It's more about the journey......
So when I was younger I would hang around in internet chat rooms before I found out everybody was either a pedophile or an undercover police officer. As a result I met quite a few interesting people and met them in real life.

This story is about a Canadian girl named Chantel. I met Chantel in a napster chat room and we would talk on a regular basis on MSN. Then after a bit things fizzled out, I had a lot of school work and I think she got a boyfriend so we would only talk occasionally.

Fast forward a couple of years and I end up working for a summer in America. One night near the end of my work I was on the computer and she came online. I started talking to her and mentioned that I was stateside, she said I should come up to Canada to visit, and she told me the area she lived in. So I set about making travel arrangements up to Canada. Unfortunately there was only 1 bus up there a week and 1 bus back down, and they were on the same day so I was forced to spend a week in Canada.

I took a bus from New York up to Maine, where the bus arrived in late at night. the next bus wasn't until the following morning, I no money for a hotel so I wondered around the town until about 2am, possibly looking for a party I could crash with no luck. At that point I headed back to the bus station so I wouldn't get too lost. having nowhere else to stay I decided I would make myself home in a bush next to the bus station. I laid my backpack down and went to sleep. A few hours later I had a dream that there was a person staying in the other side of the bush and they told me the bus was there, so I crawled out from inside the bush, only to find it was still the middle of the night and two taxi drivers had just seen me emerge from the bush. I waited for them to leave before climbing back in the bush.

When the morning arrived I was the first one in the door of the bus station and finally dropped off my big bag in a storage container. Then I went about purchasing the rest of my tickets. I had 2 sets to buy, one return to Canada and one single to Cleveland as that was my next stop after Canada. I had to purchase it in 2 separate goes using my credit card. the first one went through ok but the second one was declined. I panicked as this was the only form of money I had, so I had to frantically call the Barclay card hotline to find out what was happening. Turns out if you use your card too many times in a different country they think its stolen and block it. I explained that it was me using it and they managed to unblock it and I was able to purchase the remaining tickets. Then I set off on the next leg of my journey. This time the bus took me almost to my destination, but again arrived late at night and the next bus wasn't until the morning.

Time for more wondering around, but this time I was in luck. I met Some people around my age and we hung out, somehow ending up squatting in someones office building for a few hours. Then again morning came and I got my bus to the town Chantel was from. I found the hotel ok and checked in. Then came the next problem. I had no way of contacting Chantel other than online, and she hadn't responded to my emails for a few days. The trip was organized last minute so it really wasn't well thought out. I hung around the town for a day before I decided to hitchhike back to a bigger town a couple of hundred miles away. From here I would be able to catch the bus that was due in four days. I got very luck and met too really sweet old couple who gave me a ride on the first day to my first stop. Then on the second day I walked for miles without anyone picking me up. Finally I needed the bathroom and found a dunkin donuts off the side of the road. There I met a creep trucker guy who followed me into the bathroom and asked if I needed a ride. Rather cautiously I accepted. He turned out to be ok, told me some wierd stories about him having sex with 13 year old prostitutes but he didn't try to kill me or rape me so it was better than nothing. He took me all the way to my final destination.

So now I had 2 days to wait for a bus in a strange town with no money. I wondered around the town and eventually ran into some street kids about my age. These kids would hitchhike from town to town and sleep on the streets. I made friends with them and they showed me where there were sleeping. We went to a soup kitchen for food and generally had a great time until my bus arrived and I went on with my trip.

Tl;dr: Failed to meet up with a girl from the internet but had an amazing adventure along the way.
( bobzarkoff, Sat 22 Oct 2011, 20:47, 2 replies)

Soooo.....
...what part of this "amazing" "adventure" didn't involve hanging around bus stations or the streets?


Cause you can do that in your home town ....
(El Fandango carved a big EF onto his nemesis' doublet on .., Sun 23 Oct 2011, 1:05, closed)

Dunkin Donuts?
3 errors:
1)They don't have Dunkin Donuts in Canada.
2)Any town that has one bus a week has few enough people, that you could go up to anybody and say Chantel? and they would know that she was a 38 year old guy that lived in his mother's basement.
3)And they don't call 13 year olds prostitutes in Canada, they call them nieces.
Other than that, a very touching story
(the other guy not the one that gave you coochie warts, Sun 23 Oct 2011, 2:58, closed)