The Road to Reality

by Dianne Burnett

  By the time we finished our cups of tea that Sunday, we’d committed to an idea that our friends thought was insane: to assemble a team to compete in the 1992 Raid. The event was to unfold in Oman, a country of vast deserts at the toe of the Arabian Peninsula’s “boot.”

  We didn’t have a clue that our decision that morning would ultimately vault us into the world of prime-time television, or that we would eventually launch the country’s hottest show. Back then, we had nothing but a pipe dream—and the blind ambition to turn it into a reality.

  But it didn’t happen overnight. More than a year elapsed between the moment the gun went off in our heads and the gun signaling the start of the Raid sounded in Oman. In 1991, we both had full-time jobs—I was in the talent-marketing business, and every day Mark oversaw his credit-card enterprise.

  Nevertheless, every night and every weekend, we brainstormed on how to put together “Team American Pride,” as we called the five-person team that was then just a fantasy. First, we needed to find sponsors: just to enter the Raid we’d have to ante up $25,000—and factoring in airfares, equipment, and lodging, the cost for the adventure shot into the six figures. And from the beginning, we had more than simply competing in the endurance races on our minds: we were trying to figure out how to morph the Raid into a new, high-profile event.

  Mark is a trend spotter—he can see the next thing coming around the bend, when to most people it’s still up in thin air. From the minute that L.A. Times article landed on our breakfast tray, he had a gut feeling that the adventure-racing concept that Frenchman Gerard Fusil pioneered would be “the next big thing”—but the instinct of a credit-card salesman wasn’t enough to grab sponsors.

  That’s when we pulled in Brian Terkelsen. Skilled in financial forecasting and deciphering trends, the goateed investment banker from New York was the first person to take our pitch seriously. He researched the idea—compiling graphs, survey results, and bell charts. Brian’s research showed three emerging trends in how Americans wanted to spend their free time: traveling in nature, searching for self-fulfillment through adventure, and partaking in (or watching) over-the-top sporting events. Bingo! The international event that we envisioned combined all three, and we coined a name for this adventure event that we were sketching out on the drawing boards of our heads: Eco-Challenge.

  To understand the nuts and bolts of organizing an endurance-relay event—as well as what competitors faced—Mark wanted to personally partake in the Raid Gauloises. We needed to understand the logistics of planning, and how to bring in sponsors’ money—not to mention the daunting task of putting together a team. We invited our athletic friends to sign on for Team American Pride: their collective response was a laughter-filled echo of “You’re out of your minds,” interspersed with the occasional “Uh, where is Oman, anyway?”

  The idea of entering the 1992 Raid in Oman sounded all the more outrageous when, mere days after the article appeared, Operation Desert Storm began raining bombs over Kuwait and Iraq, while Saddam’s Scud missiles hit nearby Saudi Arabia and Israel.

  “Dianne, that Raid thing sounds so dangerous,” my mother said when I called to tell her of our plans. “Is Mark crazy?” She was one of the many who assumed that the entire Middle East was a massive war zone.

  “Yep, Mom, he’s crazy. That’s why I’m with him.”

  Eliciting only warnings from our social circle, I turned elsewhere. On my next visit to the Mezzaplex gym in West L.A., I didn’t just sweat on the Stairmaster: I started networking, telling everyone about our plan. One of the trainers, Diane Ekkert, knew all about the Raid: she was good friends with Nelly Fusil, wife of the Raid’s creator, Gerard Fusil.

  As luck would have it, Nelly was coming to town. Diane invited Mark and me to dinner to meet the Parisian, and we all hit it off. From there, the wheels began quickly turning. Mark brought Gerard Fusil into the Eco-Challenge planning, hiring him as a consultant; in turn, rangy Gerard involved Mark in logistical planning for the 1992 Raid.

  I also mined Mezzaplex for athletes to be part of Team American Pride. By early 1992, we’d lined up a motley crew—an actor, a stockbroker, and a fitness trainer to the stars, later adding an assistant TV director. With the team members in place, our next hurdle was raising money. We devised sponsorship packages and started cold-calling companies to raise money. Our friend Glenna Wiseman was the driving force in getting B.U.M. Equipment, a sportswear manufacturer, to sign on as the title sponsor, which brought in $50,000—the foundation of the team’s funding. From there, it began snowballing, with Nissan and Paul Mitchell among those donating money and equipment for the cause of Team American Pride.

  With the project well under way, Mark formally proposed, adding even more thrills—and chaos—to the year.

  We’d been talking about marriage ever since I’d moved to California. Mark’s parents weren’t entirely surprised when we announced our engagement. They’d suspected that I might end up being the second “Mrs. Burnett” ever since we met over Christmas 1989, which I’d initially planned to spend in New York with my family. When Mark flew to London for the holidays that year, he was so down in the dumps after three days that his mother insisted that he fly me to England, where I spent the holiday with his merry-making clan.

  Despite our intentions to wed, we didn’t immediately get around to it. We’d been busy with a move to a new apartment in Santa Monica, and I kept changing jobs—advancing up the entertainment-marketing ladder at assorted firms. And we frequently traveled abroad. At the end of a trip to visit Mark’s family in England over Christmas 1991, followed by a jaunt to France for my birthday, then Monaco for New Year’s Eve, I wrote in my journal while waiting at the airport:

  January 6, 1992

  With Mark as my guide, I’m finally seeing the world! The architecture! The food! The people! The history! It’s incredible!

  Everything is happening so fast, though. I have to slow down and focus to achieve my goals, one by one, step by step.

  My goals for 1992:

  1. Buy a home

  2. Plan wedding: dress, Hawaii, reception

  3. Start a business

  4. Buy a piano/take singing lessons!

  5. Take French classes

  6. Sign up for real estate classes; get my certificate

  On Valentine’s Day 1992, Mark officially popped the question.

  We were sitting in Chaya Brasserie—the classy restaurant that had been the backdrop for so much of our personal history. We’d had our secret, romantic interlude there when I’d visited the West Coast with Virginia; it was also the site of the incident with Kym and her sisters my first night back in California, when I’d returned to move in with Mark. We reminisced about that spirited beginning, laughing that Kym was still calling me, demanding the return of the purse, which Mark denied giving her in the first place.

  “To the love of my life,” Mark said that night, raising his glass of Cristal. Our glasses clinked, and I smiled, more in love than ever with the man by my side.

  He pulled out a small red-velvet Cartier box with a beautiful, sparkling two-carat emerald-cut diamond inside. “So are you in this for the duration, or what?”

  I laughed. “Is that how the romantic who rescued me from the 516 zone is proposing?”

  It was fitting that he would pop the question in terms of an endurance race. By then, Mark was obsessed with them—and his obsession only grew.

  “Joan Minerva!” Mark crowed into the phone, doing his best Monty Hall imitation. “You have just won an all-expenses-paid vacation to the tropical island of Kaua’i! Rain forests, waterfalls, and a gorgeous bride-to-be are just a few lures to this getaway of a lifetime …”

  I could hear my mother’s voice on the other end. “I won what … Who is this?”

  “Got you that time, Joanie!” said my fiancé, falling back into his clipped proper English. Mark loved to call Mom and talk in funny accents; he got her almost every time. “Joanie, I am marrying your bee-you-tee-full dau
ghter! In Hawaii! Start packing your bags!”

  I’d wanted to have our wedding in New York, close to my family, and in the scenario I’d been dreaming up, our reception would be held at Tavern on the Green. Mark wanted to have it in a lovely medieval church in London, close to his clan. So we compromised, and decided on Hawaii—the gorgeous island of Kaua’i to be precise—rolling the wedding, an extended-family vacation, and our honeymoon into one. We selected the date June 29, 1992—exactly three years from our first kiss. Our wedding invitations read, “On this day, I marry my best friend.”

  It wasn’t an exaggeration: by then, Mark and I were a dynamic unit—loyal friends, passionate lovers, world travelers, and partners working toward a shared dream. But my best friend, already deep in pitching sponsors for Team American Pride as well as developing Eco-Challenge, didn’t have time to plan a wedding. Neither, for that matter, did I, but I squeezed it in anyway.

  If ever a young woman wants her mother near, it’s when she’s planning her wedding. The three thousand miles between my mother and me seemed more like three thousand light-years, and I missed her more than ever. When I was back in New York over Christmas, we’d gone shopping for dresses at Vera Wang—and Mom’s eyes got misty every time I walked out of the dressing room. But back then Mark and I hadn’t set the date. Now that we had a date in mind, I kept inviting Mom to California to help me pick out a dress, and to help with the wedding planning. I asked and asked, offering to fly her out, but she hated planes; never a spontaneous person, she preferred to plan her travel several months in advance. Despite my frequent calls, she just wouldn’t come.

  I looked through the racks of bridal stores across the greater Los Angeles area, but I couldn’t find what I wanted. After months of searching, I finally designed a gown of my own: off-the-shoulder, low-cut, with a form-fitting lacy bodice and long satin gloves. My dress, said those at my wedding, was the sexiest bridal gown they’d ever seen.

  In the days leading up to our flight to Hawaii, family members began arriving in Los Angeles. My friend Jean teamed up with my sister Lisa to throw a beautiful wedding shower for me. Normally, a wedding shower is ladies-only, but we wanted the visiting men to partake in the festivities.

  After several days of merrymaking in Santa Monica, we departed from LAX for Hawaii’s “paradise garden island”—Kaua’i. Fearing that my gown would get lost if I checked it in with my baggage, I carried my wedding dress onto the plane and stuffed it, as carefully as possible, into the small luggage closet in the front of the coach section, where our group had taken over most of the seats; there were so many of us, it felt like we’d chartered the plane.

  We rented houses in Hanalei and the setting was surreal. Kaua’i—one of the wettest islands on the planet—has incessant tropical rainfall: every morning we awoke to a rainbow. Everyone was in great spirits, and even Mom let her hair down. From the minute she arrived—being greeted at the airport with a lei—Mark kept ribbing that Joanie was going to come to our wedding in her wedding dress, and wanted to remarry Dom, my father.

  “Dom,” Mark said with a poker face whenever my mother was in hearing distance, “Joanie brought her wedding dress, I saw it!”

  “Oh, Mark, cut it out!” Joanie responded every time, blushing between laughs. She adored Mark and his non-stop joking.

  Mom had no desire to renew her vows with Dad, but the tropical climate, rolling mountains and white sand beaches of the exotic oasis were clearly a welcome change from Peppermint Road, which she hadn’t left for years; she couldn’t stop smiling.

  Mark’s mother Jean, who’d been battling cancer, was strong enough to travel to Hawaii to witness our union. My mother-in-law displayed her artistic flair, beautifully arranging all the flowers for the wedding party: my bouquet of white orchids and white roses, flower pieces for the bridal party’s hair, and boutonnières for the men.

  In the hours leading up to the wedding, all my bridesmaids congregated in my suite, where we sipped champagne while getting ready. I fixed my own hair and makeup, my mother at my side all the while.

  “Honey, I’m so thrilled for you!” she kept saying. “Dianne, you look beautiful!” Mom was radiant; I’d never seen her happier.

  Our ceremony was an intimate affair held at the edge of Hanalei Bay, on the north side of Kaua’i. It was officiated by a local pastor, who conducted the ceremony half in English and half in the local Hawaiian dialect; whenever he spoke in the native tongue, Virginia had to hold in her laugh. Conversely, I was so emotional during the ceremony that I broke down sobbing as I was saying my vows; I could barely get out the words.

  Everyone was beaming as we walked out as man and wife. Jean told me that she was touched seeing her son with his new bride, seeing pure joy light up Mark’s face.

  We held the reception at the Princeville Hotel. On a terrace overlooking the ocean, Mark and I sat down at the wedding table, surrounded by the people who meant most to us—my mother, my father, Jean and Archie, my sister Lisa, and Mark’s friend Steve from England. Our families hit it off, and we laughed and laughed throughout the many courses of the luau, from the Hawaiian appetizers—called pupus—to the main course of roasted pig, grilled on an open fire. After dinner, the entertainment began with men throwing flaming sticks, then swallowing fire, followed by Hawaiian women in coconut bras and grass skirts, swaying to traditional Hawaiian tunes played on ukuleles. Mom even got up on the stage, miming their steps and flowing hand movements that told historical stories with the gestures.

  After the reception, Mark and I went back to the room and I slipped into sexy lingerie—white corset, white lacy garter belt, white stockings, the works. All my dreams about my wedding night were about to come true. I thought.

  I made my appearance in the bedroom, still wearing my white Jimmy Choos, and anticipating that my hubby would take one look at my get-up, swoop me into in his arms, and dramatically carry me to the bed—or at least whistle.

  “Hey, hon,” said Mark, barely noticing my racy garb, “let’s ask Steve if he wants to hang out with us in the hot tub and drink some champagne!”

  Steve had flown in from London alone, as his wife couldn’t make it.

  “You don’t mind, do you, Di?”

  I looked at my husband of four hours. “Ummm, well, sure, absolutely!” I didn’t want to start our marriage with a fight.

  I had imagined that Steve would have had the good sense to turn down the invitation, given that it was our wedding night. But he didn’t.

  After a few more magical days with our families—hiking past waterfalls in the jungle, kayaking across turquoise lagoons, and enjoying fabulous dinners on oceanfront terraces—all our guests flew back to the mainland. Mark and I checked into The Princeville. I had just married the man of my dreams, and couldn’t have been happier. We savored every moment of our honeymoon in the tropical paradise. And then we flew back to L.A. and began training for the Raid. The adventure had just begun.

  A possible snag arose early in the practice sessions. The men I’d recruited from Mezzaplex—actor Owen Rutledge (a rugby star back in New Zealand), fitness guru Michael Carson (Paula Abdul was but one of his clients), and stockbroker Norman Archer Hunte—were all “gym-fit,” as was Mark by then, but only one person on the team had ever partaken in a long-distance endurance race. Susan Hemond, a sports TV director, had competed in the Raid when it was held in Costa Rica. Initially, the other teammates’ lack of experience didn’t seem to be a big deal: back then we thought the only thing that mattered was fitness. Mark, the team captain, devised demanding training courses that mirrored events in the upcoming Raid.

  Weekend regimens started at 5 A.M. After I made Mark breakfast, we gathered together all the equipment, then headed out to a barely-marked mountain trailhead. Dropping off the team, I navigated to the other side of the mountain, using crude trail maps and a compass—the task was much more difficult then, in the era before Google Maps and GPS. For twelve hours or more, the team raced across the rugged terrain, cli
mbing up cliffs or rappelling down them. They often showed up late to our meeting point, leaving me to pace in the parking lot, rechecking my map, peering through binoculars, imagining that they were trapped, or surrounded by rabid coyotes. I’d had the clever idea for the team to carry walkie-talkies, but they were usually too far out of range to reach me.

  Early one weekend morning, the team members—dressed in Team American Pride uniforms—were readying their kayaks at Marina del Rey, the launching point for a 22-mile excursion to Santa Catalina Island, when Mark Steines from Channel 9, whom I’d tipped off when I ran into him at the gym, showed up with his camera and microphone to report on that day’s session. He interviewed each team member, questioning them about what had motivated them to compete in such a grueling race. It was our first media attention, and everybody was pumped.

  As the team paddled off in the kayaks, I followed behind on a friend’s boat, my binoculars trained on them. All was fine on the way there, but on the return, the tiny specks in the vast Pacific at one point disappeared. I panicked—convinced they’d flipped over under the ten-foot-high swells or had been attacked by sharks. In fact, they’d simply ended up way off course, and finally showed up back at the marina, hours late and shivering.

  The next weekend, we set off for a ranch in Palmdale to train for the horseback-riding segment of the race. Located at the edges of the Mohave Desert, Palmdale is hot, dusty, and dry. Mark’s parents and I waited patiently in the blazing 110-degree sun, making sure the team had plenty of water and sunscreen. Mothering is second nature to me, and I liked taking care of my husband.

  In retrospect, I realize that this was where I began to lose my identity, although I didn’t see it at the time. I thought I was helping to build our future, but I was actually starting to get lost in the shuffle of “Mark’s World.” He was a loving partner, and I happily shared in his dreams, willingly pitching in to support his goals, but I didn’t notice that I had stopped pursuing my goals, such as acting. I was so enmeshed in Mark’s identity—and the identity of “us”—that I sometimes caught myself telling people that we were competing in the Raid Gauloises, when in actuality, Mark was competing, and I was an actively-involved spectator. I didn’t see the irony of my choices for many years: I was living in one of the few eras in human history when women didn’t have to give up their identity, but I was doing so without question.