(if you’re on facebook and want in: Joel Moss Fan Page)
Today, July 11th, is the one year anniversary of the day I got an email letting my brother and I (team name “The Awesomest Brothers”) know we were one of the top ten semi-finalists with a chance at going on the siteseer challenge.
It’s very difficult to differentiate between levels of awesomeness with all my contests, but the siteseer one was of the top tier of awesome – that’s the one that sent Stephen and I to Budapest, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen and Dubai on all-expense paid trips to stay in fancy hotels, eat all the room service we could, travel around with cameras and producers following us and our own personal drivers and translators.
Maybe the sickest thing about the contest – great for my personality, possibly not for some people – was how we found out about each trip. No warning.
For example: we came back from Budapest, got back in town on a sunday (because I lived in LA, my trip was a bit longer) so I reached my home around sunday at 10 pm. At that point we wait for the editors to get the videos together and get them up on the website, where we will start the vote-shilling process. The videos go up the following monday. Voting happens from monday to wednesday, and on wednesday evening we get a phone call letting:
a) if we’re in or out for the next round
b) where in the world we’re going
c) flight info and when to be at the airport.
Sticking with this example, the phone call I got on Wednesday evening at about 7 pm went like this:
“Joel, get Stephen on the phone (I conference call Stephen in)…
Congratulations, you’ve made it to the next round! (yippee! Hooray!)
You’re flight leaves at 6 am tomorrow morning, we’re going to Buenos Aires, go get packed.”
At which point I run to Borders to by a Lonely Planet book on Buenos Aires, run home, make a few phone calls, text everyone I know with “Buenos Aires, Bitches” (which my buddy later tells me is more obnoxious and less funny than I realize) pack, try to sleep for 4-5 hours before I have to get up to go to the airport.
That was basically my life last summer. One trip, every two weeks for 10 weeks total (after Dubai, we got one more to Atlanta).
The good news is I got to see all those fantastic places and have the time of my life.
The bad news is, when we came in second place to “The Waterfalls” I learned that Jewish community internet organizing has a long way to go before we catch up with Mormons.