominously, and I blew it out, unable to sleep in the eerie desert darkness.

  I’d finally convinced myself that I was being paranoid, when something brushed past my door. It was probably just a scorpion or a cobra. Or a kidnapper. I relit the candle. Fumbling for the door, I peeked into the hallway. A shadowy figure was slithering along on the floor! I was about to let out a blood-curdling scream, when I looked more closely. It was my father-in-law crawling on all fours on the cold cement floor, feeling his way to the bathroom down the hall. His candle had already burned out.

  “Archie, are you okay?” I asked him.

  I heard him cursing in his thick Scottish accent. “Bloody hell!”

  Dawn fina
lly arrived, and in the distance I heard the noisy whirring of a helicopter. From the windows we saw the sand kicking up, and the kids ran outside in delight, screaming “Daddy!” The helicopter propeller swirled dust in all directions as we approached. Mark always loved to swoop in dramatically, and after our dreadful night, his arrival seemed all the more heroic.

  “Morning!” he exclaimed, swooping up the kids. “Wasn’t that fun? How’d you sleep?”

  “Like a baby,” I said with a smile. A colicky baby suffering from insomnia, that is.

  Mark asked his father to watch the kids: he wanted me to accompany him to Checkpoint 9.

  Great. From a sleepless night in the heart of the desert to a helicopter—a form of transportation that keeps me silently praying from takeoff to landing. I braced myself for the dust storm and climbed into the backseat, immediately putting on the headset.

  “Everything all right up there today?” I asked the pilot.

  The pilot replied in a thick French accent. “Oui, madame.”

  As we made our way up the mountain, horrible turbulence struck immediately.

  “Is this normal?!” I shrieked to the pilot. “Are we okay?”

  “The heat thermals up here make it a bumpy ride. We’re fine.”

  Mark saw his chance to push my buttons. He grabbed the controls, making the helicopter rock back and forth. He and the pilot found this hilarious, and I managed a nervous laugh. It was a tradition at every Eco-Challenge to scare me with some sort of near-miss. Mark’s nature was to constantly challenge people: he loved pushing the envelope. He was most thrilled when on the verge of danger—blazing trails through dense jungles, jumping out of airplanes, zip-lining over crocodile-infested waters, rappelling down cliffs—things that most sane people wouldn’t dare try.

  After ascending several thousand feet of altitude, rockily, in minutes, I felt disoriented, as if I were out of my body. Attempting to disembark, I stumbled, thinking I was going to faint. After a cup of mint tea, I snapped to, and looked down at the pass between the majestic Atlas Mountains and Dades Valley on an astounding sight: thousands of nomadic Berbers with their camels and sheep were moving along in a mass migration reminiscent of The Ten Commandments.

  “Mark, isn’t it odd that this leg is particularly tough for even seasoned competitors with the latest equipment and gear, but to the Berbers it’s easy-peasy?” I looked through the binoculars. “My God, they’re wearing sandals and kaftans! And they’re making better time than the best teams.”

  Mark grabbed the binoculars and looked down at the nomads. “That says something, Di, doesn’t it?”

  Back in Marrakesh, the first teams crossed the finish line to a huge crowd of wildly cheering spectators—volunteers, families, friends, crew, and press. The winning team, for the second year in a row, was Team Aussie. After a hellacious week of treacherous conditions—fighting oppressive heat, hypothermia, sleep deprivation, blisters, wounds, and head injuries—and after racing camels, and then kayaking and climbing mountains, it was an emotional moment of laughter, exhaustion, and tears of joy.

  Mark congratulated everyone as they arrived, presenting the top teams with bottles of champagne. Each team member took a swig from the bottle, then shook it up, and sprayed it all over their teammates, their first shower in over a week.

  The closing ceremonies capped the inspirational journey. The racers had subjected themselves to a brutal 300-mile course and ten (or more) days of harsh reality—a physical and mental test that challenged them to their limits. They had been overcome by exhaustion, and some got hopelessly lost. Yet they had carried on, despite their aching bodies, wet shoes, and blister-covered feet.

  Video editors whipped together a 20-minute highlight reel capturing the most dramatic moments of the expedition, but that scarcely told the whole story. The hundreds of hours of footage were edited into a four-hour documentary for Discovery Channel narrated by Liam Neeson. The next year, it won the sports Emmy for Outstanding Program Achievement.

  Eco-Challenge Morocco had been the biggest yet—and from then on, its popularity soared. On the flight back, Mark kept running through ideas for the next year’s Eco-Challenge in Argentina. I was thinking how amazing it was that Mark and I, both from solid working-class backgrounds, had coupled tenacity and determination—with some luck, of course—and propelled our lives to new heights.

  But the ascent was just the beginning, and there were no signs that we wouldn’t be together

  … forever.

  Chapter Two

  ISLAND GIRL

  Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries

  or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

  — William Faulkner

  MY FATHER WAS A DETECTIVE who looked like Clint Eastwood, my mother was a cross between Gina Lollobrigida and Nancy Sinatra, and we lived in a sweet two-story house on Peppermint Road in Commack, Long Island—not far from the intersection of Caramel and Marshmallow—where nobody knew about lands like Morocco, Argentina, and Fiji.

  Huge maple trees grew out front—their leaves bursting into reds, oranges, and impossible purples with the arrival of fall. When their brilliant leaves shriveled and dropped, my three siblings and I raked them into huge piles and dove in, later burning them in bonfires, around which everybody roasted weenies and toasted marshmallows for S’mores.

  Our backyard swimming pool, with its yellow slide, drew family and friends all summer long. Aunt Barbara was a showstopper in her screamingly loud suits and her bathing caps with the fake green hair shooting out, and her graceful swan dives into the pool invariably transformed into belly flops when she hit the water.

  Behind our yard was a fruit grove where we picked apples for pies, and blueberries to stir into pancakes. My mother’s pride and joy was her “Spanish” room, carpeted in fashionable burnt-orange shag, with an orange crushed-velvet couch and ornate red velvet chairs protected with plastic covers. On the walls hung paintings of bull fights and framed lacy fans, but my favorite touch was the four-foot-high sculpture of a Don Quixote–like knight in armor, which I named Charlie.

  Sundays were my favorite days of the week, at least in the early years. Dad blasted Frank Sinatra on the stereo; the pasta cutter came out of the pantry; and the smells of garlic and long-simmering sauces made with sausage, meatballs, and bresaola soon filled the house. My sisters and I helped my parents make homemade pasta—from dropping eggs into a flour mound to cranking the dough through the pasta machine and cutting it into flour-dusted noodles (which it was my job to catch as they came through).

  While meat roasted in the oven, parmesan was grated, and by late afternoon our extended Italian family arrived. We crowded around the long dining room table and feasted for hours in the old-country tradition: first, antipasto—mozzarella, olives, and prosciutto-wrapped cantaloupe—then a laughter-filled break followed by un primo piatto—lasagna, baked ziti, or cheesy polenta; and, after yet another break, a secondo of roast beef, veal, or chicken, followed by salad.

  As the dinner plates were cleared away, bottles of grappa, anisette, and limoncello made their appearance on the table alongside plates upon plates of desserts—served with coffee, of course. Afterward, Dad sometimes pulled his accordion out of the closet or began telling his tales about the days when he headed private security teams for VIPs, from politicians to bands like Led Zeppelin.

  “So I’m standing just a few feet away from the President …” he’d begin, launching into his story about doing security for JFK at the old Madison Square Garden in 1962, the night of Kennedy’s most famous birthday celebration. When Marilyn Monroe came onstage wearing a sparkly dress so tight it might have been spray-painted on, JFK looked right over at Dad and rolled his eyes—no doubt worrying that his father, Joe Kennedy, watching the show from the hospital, would croak when he took in Marilyn’s sultry rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

  Up and down Peppermint Road, handmade notices wrapped around maple trees advertising “The Candy Store,” as
we called the table in the foyer where my two sisters and I set up shop selling Peppermint Patties and Sugar Daddies at inflated prices—my first successful foray into sales. Sometimes the maple trunks advertised special events: “Talent Show—Saturday, 4 pm, $1 admission, Don’t Miss It!”

  Our shows were invariably sell-outs: after selling refreshments at inflated prices, my friends and I donned red and black flamenco outfits and danced to “La Cucaracha,” playing shakers while clasping roses in our teeth. Other performances featured flips and cartwheels across the homemade stage that had a sheet for a curtain, or choreographed lip synching and kick lines to “Bennie and the Jets.” From my earliest years, I knew that show business was my calling and yearned for a stage, even if I had to build it myself.

  As idyllic as my family life sounds, life on Peppermint Road was often stormy, falling far short of The Brady Bunch. My father was stern and hot-blooded, and if any of his house rules were broken—particularly the “Don’t Make a Peep on Sunday Before 9 A.M. or Else” law—he made sure the infraction wasn’t repeated.

  My parents never actually displayed affection in public—in fact, I rarely heard my parents ever say a kind thing to each other—so the Sunday dinners were performances where they pretended to get along. The only things resembling romance in my house were the fairy tales I watched on TV, and the fantasies I concocted while lying in my canopied ballerina bed.

  It was the early 1970s—an era renowned for bad hairdos, weird clothes, and a society on the skids. I was too young to understand Vietnam, Watergate, soaring inflation, and social revolutions like Women’s Lib, but I knew the meaning of divorce, since Mom and Dad tossed the word around almost nightly. Their relationship was fiery, and drama played out on a daily basis.

  Dad was an immigrant who’d come over from the rough-and-tumble Italian port town, Bari, as a youth, taking jobs from movie usher to grocery clerk, and later serving in the Coast Guard. In the 1950s, he rapidly ascended the ladder at the New York City police force, becoming a detective within a week of earning his badge. When I was young, he was simultaneously working the swing shift as a plainclothes detective, moonlighting in private security, teaching a high-school shop class (as well as teaching a German class, a language he didn’t speak), and working on his master’s in criminology.