5 Vag's Ate 47 (Or how we hit the road and learned to stop worrying about the Bomb)

Ate 47 what? We're not entirely sure, but we can make some educated guesses. The term cock-hungry leaps to mind.... but to the matter at hand.

The road trip technically began when B slipped behind the wheel of our Pontiac G6 - upgraded (free) from a Hyundai coupe - and slipped head first into the right-hand manic midtown madness of San Francisco downtown. In his own words: "Holy shit, what the fuck? Where the fuck? Who the fuck? Fuck you, shit, and what the fuck - arsehole! Thanks fucko, you fucking cunt, why didn't you just take a fucking shit on me while you're at it. You son-of-a-fucking shitting, cunting piece of fuck."
Ok, some paraphrasing may have been involved but when B gets behind the wheel, the profanity flows like gastro-intestinal upset. And our first hour of San Fran driving - where pedestrians have right of way no matter what (and abuse it), where lanes merge and disappear with no warning, you can turn right through red lights, and every white line is an otherwise unmarked stop sign - was a magnificent example.

But without incident we crossed the Golden Gate and left the city, embarking on our 19 day road trip.

Our first port of call was to be Yosemite National Park, approximately a 4 hour drive from SF, but we decide to make a northerly detour through Muir Woods, home of big trees and windy roads.



















Below is Stinson Beach - a beach we saw but never went to. It also represents the approximate point of our detour where we discovered that we weren't where we should be, and that the road we wanted was closed. Bugger.














We stumbled into a Safeway and loaded up on supplies, but by the time we made it out of there it was about 4pm, which not only meant that we were going to arrive at Yosemite well after dusk, but that we would be able to enjoy true Rush Hour traffic. But this wasn't Rush Hour with Jackie Chan, this was a cheap knock-off starring several thousand fuckholes in oversized 4wds.

As far as we could tell, the real way to drive in heavy traffic was to not allow any stopping distance - this is to stop people from swerving maniacally into your lane - and to close any gap with as much accelerating as possible. This also ensures that when the person in front of you slams on the brakes, you have to do the same, and leaves a long line of stationary cars, waiting for the next chance to burn forward for twenty metres and slam on the brakes again. The beauty of this is that you really get to enjoy the lovely ashpalt and concrete roads and the company of overly aggressive drivers like yourself. It's therapeutic. Did I mention Pe was sick? Yes, yes, I'm sure I did, certainly. She'd caught some flu virus off of one of the guy's at the hostel. We're not entirely sure which guy. It might've been the guy we were talking to heaps, the Sushi chef/busking Japanese flautist. Or it might have been the two guys from Brisbane (coincidence and laptops brought us together). Or maybe it was the worker who showed up late the night before we left, drinking lemon tea and complaining of the flu-like symptoms he'd recently caught off of one of the patrons. Personally, my money's on the annoying, loud-mouthed, idiot who carried on at 180 dB about the dumbest fucking things I could've imagined.

Back to the drive. Apart from the frustration of being surrounded by morons in charge of oil rigs, the drive was pretty dull. Yeeeeep, just a lot of road and traffic. We're sure there was scenery out there but we couldn't see it. We did however stop in at a little town of Modesto - the town where a young kid called George Lucas grew up and based a movie called American Graffiti - and since we were on a road trip, we thought: 'what better way to mark the occasion than a pitstop at a greasy burger joint.'

And that was how the Beatles found their beat. Tune in next week to learn how the Rolling Stones manage to keep breathin'.

So long Cowboys.