Pearoast
On the way back from Cornwall we pulled into a petrol station to fill up, my mate spilt petrol on his hand then after filling up went and washed it off (well thought he got it all off) We then left the petrol station and pulled smack bang into a traffic jam. I lit a cigarette and his hand went up in flames pretty much straight away, nowhere to go he sticks his hand out the window and starts waving it about, behind us was a policeman, he jumps out of his car and arrest's my mate straight away, possession of a firearm....
(djgalaxe, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 16:51, 12 replies)

Back from Amsterdam
After a mad 12 hours in Amsterdam for my brothers 21st Birthday (1983) I woke up on the ferry to Harwich with no idea how I'd got there.

Sitting in a chair I was faced with a queue of foot passengers waiting to disembark looking down their noses at me.

I had a bad taste in my mouth, a bottle of beer (half full) in my hand and a toothbrush in my jacket pocket.

Don't use beer as toothpaste. It makes you honk.
( Blackdogmanguitar is out with Fat Larry's Jazz Band on, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 15:42, 1 reply)

Pearoast
Me and my two older brothers were horrible hyperactive children who Mum had the challenging delight of bringing up by herself. A trip pretty much anywhere would lead to chaos and result in tears… actually just a Sunday afternoon as well. Showing off and winding up dear old Ma was what we exceeded in.

One weekend she decided she wanted to visit an old school friend in Bedford, and she took us with her. Naturally we all played up and embarrassed her, I can’t even remember what we were specifically doing. But. Mum. Snapped. She made her excuses to her friend and packed us all into the car. My brothers thought it was hilarious so were giggling like loons at Mum’s gritted teeth and pulsing vein in her forehead. After we’d been driving about 5 minutes, she calmly pulled over and announced, “right awayfromthenumbers, since you find this so funny you can get out first”. I wasn’t sure how to react so I nervously laughed, until I was shoved out of the car by my shrieking traitor siblings.

I tried to run after the car but it soon disappeared from sight. Stunned, I sat on the kerb and cried in the strange foreign town, as scary groups of teenagers walked past shouting and laughing (not at me, but, still…). After about 10 minutes my middle brother came around the corner, he’d managed to re-trace the road and find me. As he was a bit older, he knew the house number and street so we asked a nice old man in a trenchcoat directions back to Mum’s friend’s house. When we got back Mum looked a little sheepish but relieved we were back. However my eldest brother still hadn’t turned up after an hour- no surprise really given that he’d been dropped off at a petrol station on some main road on the outskirts of town. Mum felt a pang of guilt and went to find him and bring him back… happy days.

Did I mention I was a 5 year old girl at the time of abandonment? We’ve never really spoke of it since.
( awayfromthenumbers, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 15:28, 7 replies)

The journey is more important than the destination
My destination was the Grand Canyon. I'd booked a place on the campsite at the bottom of the canyon, and had to do that months in advance to get a place (and by snail mail, this was in the stone age before e mail). The journey was by Greyhound Bus: a vehicle with the same craziness level as a box of frogs.

I'd planned my journey from Albuquerque to the canyon down to the last minute to ensure I'd make my camping appointment. Unfortunately a very inconsiderate man on my bus had a heart attack. The bus was diverted and delayed by several hours. I missed my change to another bus, and it became impossible for me to get to the canyon in time to hike down and camp there.

So I made a tough decision: I chose to give up on seeing the canyon, and went to California 2 days earlier instead. To this day I've still never made it back to the Grand Canyon. Maybe one day.
(Smale is stuffed, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 14:44, Reply)

I need to tell this story better, but I am a bit bleary.
I had a postie bike with knobby off-road tyres, the milk crate with an official Parks Ranger sticker on it and I used to do blockies around Uluru - all 9km circumference and often as possible.

Puttering along at a top speed of 60km with a tailwind and the lyrics to 'Born to be Wild' raging in my head, agog still after three years of the ever changing colours of the Rock; upon hearing the rent-a-bike Honda sounds and popping up like lemmings walking walking walking forever in hot sand and no beer, the hearty European traveller was bitterly disappointed to see only a slovenly ranger on the MOST AWESOME wheels eva to circle Uluru. And it was all mine in a land on no bike rentals.

I used to toot them on my merry, slow way as a guesture of boo sucks. Ah, the power.
(boozehound is drinking your bar dry, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 12:44, 6 replies)

Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Volcano's
OMG WORDS-stay with me folks, this is an epic!

Last year, there was a group of 10 of us on the way to Puerto Banus,in Southern Spain for the Boss' stag do.
We arrived at the airport in Birmingham in timely fashion, and loitered around waiting for the check in to open.
As we waited we noticed an unusually large presence of heavily armed security and police, which we kind of commented on but pretty much ignored, knowing that in a few short hours we would be hammered and surrounded by fit birds.
Talking of fit birds, who is this tiny china doll goddess approaching us in airline uniform? It's Cassie, she seems lovely, I wonder what she's going to say?
"I'm sorry, the flights are all cancelled due to the Volcano in Iceland".
The airline had clearly hedged their bets, and had sent a very pretty young thing who no one could possibly shout at, it would be like bollocking a kitten for being a bit fluffeh, and we could only stand agape as the airport slowly emptied and various mutterings from other groups of angry people confirmed that the story was true.

Well that's the weekend fucked! BUT NO!
The boss has spent a fucking fortune on a 12 bedroom villa for us to destroy, and he wasn't going to let a small issue like no flights stop us from getting to Spain! A plan formulated in his mind, oh so quickly, and he grabbed his suitcase and belted towards the monorail thing that would take us to Birmingham New St station. We followed, bemused.

He paid for us all to go on the train to London.
He then paid for us all to go FIRST CLASS on the Eurostar to Paris, and then paid for flights from Paris to Valencia.
He then hired 2 cars (tiny, tiny cars) and we fucking DROVE the rest of the way to Puerto Banus, where we arrived, 12 hours later than scheduled, in the pissing down rain, and proceeded to get fucking ruined for 2 days! Then we had to get home.
We hadn't thought about that. At all.
OOOPS.
A quick call to the Mrs confirmed that we were, indeed, stupid cunts (she had alluded to this when I called her from London on the Thursday) and we couldn't get back, due to the ash cloud.

Now, in our group, were 5 of 7 dept managers from the company we work for, and we were all meant to be back in work on the Monday. This was Sunday morning, and we were stuck.

No, we are not stuck. We have Cars. Tiny, tiny cars.
5 of us, and all our luggage, decided we HAD TO TRY to get back, for our families, for our jobs, for men everywhere who had been defeated by mother nature.
We packed a shit load of stuff into this tiny tiny car, and crammed in, and set off to drive the WHOLE LENGTH of Spain. Which took 24 hours. We holed up overnight (after a very dodgy Chinese meal, which I think was mostly dog) in a F1 hotel, which is basically where long distance truckers go to kill hookers. The bed was 2 ft wide and made of rock.
At 5 in the morning, we needed to be off, and after our three hours of kip/non kip we were back on the road, to leave the rental car at entirely the wrong place (we no longer cared) and took a taxi over the border into France. We aimed to get a train across France, to Calais, and get a Ferry home.
OH NOES! France is having an industrial strike, and there are no fucking trains. We loiter around the arse end of wherever the hell we were, trying to come up with another plan. The Mrs at this stage had texted me to say there is no point going to Calais, as all the Ferries were booked solid, and the Navy were getting involved to get people home, but we faced a wait of at least a couple of days.
No we don't, not us! Not we brave few.
We got another taxi to the nearest airport, had to wait for someone to drop off a car which we could then drive almost the full length of France to Dunkirk. This car was tiny. Tinier than the other tiny cars. And it had no air con. And the windows were stuck. But fuck it.
We drove, another 12 hours, across France and arrived in Dunkirk.
"Sorry" said the nice French man, " you can't get on the Ferry, its freight and wheel traffic only, no foot passengers".
People were getting on this fucking ferry with kids tricycles, to get around this, but we were stuck, at the terminal (not many kids tricycle shops THAT close to the water) and we were no nearer to getting home.
BINGO, we call John, one of the company drivers, and he catches the NEXT ferry over, drives off, we pile in, and drives back on again.
Genius.
We get to Dover, and John, bless him, takes us home.
I love John.
I arrived home, to an angry Mrs, on the Tuesday, at 2pm, 52 hours after we set off, on three hours sleep, and almost no food.
I went to bed, and got to work on Wednesday.
The rest of our group arrived home on the Friday, having taken a slightly more scenic and genteel route home.

It was certainly something I will remember forever, but I won't ever do anything like it again, not through choice anyway.

Next time the Volcano goes off, I'm staying in bed.
(Unstable-Dan looks like that bloke out of Scream, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 12:43, 8 replies)

So anyway, I used to drive an HGV.
As you know, the cabs are quite high, and as such I get a good view of the cars below me.

One day, during the summer, an open-top sports car pulled up along side me, with just two girls as occupants.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 12:23, 7 replies)

From Quito to Rio….
…Using South American public transport. Organised tour so not so rock and roll.

Coaches, taxis, mopeds, mini vans, rickshaws, (as well as boats and planes, which I guess don’t count as non-road) in 70 days.

Brilliant trip! Although the three ten hour coach journeys in six days were knackering. Especially when there didn’t seem to be any scheduled toilet breaks. You just had to hope that the driver needed the toilet when you did… And limiting what you drank wasn’t really an option in the sweltering heat.

I have to say I didn’t feel amazingly safe with South American drivers holding the wheel.

We hired two old dodges from the Nazcar lines in Peru to a town a few hours away to get the overnight coach to Arequipa. Cruising down the Pan American highway through the Andes as the sun was setting was awesome. However, it would have been more enjoyable if we didn’t have to keep nudging the driver who kept falling asleep, which was ever so slightly nerve racking when driving along a road with a several hundred metre drop alongside it.

Another white knuckle journey was from Cuzco to Puno. We had been stranded in Cuzco for a few extra days due to farmer strikes, and when we finally set off, we were greeting with miles and miles of roads strewn with rocks and branches. Our driver just decided to swerve around the rocks, and plough over the branches. For about two hours.

On the road from Quito to Otavalo, there were rock falls which sporadically covered our side of the road. Nothing had been done about it to control the two way traffic, so our bus driver just drove on the opposite side of the road. I get nervous when drivers overtake and are on the other side for a few seconds, let alone a lot of seconds. And the fog really didn’t help.
( awayfromthenumbers, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 12:08, 2 replies)

I went to Auckland and it was lovely
but also shit and made me a bit racist.

I wrote all about it, but couldn't take the criticism, so deleted it.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 11:44, 9 replies)

X marks the spot
For a journey that really is more important that the destination, you can't beat Confluence Hunting.

15 years ago, a guy in America was playing with his new toy, a GPS, and realised that he crossed the 72W line of longitude on his journey to work. He also noticed that he was quite near 43N latitude, so decided to go to the point where they crossed, and see what was there. After making it to the exact point - which was in a hedge at the side of a field - he took some photos and posted them on the net.

Soon, others were doing the same, and a project was conceived: to visit every integer crossing point of latitude and longitude on the planet. This is known as the Degree Confluence Project (http://www.confluence.org/). There are something like 13,000 of these points on (or visible from) land, and you are always within 79km (49Mi) of one.

Now, since this has been running for some years, all the easy ones have been done, often many times. Of course, the real thrill is to be the first person to get to one of these points, so when I discovered that the four closest to my wife's home town in Brazil had not yet been done, I was determined to bag at least one of them the next time we went.

It was a little tricky to explain to her family what it was all about, but eventually her brothers caught on and became enthusiastic. We pored over the map and chose our first target, and the next day set off.

We drove as close as we could, first on main roads, then minor ones and finally dirt tracks. We finally had to stop some 8km from the point, on a farm. The first problem was explaining to the farmer what we wanted, and I don't think he really understood - but once we'd explained that all we wanted were photos, he was fine with it, and we set off.

After trekking through fields of corn higher than our head, snake infested undergrowth, jumping over (and in one case falling into) streams, and being stalked by spiny anteaters, we finally made it to the exact point. We did the "confluence dance", trying to get all 0's on the GPS, and took our commemorative photos, before retracing our steps back to the car.

Yes, a completely futile exercise, but it felt so amazing to reach the magical point that we did it all again the next day. And the weekend after that. In all we managed to reach three of the four closest points, and although I was gutted to find that I'd been beaten to two of them - by mere days - I am the proud First Visitor to a degree confluence point*.

If you've never heard of it, visit the site. Then find a point and do it. The point you reach may be entirely unremarkable, but the journey - no, quest - will change your life.

* I'm not going to tell you which one, on the "no personal details" rule
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 11:14, 12 replies)

There’s a big biannual international conference for members of my profession, and in 2008 it was held in the town of Rijeka, in Croatia. Rijeka isn’t easy to get to; from the UK, flying in to Trieste is as good an option as anything. Since there was a big UK contingent heading to the conference, and a lot of us were on the Ryanair flight from Stansted, the conference organisers provided a bus for us.

We didn’t have long to wait in the arrivals hall; within a few minutes a guy had appeared and shouted that attendees at the conference should follow him to his bus. Thankfully, it was pretty comfortable, because the journey was loooooong. As we passed got closer to our destination, the average speed at which we were travelling dropped and dropped and dropped. It’s less than 80km between Trieste and Rijeka; but it took well over two hours to make the journey. Fortunately, the journey was quite sociable: everyone knew at least a couple of other people, and so there was plenty of conversation to pass the time. Two people seemed to be keeping themselves to themselves rather than engaging in the normal chat and banter, but that was their right. It was slightly strange that noone recognised them – but so it goes. That happens.

Eventually, we arrived at our destination, and the driver started a short tour of the hotels in the area, dropping people off.

I was booked into the hotel that was last on his route. The couple whom noone knew was mildly agitated by the time we arrived there, not having heard the name of their hotel called. One of them asked the driver when they’d be getting there. The driver looked puzzled; there was no hotel on his list that matched theirs. He asked to see their booking. They showed him a piece of paper. He looked at it, and looked at them with a sense of wonder.
"Your hotel is in Slovenia," he said.
"Yes."
"This is Croatia."
"..."

At the airport, they’d heard him call for conference attendees, followed him, and climbed aboard. They had been going to a conference, too. The problem was, it wasn’t ours. Since we didn’t stop at the Italy/ Slovenia border, they hadn’t realised we’d left Italy; they’d thought that the Slovenia/ Croatia border marked our entry into Slovenia, rather than our exit. Hence they’d not realised that they were in the wrong place, and had spent most of the afternoon on the wrong bus, and were now at the wrong conference venue, in the wrong town… and the wrong country.

Did we snigger at the likely intellectual calibre of the people at their intended conference? You betcha.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 11:03, 4 replies)

You'd rather have Jesus? You're welcome to him.
We'd crossed the border between Tanzania and Kenya three times in the past week or so, as we travelled from Moshi to Nairobi, then back to Moshi, then back to Nairobi.

Few specific memories of any of the journeys remain. I can remember the Masai encampment where we spent the night - but I can't remember what country that was in. I have a clear mental image of the young Masai men we passed on the road, whom we could tell from their black robes to have been recently circumcised. I will not forget the worrying and possibly drunk Australian pointing a bow and arrow out of the window of the truck in which he was travelling at the customs point, and firing so ineptly that the arrow simply fell limply onto the earth. Other than that: almost nothing.

Almost, but not quite. The one other memory that remains is one I would dearly love to lose.

The third of these journeys was aboard an uncomfortable white minibus. There was little legroom, little stuffing in the seats, and no air-conditioning; but there was a stereo, through which the driver of the bus played one cassette again and again. For six hours, we endured it. Six hours of Jim Reeves singing Christian songs, the general theme of which was that the world is a terrible place, and it's probably better for good Christians to be dead and so with Jesus. Twelve years later, this song still haunts me; there were only ten or so songs on the cassette, and I think that this one might have been duplicated. I lost count of the number of times it came around during the course of the journey. I hated it the first time; by the seventh repetition, it was making serious inroads into my sanity. Twelve years later, it sometimes appears unbidden from the depths of my unconscious to torture me with its message of mournful salvation.

Yet the song served an evangelistic purpose. I subsequently feared hell slightly more, for I had had some experience of it.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 10:17, 2 replies)

Public transport from LA to Miami
I was working in LA, standard youth hostel stuff, when an old workmate phoned me up and offered me a cushy job in Miami. Not being the biggest fan of my current workplace, the Venice Beach Cotel, it was an easy choice. The only hurdles in my way were the 2,300 mile journey, I needed to be there in five days, and I couldn't afford to fly.
So I boarded the Greyhound bus somewhere in downtown LA, and four days rolled off somewhere in downtown Miami.
If people ask I say I've been to Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, but essentially I drove through them on a bus silver bus, stuffing my face with taco bell, and occasionally grabbing a few hours sleep in some dodgy bus station.
By the time we arrived in Orlando three days later, having not slept or washed, people were avoiding sitting next to me due to my rather poor personal hygiene. To say I was lifting a bit would be an understatement, having lived on a sweaty bus driving through Southern America in the middle of June.... When we finally pulled into Miami I took a cab straight to the beach and jumped in the sea, then slept in what seemed like the best bed of all time!
I would not recommend it to anyone, at least fly some of the way!!
(Hoaxy The only living boy in new cross, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 8:33, Reply)

I went on a roadtrip across a post-apocalyptic USA
Accidentally killed Bill Murray.
(McChinaman banned, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 3:03, 5 replies)

I was on an 8 hour coach journey across Slovakia
and it stopped at some small town for a toilet break. I got off to relieve myself, leaving my bag on the coach. When I came back out, I noticed that it had already gone. This was in 1998, so mobile phones hadn't entered my consciousness yet. I looked around in depair and couldn't believe I was stuck in the middle of nowhere. I had no phone numbers on me and thought I'd have no way of getting out of there. I spoke very little Slovak and wouldn't be able to explain my peril.
I was looking around with my heart pumping, not having a clue what to do. Then I went over to the next platform and saw my coach was still there. I calmly got back onto the coach and went back to my seat as though nothing had happened.
(OnionTerror is a bag full of sick, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 0:50, 1 reply)

Got my foot caught in a pothole..
and ended up rolling down a hill for over 20 seconds (a very long time when tumbling uncontrollably) resulting in minor cuts and a broken watch. Needless to say, it was a nasty road trip.
(El_diablo_blanco, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 0:43, 2 replies)

Last year I drove from
"51.468125,-112.714233" to here "48.557069,-124.423943" ... a 2600 km roundtrip in which I somehow managed to clock up over 4000 kms. I like a bit of a detour.
In particular I loved the unmarked and potholey logging roads, always an adventure, sometimes twice when I had to turn around and retrace my steps. Found spooky campgrounds in the forest where every sodding tree had eyes made from stones, saw bears in the road and eagles fishing. While the laundry was drying I sat and watched killer whales a short distance off the beach and watched awesome mountain and beach sunrises and sunsets. I soaked in a hotspring under starlight in a canyon way up in the mountains while some guy stood in the darkness playing a violin to amuse his mates. I mean, it's alright where I live but
British Columbia is bloody amazing and I shall return.
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Tue 19 Jul 2011, 0:21, Reply)

Would anyone like a poem?
From Exeter there was a dock
Upon which was several cocks
Children could play
Kinder eggs ran away
Your vagina could do with a lock
Oh, this is about rides....
U can read the letters down the side
(Nigella Pussycat picking baked-in hair from creme brulee, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 22:15, 17 replies)

Bedding Down At The Moura Refuse Tip
Entropy seems to overwhelm every extended trip at some point. Everything falls apart.

In 2006, I visited Queensland, AU, and had the good fortune of having a friend's vehicle to drive. I quickly headed off to visit Carnarvon Gorge National Park. It's shocking how few people live away from the coast, and I had a sense of dread the entire trip lest the vehicle break down or that I get lost.

The locals always advise never drive after dark, because of the likelihood of colliding with wildlife: predominantly, kangaroos. Driving well after sunset, I missed the roos, but collided with some kind of enormous raptor that tumbled away into the dark. Guilt-stricken - come to sunny Australia and kill our wildlife! - I drove off to find a place to sleep.

Eventually, I arrived at the town of Moura, but it was too late - 11 p.m. - to find accomodations. I was afraid of driving down country roads near town: country folk know who belongs in their neighborhood and who doesn't, and I was afraid of encountering angry Queenslanders at 4 a.m. So, I ended up at the only neutral place that occurred to me: the town refuse tip.

I slept fitfully in the vehicle, waking up on occasion when a curious cat crawled all over the vehicle. And I met the angry Queenslanders anyway, but at 6 a.m., when the refuse tip workers arrived, only to find a weird intruder trashing up their trashy place. I hurriedly drove past the outraged workers into the sunrise.

Oddly enough, after only a few hours of sleep, I felt refreshed, with less of a sense of dread than ever.
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 19:55, 6 replies)

Napoleon the irrate
8years ago i was lucky enough to take part in a small "rally" from Montril in Northern France to Rome. The morning started of nicely, bit cold, but we took some pictures of all the cars and then set off on our various different routes...getting onto the autoroute there were about 6 of us together. We all floored it and got upto silly speeds (160Mph+) before backing off due to the fuel needle dropping at an alarming rate...soon enough we and 2 others pulled over for fuel. Filling up was a story in itself, as a sunday morning in rural france seems to mean no one is alive before 10am, even the pay at pump machines were on strike. After finding somewhere to fill up, grab a 'pasty without filling' and a coffee we were on our way again, but this time with the 3 of us deciding to stick together for the rest of the journey.

We'd been on the road for an hour or so and were heading south....fast. Car after car was overtaken, sometimes (most of the time) at some pretty antisocial speeds including 3 old blue 'tourist' buses that seemed to take offence to the speed, their flashing of lights amused me, mainly because I knew i'd annoyed several French people. We'd then got a call saying that one of the other guys on the run had been stopped at the swiss border and that he wasn't going anywhere for a while, so rather than pile in behind him and possibly face the wrath of the swiss fun police we decided to stop for lunch at a service station before taking of the car stickers to try and blend in a bit.

We pulled up and had our lunch then went to get more fuel before the journey onwards...Then the 3 coaches we buzzed passed pulled in and all the passengers poured out and glared in our general direction, A small white car then made it's way over to us. We noticed something odd, then the trouser quaking reality set in, those 150 (ish) passengers were all smartly dressed, in their damned police uniforms! and the small white car making it's way over contained 2 rather irate French policemen...One stepped out and blasted something in french at us, luckily one of the guys we were with spoke fluent french, even more luckily the frence policeman spoke very little english so a shrug of the shoulders was more than enough to convey that we didn't understand what he was saying...After 20mins of having our cars and equipment very closely checked (€1500 fine if you are caught with a working speed detector) little napolean fucked off back to his gang of collegues, we'd been told in broken english and angry french, that if we were caught driving at those speeds in his country again, we'd not only spend at least one night in jail, but have our cars confiscated and a hefty fine levied, I'm not sure if he even had the powers to do that, but he had a gun, so we politely shrugged our "don't understand you properlies" and we on our way, very very slowly. Until Italy. I think my butt hole relaxed a few hours after crossing the boarder, and it was pretty worrying at the time, but it was definatly one of the most vivid memories I have of that road trip.
(Bushcricket, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 18:00, 23 replies)

Britain may not have the length of road-trips that the states does, but they can still be long...
Travelling from Plymouth to Brighton, on the coach. We'd been staying at my GF's cousin's house, and the cousin was coming back with us to Brighton. That's about 10 hours on the coach.

We were the last three people on, and the coach was full. GF and cousin wanted to blether, so they took the two seats together; I was relegated to the single space a few rows away. Damn, have to sit next to a stranger.

Wait a minute: result! My new neighbour was a hot blond girl! I smirked at my GF, who made suitable obscene gestures and ribald comments, and settled down for what could be a pleasant journey.

Oh, how wrong I was. Hot Blond turned out to be Mad Bus Girl From Hell... she had the IQ of a concussed potato, the self-awareness of a stone mushroom, and the social skills of a rabid stoat. She spent the entire journey telling me in intimate and entirely unnecessary detail about her disastrous relationship with her chavvy ex. And I mean the entire journey; even when I put my earphones in and closed my eyes she continued relating the train-wreck that was her life. Dear god, that girl could talk.

Probably the longest 10 hours of my life.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 17:00, 9 replies)

Customs don't work
It was on my return from a trip around South America, emptying my backpack in the kitchen table at my mothers' house, when the 5 inch pure Columbian bifta fell out. Result! Then I realised since Columbia, I'd also visited Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, back to Cost Rica, the US, then England. I'd been through customs 6 times and taken 4 flights.

Despite being a bit dry, I wanted to smoke it in celebration of my freedom. My mother was well cross and confiscated it.
(bendyness shows you on the brick where he licked her, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 16:51, 9 replies)

Visit to my brother in Wimbledon
After a trip to Birminghams Snobs nightclub one weekend, I'd caught a bit of ginger fluff from Coventry University...this was back in summer 2001. She was well up for everything and I asked to her come with me on a drive down from Bham to London to visit my brother in Wimbledon.

I had a Purple 1.8d Feista which looked like a big glans. She didn't comment on this as our brief relationship hadn't developed to that sort of conversation but I knew she thought it was a little bit shite.
The car was my little prison for a trip that should've taken 3-4 hours there and back:-

I had been in a car with my brother driving into Wimbledon so knew the route to my destination quite well....should be a doddle.
We managed to get on the M1 all the way down to the North Circ. and picked our way through traffic lights and jams getting to Wimbledon and had a good night at my brothers.

The problem was the next day - I had to drive out of London. I'd never done this before with anyone so had no idea, I'd not studied the map because I was trying to impress my piece of ginger fluff.
This was before SatNav's were cheap so I relied on an OS Map found in my car door pocket.

We set off at about 10:00am. I thought that heading East from Wimbledon would get me past London, then I could head up the East side of London and avoid loads of traffic, then head north up and into the Midlands. It didn't happen like that.

After about 200 traffic lights, we were running out of diesel and I had to put the wheels on some red double lines while ginger fluff had to get out and get some for me....she returned looking sweaty and flustered after about half an hour. We set off and after another hour of driving round in circles, traffic lights, asking directions from cockney's who laughed at my ridiculous car (one spat some chewing gum on the bonnet) I finally lost my mind and I remember swearing and shouting at everything and everyone.

She became quiet as I tried to lighten the situation by joking about how we will get home at about midnight and I remember her response "let me out". It was somewhere in Eltham, she got out, took her bag off the backseat and I never saw or heard from her again.

I thought that was the least of my problems....I'd been driving for hours and was still in the south of London. I continued to drive until I recognised a something on the map (Woolwich) so I headed toward it. I got into a traffic jam and realised I was heading to the Woolwich car ferry. I was in a long line of traffic waiting for the ferry to return. Luckily there was a hot dog seller just a short walk away from the car so I got out and bought one. As I started to bite down on my big mechanically recovered horse pole, all the cars engines started up and started driving toward the ferry, my car of course was blocking hundreds of commuters (it was about 5:30pm in the afternoon) so I dashed back, slipped over the kerb banging into my car dropping my food. Many people saw this and I had to drive onto the rather small ferry with those many people smirking and pointing at me. As the ferry tugged along I thought to myself "how the hell did I end up in this situation?"

As we got to the other end I drove off in a huff, (a murderous huff) and continued to head north - my delight as I saw a sign that said Harlow which according to the map meant I was heading out of London. It was about 7:00pm. I continued driving, my eyes dreary, filled up with diesel again, half asleep, starving and thirsty.....I passed Peterborough and started into Nottingham. Then realised I lived in Birmingham. I had to then spend another hour driving across from Nottingham, south into Birmingham.....I'd overshot a whole city.
The entire return journey was about 12 hours and two tanks of diesel.

The moral of the story is - don't go out with a ginger from Coventry Uni and get a satnav before you drive out of London.
(Master of Toss has piles, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 16:08, 9 replies)

The longest journey begins with but a single step.
So I never leave the house, just in case.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 16:02, Reply)

So, to cut a long story short, the apocalypse happened, but we somehow survived.
A few other people managed to as well, but society reverted to anarchy, and, since food was increasingly scarce, roving gangs had resorted to cannibalism.

There was this one bit where we found a cellar full of people being kept for food.

Luckily, a few hundred yards away, we found a secret bunker someone had once prepared for just this sort of occasion, and we were able to feed really well on tinned food and even a bottle of whiskey. We were able to wash in clean water, and sleep in clean beds - it was lush.

We had to go before we were discovered, though.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 15:55, 6 replies)

It was magic.
I saw a tractor turn into a field.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 15:42, 5 replies)

I couldn't get out of the turning!

( Dervel OTBC, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 15:31, 2 replies)

If nothing else
This is week is proving that whoever said "it's not about the destination, it's about the journey" didn't know what they were talking about.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 15:27, 3 replies)

Boring 6 hour car journeys
Every Summer, my family would head for Stranraer in Scotland to visit family. It was a six hour journey by car and the family car at the time was a Volvo estate. With my two sisters in the back seats with luggage inbetween them, my brother and I were forced to 'camp' in the boot. We lined it with duvets and pillows and it was a nice little den for us to chill out in during the journey (obviously the parcel shelf was removed). Highly illegal yes, but we never got pulled over. Nice to see how responsible my parents were.

Such was the length of the journey, boredom would soon set in. We would soon grow tired of drawing or doing puzzles, so to entertain our young minds, my brother and I would hold up signs to other cars on the motorway such as 'Nice boobies', 'I just did a poo', 'your face looks like a rat's face', 'we're being abducted, please call Childline', 'your wheel has fallen off' and 'finger my bumhole'. Quite what people thought of this, I have no idea. It was made funnier to us as we had to stifle our laughter from my parents, who would have given us the biggest bollocking had they seen what we were up to.
(Monkey the Chicken Twitter: death_stairs, Mon 18 Jul 2011, 13:20, 5 replies)