My mom is the funniest, warmest and happiest person on the planet. No, seriously, you won’t find a more optimistic person than my mom. Back in the days she used to make some last minute decisions such as back in 2014…

I was participating in the desert run in Jordan and as we stayed in the middle of nowhere, we didn’t have access to the outside world. Although there was a cybertent where participants could write something on their blog or a quick message to family, we weren’t able to check emails (not checking email for a week….you can’t imagine hey?).

Although we didn’t have access to the outside world, the daily results of the race were posted on the race website and thus friends, family etc were able to see how we were doing.

My mom followed me daily and realized that I was doing pretty well and funny as she is, she decides that she wants to see me finish. And so…she buys a ticket the day before the finish, flies from The Netherlands to Amman, Jordan, takes a 2 hour cab drive to Petra, where she than arrived at the ancient site of Petra where the finish was. Although we weren’t going to arrive in Petra around 8:30 am, my mom and Richard were at the entrance gate at 6:00 am, being so enthusiastic…the gates weren’t open for public yet but somehow she talked herself into the site telling the guards that ‘my sun is finishing here soon’. The guards rolled their eyes but let her and her partner Richard in.

Richard had some balloons and the poor guy, blows up the balloons, than asked one of the persons at a coffee stand to hold them for a minute as he wanted to get a coffee….He got his coffee, turned around to see the man selling his balloons 🙂

So after a few hours of waiting, there was rumor that some runners were close by. My mom grabbed her camera to film the incoming runners and here’s the funny part; My mom didn’t realize that I came first, arriving through the last narrows and thus she didn’t expect the first runner to be her son. I, on the other hand, was not expecting my mom to be at the finish line. So, she is filming and the moment I pass by, running the last meters, she yells BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERT. She really scared the bejesus out of me and almost literally tripped over a bloody camel.
Now, the funny part is this video from the finish….watch it and put your sound on high…listed at the reaction from my lovely mom when she realized that it is me coming in first…Have fun watching

Me, Richard and mom with the balloons, the ones that someone else didn’t sell..

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