We didn't change our undies for 71 hours!

First things first, news came through on our journeys that our friends Laura and Bill got engaged so a massive congrats to the two of you! We hope all your best wishes and dreams come true! Sorry for putting this congrats under the heading "We didn't change our undies for 71 hours!"

Wow!

On the 25th of March we jumped on a Greyhound in San Diego California.... destination New York City... arrival date 28th March... 3200 miles away.... yes miles. Do you want me to do the conversion for you... 5149.88800 km... mammoth right! The reason? Well when we initially did planning for the trip we realised that it was going to save us about $600... that is $600 to spend elsewhere and we thought that we would be able to see lots of America... once again putting a positive spin on a potential negative! We travelled through California, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and finally New York Sate... geez! If someone had asked us in Australia, 'Would you get on a Greyhound from Cairns to Perth for 71 hours straight?" we would have told them they were possessed by a retarded ghost!

After the first night we kept on saying to each other "this is ok, we'll be fine" because when you look at your ticket you can see scheduled breaks along the way. 1 hour in Vegas, 2 hours in Denver, 1.5 hours in Chicago. In our minds we thought great! Time to take a walk, grab some food etc etc... did that get to happen? No! The buses make so many stops that they quickly get behind and then they don't plan for stuff like bad traffic, federal police getting on the bus to check for drugs and bombs and massive, massive snow falls! All of which happened!










At one stop in the middle of no where this guy gets on the front of the bus and says "Hi ya'll i'm from the federal police and we're just gonna take a quick moment to have a chat and check the bus for any drugs, alcohol or explosives, ya'll don't mind do you?" That 'quick moment' took over an hour... there went that 2 hours in Denver considering we were already running an hour late! So as you can imagine 'time spent on the bus' was getting greater and greater... Along the way there was driver changes, obviously for safety reasons. You could tell each drivers favourite place to eat... because they would pull over for a rest and to give us the chance to stretch our legs. They would pull over at one of three places, a roadside dinner, McDonalds or Burger King. Gross! Try eating healthy with those options. We stuck to these rules. No burgers, no hot dogs and no sugar loaded drinks! That way we were able to feel somewhat healthy and Simon wouldn't load up the bus with flatulence! The bus drivers were interesting themselves, we had a big mean lezzer who liked to show who was boss, an over friendly fella who just thought every mountain and piece of countryside was beautiful, the mumbler (we could never understand his announcements) Queen latifah she drove like a maniac and old mate who felt like he was falling asleep sometimes... occasionally the bus would run over the sleep markers on the side of the road and wake everyone up. We later named them the "Oh Shit lines!"
At one stage we thought we were going to die... we were hitting the road through the upper mid east (Ohio) and it was snowing very, very heavily. So heavily that truck drivers and the majority of the people on the road had pulled over so that they didn't veer of the road, flip, roll, catch fire and die. What does the Greyhound driver do... hit mach speed like Maverick in a F-14 fighter jet. Crazy son of a bitch!

On the bus there were some really weird characters, lots of mexicans, trailer parkies and quite possibly some convicted criminals! One of our favourites was this massive bloke who was a splitting image of Eddie Murphy (Mr Klump) in the 'Nutty Professor'. Not kidding either the guy was huge and he spoke just like him too! He got on the bus an mumbled all the way up the aisle... "Oh man there's so many people on this here bus, how am i gonna get a seat up in here". He did find a seat, right behind us. Hmmm that made it hard to recline. He snored and had smelly breath, so when he really got going it would waft over our seats... eeeew!

Towards the back end of the trip we changed onto a really nice bus. Bigger seats, more foot space and tv's too! We got to travel on that little puppy for about a day and a half! It was on said bus where Simon and Zoe experienced a very surreal moment! It was the middle of the night, we had just made our last stop for about 4 hours and we had just finished watching the movie "Dunstan Checks In" a dodgy 1990's kids movie. Before we hit the road from Macca's number 37 the bus driver put a new movie on and hit the road. The feature film started... It was... get ready for it... "The Man from Snowy River"... starring Tom Burlinson. Are you serious... On a greyhound bus at 1:30 am, in the United States of America, in the middle of nowhere watching the man from Snowy River on a bus full of yankee doodles with the Nutty Professor swallowing 3 big macs (patties, buns and special sauce in one go). Simon had never seen the film all the way through before so he watched the entire thing and fell asleep to the nausiating smell of special sauce! Zoe woke up to the nausiating smell of special sauce in a panic yelling, my neck, my neck ive killed my neck. She had fallen asleep in the worst possible position and Simon had to physically lift her chin up to help her! Funny!





On the 28th of March, 3 days after setting off from San Diego we arrived in the monstrosity that is New York City! Thank christ, we finally got a shower and the chance to peel off our undies and socks!

Would we do it again? No!

Much love Mitch N Zobo xo

P.S. On the top left hand side of the page you can click onto a link for all of our photos on picasa web albums. You don't have to be a member to log in, you can just view all of our photos, thanks again for stopping by and feel free to leave a comment it is nice to know you are alive.