Our road trip was a disaster. I think that about sums it up. But really, it was doomed from the morning we left, and it didn't really get any better. It's been kind of hard to remember all of the fun we had while we were gone because the bad stuff has been so overshadowing, but I think we did a good job of finding silver linings and making the bad situations fun. I think it will just be easier to break the road trip down by days, that way I don't forget to write about something important.
Thursday:
Jess, Sarah, and Jeni were in charge of going grocery shopping for our trip and they went Thursday night while I was in class. I'm actually a little bit surprised at how well they did in buying good food (not just crisps, sweets, and chocolates). We had strawberries, celery, carrots, and apples which all turned out to be much better snack foods on our long drive anyway; when crisps are the only thing you eat all day you feel kind of sick. Anyway, Jess stayed the night at Cats on Thursday night so she would be here with all of her stuff Friday morning when we left after her class. As usual, I didn't pack until the night before leaving, so at 11:00 I was running around trying to get my stuff together so I could go to bed at a reasonable hour. You know how you always forget to pack at least one thing? I forgot to pack an extra pair of contacts. I was so worried all week that I would lose a contact and be blind for the rest of the trip (thankfully I remembered to pack my glasses though).
Friday:
I got up super early with everyone else so we could get brekkie and get the last minute things together before going to pick up the vans. Jess had class until 10 am, but she ducked out at 9:30 to meet us at the bus stop so we could get the vans as early as possible. Originally we had planned to pick up the vans at 9 which was the earliest we were allowed to get them; but a few days before we left Jess' class was un-cancelled, which threw a bit of a wrench into our planning. That was the first thing that went wrong...we should have seen it as a sign and called it quits then!
Megan had been in charge of finding directions to the van pick up place, but unfortunately she didn't know that Perth has more than one bus station. Megan had accidentally assumed that the Wellington bus station, where we wanted to go, was the bus station located near the center of the city where we go to shop and do things like that. She was a little bit wrong. We ended up at the wrong bus station and spent a few minutes running around trying to find another bus that would take us to the bus station that we wanted to be at. We eventually found a bus that would take us to Wellington, the driver was a little bit creepy (Perth bus drivers have kind of a bad habit of muttering to themselves and acting kind of crazy). At Wellington we had to catch one more bus that would take us to Newcastle St. It was really obvious that we had no idea where we were going and the sweet bus driver (not a crazy one) was really helpful and shouted when we were at the stop we needed to get off at. He even helped point us in the right way when we got off the bus.
The rental place was pretty easy to find and when we arrived they weren't too busy. I was expecting we would be able to slap down 2 credit cards, grab our vans, and be out of there in 30 minutes. I was really excited, even though the rental place looked dodgy as all get out. However, Megan's credit card wouldn't work and we had been given wrong information about third party credit cards when we had called weeks previous, so Jeni's dad's credit card wouldn't work either. We had to go through this super long process of calling Megan's credit card company and trying to get ahold of Jeni's dad so he could sign paperwork for us to use his card. At this point there were tons of people waiting behind us to get their rentals and all of us were starting to feel a little stressed. When it seemed like working out the details of Megan's card was just going to be too much to deal with I offered to put down my dad's AMEX for the $3,000 bond on one of the vans. And then stupidly (I really didn't think my choices through...I just wanted to get our vans and leave since we had already wasted almost two hours) I put down my own debit card on the bond for the second van. With the money down we were able to continue with our rental and actually got our vans. They were total pieces of sh**. Honestly, they were ghetto. But we were so excited to be getting them and leaving that we didn't really care. We did all of the paperwork and learned about how to make sure the stupid things were maintained "properly" and then we were off to St Cats to pack up our stuff and hit the road! It was decided that Jenny and Jess would drive the vans back to Cats since they are both familiar with driving manuals on the left side of the road (in the right side of the car). We figured having the Americans figure out the whole driving concept in the city would be a bad idea.
We made it 3 blocks from the rental place when the van I was in (Jess was driving) started having all of these issues with shifting. Jess couldn't get the car to go into 1st gear unless she bashed on the shifter, and once in first the stupid thing wouldn't shift up at all. We were stalling in the middle of the road trying to figure the stupid things out, which was really stressful. We eventually made it to a parking lot where Jess pulled over and we tried to call the other van to come back and find us. We were worried that if they got too far ahead we wouldn't be able to make it back to Cats since we didn't have a map (it later turned out that our map was in the map folder in our car, but since it had been folded in half Jeni hadn't seen it and assumed we didn't have one). We spent a solid 15 minutes calling each other and trying to figure out where we were in relation to the other van. When we finally found each other we thought that maybe the van was just having issues because Jess was really nervous and wasn't driving right. Sarah and I drove the van around the car park and didn't experience any issues with the clutch or gear box, so we just assumed that we were correct in thinking Jess had just been stressed. Sarah offered to drive the van back to Cats instead and Jess took her place riding in the van that Jen was driving. We made it another block, and then Sarah started experiencing the exact same issues that Jess had experienced with the gear box.
We pulled over and called road side assistance. Funny thing, they couldn't find our registration in their database, but they attributed that to recently we had rented the vans. They just assumed that our data hadn't been updated into the system. Roadside assistance sent out a mechanic/tow to look at our car and he jumped us and sent us back to the rental place to have them look at our van. When we showed back up those idiots tried to tell us there was nothing wrong with the van and that the battery would be fine all the way to Exmouth and back (it's a 16 hour drive to Exmouth). We actually had to argue with the employees about putting a new battery in the van, they were not happy about it. We also asked them to drive the van since they didn't believe us when we told them there was something wrong with the gears. They finally caved and took the van to a "mechanic" aka some creep who's friends with the people at Traveller's Auto Barn. The tightened the gear box and it seemed to be working better, but it wasn't working the way it should have been. We tried asking them to exchange the van out for a different one so they could look at the issues the van was having and let us a take another one, but they wouldn't even consider it.
By the time we finally left the Traveller's Auto Barn it was pushing four in the afternoon...we wanted to be leaving perth at 11:30 at the latest. We got back to Cats and had to pack all of our stuff into the vans before we could leave too, so I think we were finally ready to leave at around 5, which was unfortunate considering it was rush hour. We had Google Maps directions that were supposed to direct us out of the city, but somehow we got lost. The van behind us got separated at some point and kept calling to figure out which way they needed to turn at which street to stay on the same path we were taking, at one point Jeni called Megan and said "We're at the road where we can go left or right...which way do we turn?" It was hilarious. There was a long pause before Megan replied that she needed more information than that to help them out. My phone also rang while we were driving through the city and at the time of the call I was busy trying to read the map and figure out where we were at, I assumed it was the other van calling again so when I answered I snapped/yelled "Yeah?" in a pretty annoyed/stressed tone. Turns out that it wasn't the other van on the line, it was my hot dive master, Dean. Yes, the one time I think I have ever answered the phone in a rude way was when Dean called. Just my luck. He just wanted to let me know that my dive card was in at the shop and I could pick it up whenever. I felt so bad; I tried to explain why I snapped at him, but it was just awkward and I really just wanted to hang up and pretend it hadn't happened. Moral of the story, always be nice when you answer the phone, you never know if it'll be a hottie on the other end. After my conversation with Dean we were still in the city and we were still trying to find our way out. Megan was in the middle seat and she had a fold up road map that she had purchased at the Caltex which had an ok map of the city that she was trying to look at. As she unfolded the map she was kind of flailing around with it and smacked me in the face with it multiple times as she turned it this way and that looking for the right map. (Imagine her with her arms completely outstretched with this huge map flipping it upside down and turning it over while trying not to get in Jen's way of driving. It was beyond funny, I really hope you can picture it in your head.) These two guys on the sidewalk saw all of this happen and they just stood there laughing at us until the light we were stopped at turned green and we were able to drive away. Honestly, the should make a movie about our road trip, with as much crazy/awful stuff that happened (and the fact that we are all alive and still friends) it would be a box office hit.
We made it out of the city eventually and made good time for a couple of hours. As it started to get dark we thought it would be a good time to try to teach Megan and Jeni how to drive manual. We pulled off the main highway and onto some back road that looked like it was fairly empty. Megan picked it up really quickly; she only stalled the van a few times. It was little bit harder for Jeni, she didn't really understand right away when she needed to upshift and downshift. We spent around an hour driving up and down this one little road while Megan and Jeni practiced. Then it was my turn to drive! I'm actually really, really proud of myself. I didn't stall the van once! It did take me about 3 days worth of driving to break myself of the habit of trying to shift with my right hand. I had bruises and small cuts on my right knuckles from all the times I hit the driver's door when I trying to shift. Driving on the left side of the road was really easy to pick up as well, it's only when I went to turn that I had to make sure that I stayed to the left and think through my turn. By the time our trip came to an abrupt end I had the driving thing down! (Hopefully when I come home I pick up driving the "right" way again just as quickly! Watch, when I drive manual I'll have to break myself of the habit of trying to shift with my left hand!). It was funny actually, everyone wanted to drive, no one in our van ever tried to wiggle their way out of their turn behind the wheel. Driving was fun, plus with those POS vans when you were driving at least you felt like you had a little more control as opposed to when you were a passenger and you were praying the engine didn't blow up underneath you.
It was getting dark so we decided we should probably get back on the road...turns out my van had a burnt out headlight and the other working headlight as well as the brights were directed downward and to the left, so they didn't even light up the road! It was awful we had to drive with the brights on just to be able to see at all. At around 8 we decided we needed to stop for gas and get something to eat for dinner. We found a little town called Lanclin just off the highway that we figured we could stop off at to get some gas and grub. As we drove into the town we realized it was DARK and it was DEAD. There was literally nothing around us. We found one small pizza place on the side of the road and that was it, we didn't really want to drive much further down the deserted road so we pulled over there. The pizza place was super tiny and this nice, but strange, woman was the only one working. We ate outside and all joked about how if we were in a movie we were at the point just before we all started to die. For some reason we were talking about walking down the road to find the bar, I think so we could use the bathroom, and Jess said "Oh, I've seen this movie! We're going to die if we try to walk to the bar." She was probably right. Lanclin was spooky to say the least. After dinner we were discussing how far we should go before we stopped to fill up on gas. (Earlier we had decided we would just drive straight through the night to make up for lost time at the rental place earlier in the day). We realized that in the middle of the outback, the gas stations close at 8 pm...which meant we could go as far as we could get on a tank of gas and then we were stranded until the gas stations opened at 6 am the next morning.
We made it as far as Jurion Bay before the other van ran out of gas and we had to stop for the night. We didn't have reservations in Jurion, so we had no idea where we were going to sleep since the office at the caravan park had closed hours before. Jen, Megan and I drove further into town (we left the other van parked near a park so they wouldn't run out of gas) and found a hotel/bar that was open. This bar was a mad house. Imagine what you think a bar in the middle of the outback would be like...that is this bar. There were no women and it was full of these crazy strange men. And it smelled awful. The man at the reception desk (which was in the bar) told us that we could rent a room for some ridiculous price, which we weren't willing to pay for...so we decided we would go into the bar, buy something and then sleep in the car park (parking lot) and hope that no one would come along and kick us out. Going into the bar was an awful idea. These guys flocked to our table and were all strange and kept trying to hold our hands and do weird things. We didn't stay long before telling them we had to walk to our "hostel" for the night. We used the bar's bathroom and then snuck out before the bar closed so we could be in the vans before everyone came out. While we were moving around trying to get ready for bed the other van called us and whispered "Don't move! Stop moving! There are cops outside the vans!" Immediately all three of us stopped moving..which was hilarious since Jen was only halfway up onto the top bed (it's impossible to get up there without shaking the van like crazy). We lie there for what seemed like forever not making a sound while we waited for a cop to knock on our door and tell us to move. Thankfully no one came to kick us out, so after a while we decided it was safe to move (just a little bit) so we could get comfortable. As I was falling asleep these drunk guys walked by our vans and I heard one of them say, "Hey look at those camper vans! Wouldn't it be fun if we tipped them over?" Right afterwards Megan says, "Lynz? Did you hear that?" I whispered back that I had to which she replies "Well, if we hear a big crash I guess we know what happened to the other van..." It was so funny, I've never in my life had to try so hard not to laugh out loud and draw attention to myself.
I guess that about wraps it up for Friday. I'll write another post(s) about the rest of the trip later. I figure as long as I get one post up, and since this one is so long, it should get some of yall off my back about my road trip.
Check in later for more.
Love always.
No comments:
Post a Comment