In the Beginning

A few Wednesdays ago, Chelsea asked me to come help her with a video she was making for a contest that, if she won, would have her join 2 men on a quest to get their Global Degrees, in turn earning hers as well. To get your Global Degree, you have to travel to every country in the world. No big deal. Once the video was accepted, we started cold calling news outlets, influential people and notable businesses all over Ottawa. We had one question: would you be interested in hearing about a woman from Ottawa trying to be the youngest woman to travel to every country in the world? To our surprise, basically everyone said no. Buzz kill. After a few calls we perfected our spiels and people started listening for two seconds instead of hanging up on us. A few radio stations and newspapers took our information and not much else. We exhausted our lists and decided it was time for some Starbucks. While in the parking lot, Chels gets a call from a reporter from the Ottawa Citizen.

Fast forward through the rest of that week: we were able to get Chels on 3 different radio stations both in Ottawa and Toronto (all of which called US for the story after seeing it in the Citizen), in the Ottawa Citizen both online and on Page 2, get Jim Watson’s (Ottawa's Mayor) explicit support and get over 300 likes on her video. It’s crazy how far a little positivity and hard work got us in less than a week.

Then, Wednesday (the day before the contest wrapped up) rolled around. The guys from Global Degree decided to extend the contest until the next Sunday. Honestly, we were pissed. What else were we supposed to do in the next 4 days that we hadn’t already done? We had annoyed and pestered everyone on Facebook for a solid week with just a little video and some links to radio interviews and newspaper articles. It wasn’t really an option to keep doing that for 4 more days unless we had something REALLY good to show them.

The two of us looked at each other—exhausted, crabby and baggy-eyed from the last week of little sleep and lots of promoting—and basically asked what was next. We needed wow factor and we needed it right away. We threw all the spare tip money in our wallets together and checked our bank balances. We had 500 bucks between the two of us that could be spared for an adventure. At first, we said Toronto. It didn’t feel quite right. We needed bigger. We pointed out that NYC is only an 8 hour drive away. Outrageous, but an option. We didn’t have time for Chelsea to travel to the exotic places in the world that the other competitors had been to. Maybe instead of traveling the world, we could go to where the world travelled to. Definitely wow factor. Could we just up and drive to NYC? Do people even do that in real life, let alone two 22/23yr old women? Why not?

Fast forward to 24 hours later and we’re on a full tank of gas in the middle of some miscellaneous US town with a borrowed video camera in hand documenting it all. We’ve kept our final destination a secret and have hyped it up enough that we’re being barraged with texts and notifications asking where we’re going. We get lost a few times along the way. We stop for some photo ops. We drive out of -25 degree weather and into what ends up being +4 degrees. We roll down the windows and open the sunroof and blast the tunes as we fly through Manhattan because 4 degrees is WARM. Americans are looking at us like we’re nuts because we are. The whole experience is nuts.

Eventually we arrive at our hotel in Queens, make friends with the front desk who offer us a private shuttle to the subway station which we somehow successfully navigate to land ourselves in the middle of Times Square. We head outside looking for our next goal. American Eagle Times Square is featuring people on their MASSIVE billboard. We literally run in, yelling, and tell the (terrified) greeter that some crazy Canadians need to speak with their manager. Next thing you know we’re posing for a photo and giving them our information. We’re buying Chels white pants and a white shirt so people can sign her in Sharpie. Our photo gets posted. People see it. Literally CROWDS of people gather around her to sign where they’re from and who they are and show that they support this crazy Canuck on her adventure. We're handing out literally HUNDREDS of sticky notes to everyone we meet with #‎chelsea4globaldegree on it so they can look it up and participate in the movement.

After a luxurious 3.5 hour sleep, we wake up at 6 and cab out to the Rockefeller Centre and sprint about 3 blocks to get to the Today show outdoor set. They give us weird looks when we approach, out of breath and with a huge sign, but they let us in behind the barricade. We’re early enough that we get the perfect spot, but also early enough that we commit ourselves to 1.5hrs waiting in the freezing cold (-15 degrees… the Americans are losing it) to keep the spot ours. During their little morning clip, we are RIGHT BEHIND THE ANCHORS and our sign is visible the whole time! Before we leave NYC we head to a lookout on the Queens side. Chelsea poses in the freezing cold with just her signature-filled white outfit on and Manhattan in the background. It’s pretty cool.

During that drive home, the two of us had a long talk about the whole experience that this contest had all of a sudden bestowed upon us. We didn’t just grow, we extrapolated. We went from a crappy 3 minute audition video to throwing some clothes and a cooler in the back of her little Volkswagon and heading to NYC at 4:30am. We went from cold calling anyone and everyone we could think of and getting rejected to people calling us and having a hard time NOT double booking interviews and radio appearances. We went from “please share our video” to trending an internationally shared hashtag and having total strangers physically sign their support onto a new friend in the middle of the biggest North American city.

We talked about all of this and decided that life was now different for the both of us. When you figure out that this kind of thing is possible in such a short time, it changes the way you look at things. We knew that regardless of the outcome of this contest, we were in it together now.

We have decided that they are still going to go to every country in the world. We have to try something outrageous but still reasonable to test the wild waters of world travel. Plus, before we take on such a big goal, we need to know they can do something like this without going broke or killing each other.

Stay tuned for our adventure announcement post and video coming soon!

Love,

Maddy

Former Campaign Manager turned Inquisitive Globe Trotter