What is the funniest thing that's happened to you or someone you know, while they were traveling?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Answers

I admit this isn't THE funniest thing that's happened to me while traveling, but it's the first thing that came to mind.

I drove from New Orleans to Denver in the summer of 1987. On the way back, I drove across Kansas to my dad's house in Missouri. I wanted a good pair of sunglasses and my mother had a great pair of those big wraparound monstrosities that they give cataract patients and I just thought they were perfect. So she gave them to me and off I set, motoring across the wastes of western Kansas in August. At a rest stop I pulled over to use the facilities (an outhouse, essentially) and hooked my new sunglasses on my back pocket. I sat down (this was a sit-down stop for me, if you know what I mean) and when I stood up my sunglasses slipped out and tumbled into that hole. Gone, forever. Lost down a Kansas shithole. I was very sad, and I drove all the way back to Louisiana without sunglasses. Oh yeah, and I got into a huge wreck in a rainstorm just west of St. Louis, but that wasn't at all funny.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Paul I'm glad you didn't say you went after those glasses (I was a little worried where the story was going.)

One funny thing I can remember, is standing at the luggage carousel at LAX and seeing a box tied with rope coming down the gangway. Out of the flaps were sticking 10 frozen footlong hotdogs. That was in the '70's, but I knew right then that flying was starting to be like riding the bus. (Unless they were Nathan's, I can't imagine why someone thought those had to come to Los Angeles.)

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

It wasn't funny at the time, but I was driving from Virginia to North Carolina with my aunt, who is notorious for getting lost. She got so confused we ended up having to turn around and go north to get there, because she missed the exit and kept driving for an hour and a half before I woke up and realized something was wrong. The trip should've taken 6 hours, instead it took 10! I haven't taken a trip with her since!

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

My best friend Kristi and I were driving home to SF from a roadtrip to LA. I'd come down with a bad cold the day before, and was hopped-up on cold medicine, so Kristi was driving. We were on Hwy 99, an old, quaint stretch of road that passes through lots of little towns no one's ever heard of, and we were punchy and giggly (normal status quo for us) and somehow we came up with the brilliant idea of using up the film in our camera by taking pictures of the vehicles we were passing. The first subject was a pickup-and-camper shell-combo, driven by an older couple. As we passed them, I opened my window, twisted round, and took aim with the camera. The looks on their faces were priceless-- abject confusion and Concern-- and we DIED laughing! Hwy 99 is a trucking route, so I took photo after photo of semi cabs, the truckers smiling and waving out their windows, they thought it was great. Meanwhile, Kristi and I are laughing so hard our sides hurt, and my nose is running, my head swimming, and Kristi is wiping tears of laughter and trying to drive competently. That was one of the funnest (and funniest) car rides I've ever taken. It's one of those things where you really had to be there, but we still laugh about it when we look at the photos.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Two years ago, my boyfriend and I took a roadtrip out to the western states without much of anything planned, but we made sure to pack a tent in case we couldn't find a hotel, and we had his amazing F-150 pickup truck that got us over Mosquito Pass and various other places.

Anyway, he and I decided to head up to Yellowstone from Jackson Hole, but drove west through Idaho and then north to Montana, so we could go into the original entrance. I was sending postcards to everyone every time we stopped and spent a fortune on stamps.

The day we headed south to Yellowstone from Livingston (shout out to Jimmy Buffett's "Livingston Saturday Night"...um, never mind), we took 89 to Gardiner. We being adventurous souls, figured there had to be a better place to eat than McDonald's and would take our chances further down the road. An hour later, we start seeing huge billboards proclaiming, "Montanas Best Family Restaurant!"

Well, we liked stopping at homey kids of places to get a chance at trying regional cuisine and intereacting with the locals. We decided this would be our lunch spot. About a half hour later, we pull into the gravel parking lot of the restaurant, which loooked like a house, with a wrap-around porch. I was pretty excited, since I hadn't had any Montana food yet.

We went inside, and to our right was an area with bookshelves and souvenirs. To the left were shelves with chips and various sundries. Straight ahead of us was a pass-through, into a small kitchen/cafe area. There were refrigerators with all of those cool sodas that no one ever actually sells at the grocery store, and they cost $2, but you don't care, because you finally found that soda again. The woman behind the counter informed us that there was a buffet in the next room behind us, and that the sandwich selections for the day were tuna on rye and cream cheese with tomato on wheat. Their soup of the day was chicken noodle, and we could serve it to ourselves out of their Crock-Pot.

The sandwiches were not fresh. At least, as far as I could tell. They had that soggy-bread look, and they were heavily wrapped in Saran Wrap. I don't eat tuna, much less tuna that's been sitiing out at room temperature. The cream cheese was not calling my name. We looked into the back room to see what was being served in the buffet.

The room looked like a school cafeteria, with rows of tables and benches. More crockpots lined a collapsible table, and the only food item in view that wasn't covered were green beans that had a brown aura and most likely came out of a huge can. A man was standing near a microphone, talking, but we didn't bother to pay attention to what he said.

And maybe we should have.

We walked back to the first room, my boyfriend finding at least a bag of potato chips to settle his stomach until we found a somewhat better restaurant. I walked over towards the bookshelves, to get postcards.

They weren't postcards.

They were wallet cards with pictures of different deities,along with Elizabeth Clare Prophet and Mark L. Prophet. They had portable altars. They had the teaching of the Seven Rays. There was nary a postcard of a prancing bison in sight.

I walked back over to my boyfriend and stood with him while he paid for the chips and drinks. The woman who rang us up asked, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

My boyfriend answered yes.

The woman, covered in a sea of purple gauzy material that flowed and flotated in every direction then *screamed*, "I wasn't asking you!" and then pointed at me, giving me a view of her third eye in the center of her forehead*, "I was asking her!"

I muttered something quickly about not needing anything and then we hightailed the fuck out of there.

I was going to make a nice link to their website. I'll instead just put it in ye olde fashioned click and paste format, because these people terrify me, and they have sitemeter, so their referrer logs would show that y'all had come from here, and then they would read this and hunt me down and...no, I'm always this paranoid.
http://www.tsl.org

But that's not all, kids!

We stopped in the town of Gardiner, and had pizza. We asked the waitress about the restaurant back up north. She told us that they had been having ins and outs with the "gubmint" for years. IRS, ATF, FBI kinds of ins and outs. They have been scamming the elderly for years, duping them of millions of dollars. They keep a large supply of weapons in the foothills behind the property they own. They live on a farm directly across the highway, and are organic and self-sufficient in that way (which isn't too awful, I know), and have a big ole commune. They have bought up a shitload of land in the area and then they "donate" it back to Yellowstone so that they stay somewhat in the good graces of the local "gubmint".

So, it was an intersting place, no doubt. They also have a hotel you can stay at, with a gazebo in the front, with a creepy deity mannequin holding what I *think* is the baby Jesus, but I was too chicken to get too close for them to see me when I took the picture. And yes, I'm probably a bad person for not being accepting of someone else's religion and not allowing them to "witness" for me, but then I've never *died twice* (http://www.tsl.org/press_releases/brinkley.html) and lived to Art Bell about it.

(*) Um, okay, maybe she didn't have a third eye. But she was damn spooky.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Oh, Keli, damn! What a great story. I've gotta go there! I don't have any Mormon memorabilia, just Cathollic and Hindu; I really should round out my collection. I loved your Art Bell reference, too. I used to stay up late to listen to Coast To Coast A.M. to hear all the freaky stories but I don't anymore since Art had retired. It's just not the same!

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

Art retired? Oy. It's been a while since I listened to him, and I guess it was few years ago that he had went into hiding or whatever and everyone was all,"ooooh...'gubmint' got him...".

I have another good one about a hotel in Murdo, South Dakota, but I think it would be too lengthy to post here. Just let this be a lesson for us all: When they say each room is uniquely decorated, believe it. And it's not like the ones in the Poconos, either.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

I have to ask it too, Art retired? They must be playing old reruns on the radio then...I end up catching him when the power goes out and I'm waiting for the electric guys to show up. He's scary with the lights out listening to a walkman!

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

Me and five of my Psycho Duranie Friends, on our way to an All- Duranie Gathering in (don't ask) the Smokey Mountains of Knoxville, TN, hit a truck stop in the heart of Virginny about 5am. And it wasn't "truck stop" like the New Jersey truck stops... it was literally acres and acres of parked big rigs... and one really big restaurant. The decor of this place was an Ode to Southern Testosterone unlike anything I've seen before... stuffed animals (I mean ones that were once living, not ones that children play with) and mounted animal heads covered the walls, along with beer signs, girlie pictures, fishing gear, paintings of hunters, fishers, drinkers, smokers.... There were numerous glass display cases of assorted weaponry, like this collection of WWII hand grenades or that assortment of rifles. There were pinball machines and video games in every available empty spot. We. Were. The. Only. Females. In. There. Other. Than. The. Requisite. Blowsy. Waitresses. Every man in there had facial hair, most wore worn baseball caps and/or t-shirts with some kind of slogan/saying on them, and I'd be surprised if any of them still had all their teeth. Most were smokin' and/or chawing. While eating.

Guys, Hemmingway would've been a total pussy in this place.

The folks didn't really appreciate our hysterical laughter... of course, we were a little punchy after a night of driving with Sheri doing "Spice Girls Finger Puppets"....

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

Did they flirt with y'all, though?

Keli -- HA!

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

A friend of mine and I were pulled over on our way back from St. Louis by *seven* (yes, 7) police cars, lights flashing, guns drawn..with the drug dogs.... We were speeding at the time and, apparently, had passed by 4 highway patrol cruisers parked in the median. We were going so fast (like, over 100 mph) and didn't slow down for the cruisers so they assumed we were quote, "Fugitives from the law." Imagine their relief when they found out we were just really stupid. For the record, highway patrol cars in certain parts of rural Missouri may be brown colored and unmarked.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

Good Lord, Gardanna! Did you get a ticket? Did they search your car and frisk you? Did they let you pet the nice doggies?

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

why yes, they did in fact issue a ticket :) a pretty large one at that...I think it was somewhere around $200-300. Lucky for me, I wasn't driving. They were nice enough to report that we were only going 95mph instead of the real speed so we wouldn't have to go back there for court. In fact, they were all very friendly..even the dogs.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

My travelling stories as a kid with my family are probably the funniest. Dad had a knack for picking motels that had such nice features like garden-hoses-through-the window for showers and condom dispensers on the wall.

Recent funny story? I just got back from a dog show in Ohio. I was speeding and happened to pick the town speed trap to do it in (35 to 25, NO signs warning of that change). Cop saw the Georgia tags and smelled free money. So he pulls me over, and I have to open the hatch of the Jeep to get my purse/license/proof of insurance. He can clearly see my show dog and a teeny little rescue dog (8 lbs) with a bright pink cast on her leg. So we go through the legal shenanigans (why don't they just open a frickin' toll road if the need the cash that bad?), he hands me my license and the ticket, and he politely reminds me to close the hatch. Then he asks, in a grave, concerned voice, "What type of dogs are those? You don't breed them for anything nasty, do you?"

Yeah, right, buddy, that eight-pound wonder with a broken leg was bred to whip your German Shepherd's ass when I got pulled over for a speeding ticket in Podunk, Ohio. Don't piss her off, OK?

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

A few months ago i was on a plane and i accidently passed some gas. It was really smelly and the lady next tom me kept looking around and i just sat their reading my Cosmo. Their was a kid in the row ahead of me so i hope she thought it was that kid. I was sooooo emberessed.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Does anyone actually pay tickets acquired in other states? Not like I'm saying I ever got any and didn't pay them or anything...

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Gwen, please do not let this scare you, but the Pennsylvania HP came and drug my friend's butt out of bed in Ohio for speeding tickets. At least, that's what he told us. Could that be just a story?

Mary Ellen, I want to hear the hose through the window stories.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Floosie, that is why you should always have a dog with you. Since I got my puppy 7 years ago, I haven't farted once! :-)

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

I plan to pay my ticket, 'cause I will probably be going back to that town next summer. That'd be all I need, to drive 13 hours and have my butt thrown in jail and my dogs dumped in the pound because I didn't pay their stupid speeding ticket.

I can't expand too much on the garden-hose-shower stories. In any given location, my dad could find the hotel that charged hourly rates, I swear. My parents didn't have much money till I was grown but my mom loved to travel, so the six of us often drove for long distances and stayed at the Fleabag Inn. Us kids always liked it because it never failed that the beds had Magic Fingers and we'd fight about who got to put the quarters in. Plus they'd always rent two rooms, one for them and one for all the kids, so we could fight and stay up late and sneak out and run around all night. I'm surprised we all survived to adulthood, actually.

There was the place with the garden hose through the window for a shower. You had to send someone outside to turn the water on. There was also a motel where the walls were plywood paneling. Not paneled with plywood, mind you, actually constructed from quarter-inch paneling. There was a hotel in Greece where the elevator doors didn't open till you pried them apart with a shoe horn, and the interior decorating scheme was chickens. Chicken wallpaper, chicken artwork, chicken bedspreads. It was really creepy after a while, all those beady eyes looking at you. Then there was a Howard Johnson's somewhere in Nebraska where we ran into a convention of people who collected place mats. All kinds, even the paper ones you find at Waffle House and such. One woman had paper place mats from as far away as Oklahoma!

-- Anonymous, August 05, 2000

Travelling in London, where all the nice cosmopolitan people are so helpful and friendly and kind... trying to get my friend and my body bag of a suitcase up the stairs and onto the train headed for Wales... We were travelling cheap to Ireland which meant many different modes of transportation... Any way, I'd already dragged this mammoth suitcase all over London, from our skanky little hostel to the train station. People would point and laugh at the six foot American girl with her overflowing capitalist suitcase. At a certain point, my friend started running ahead of me to escape being associated with me... At one point she stopped, after it had fallen yet again onto it's huge wooley mammoth side and said "You are not my friend." Well, a couple of Dead Heads helped me hoist it onto the train, and I thought it was going to be alright... I really did. But then we got off the ferry in Dublin and the F*##$%% thing wouldn't fit into a taxi cab. So I calmly opened my suitcase and started giving my clothing away. The suitcase went to a bunch of kids who were having fun seeing how many of them they could zip inside as we drove away, with me clutching my carry on bag and underwear to my chest. My friend Cathy turned and said, "Jesus Christ, all eight of them are in there" and we lost it. For the rest of the trip, all she'd have to do was look at me and say "eight of them" and we'd lose it. Ahh, the good times.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2000

Hey Dwannie:

"Siddown, woh-mun, I eats whut I wants t'!"

*hee hee*

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2000

Shannon--that is GREAT! "Eight of them!" LOL!!

I made the mistake of taking two heavy bags when going via Gatwick and discovered that a lack of elevators makes for a lack of fun with more than one bag. I feel your pain, I do.

Lesson learned: Pack light.

My only excuse was that I was attending a wedding during a blustery season, thus brought a coat and layers and one more pair of shoes than I would have otherwise.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 2000

I have a Missouri speeding ticket/pet in car story, too! I was on a road trip from mid-Texas to Chicago, and had along my two kitties, Prissie & Honda. We stopped in Tulsa, OK our first night out and stayed in the luxurious and stylish Motel 6 (never again, don't care how poor I am, I mean...cinder block walls? I felt like I was in prison). I caught the evening news and they were forecasting a freak snowstorm. "Yeah, right" I thought, but set my alarm extra early to catch the first morning news report. The next morning, dark as pitch, I look outside to see my car buried in snow. At least 1 foot of it. The Tulsa news stations were announcing school & business closures, road hazards and pleading with viewers to stay off the roads unless they absolutely *had* to go somewhere on an emergency basis.

I considered my options. I didn't have many. I had embarked on this road trip with just enough money to cover food, one night's stay in a cheap hotel, gas and have a little left over. No credit card. No back- up cash. I had a vision in my head of this killer blizzard locking up Tulsa for four or five days, and me ending up changing bed linens at the Motel 6 to pay for my stay. I decided to risk it and head out of town. After scraping off my car windows with my atlas and securing bags, cats, litter box in food dishes in the car, I headed out, lonely little blue Honda Accord in a sea of snow. It was a white knuckle adventure, let me tell you. Folks in Tulsa do NOT know how to drive in the snow. No lanes, no laws, couldn't see the signs. I drove by intuition and as I headed out of the state of Oklahoma and into Missouri, suddenly the roads were plowed, clean & dry! The sun was shining and visibility was excellent. In my relief (and desire to get away from the storm that was on my heels), I put the pedal to the metal and started jammin' my way through this rural fairyland.

Did I think anything of that little toll road? Nah. I got my little ticket stub when I entered it, stopped at the end and paid my toll...and went about my journey. Ya know what that thing was? That's right. They note the time that you enter the toll road and also the time of your exit...then they do the math and figure out how speedy you are. Next thing I know, the law is behind me with lights & sirens blaring. I was just approaching a rest area, and slid into it as delicately as I could, being as there was two feet of snow covering the drive. As my cats were prone to do during this road trip, everytime the car stopped they would start crawling all over the car, thinking they were about ready to be set free. So the cop walks up and asks for my driver's license, and I've got one cat on my lap with front paws on steering wheel and the other cat on my shoulder trying to shove his head out of the 1-inch opening of my window. I apologized to the cop for not being able to open the window any further, that my cats would escape if I did. The guy looked at me like I was the insane cat lady. He asked me a few standard questions (I guess they were standard..."where you coming from?", "where you headed?") and the whole time I'd take Prissie and set her on the passenger seat, then take Honda and do the same, but by then Prissie was back. Over and over and over and over, cats swishing their tails in my face, over and over and over. Finally the guy let me go. I paid the ticket after I got to Chicago. I haven't gotten a speeding ticket since! But I did make another road trip with those two cats. Lordy.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2000

Bless your heart, Laura! I dislike driving on snow, but with two cats to boot? You get major credit. I've just got one cat, and he's handful enough in the car.

Thanks for the tip about the toll slips. That will definitely save me a ticket in the future.

Last December I got stopped speeding between my hometown and my family's (I was headed AWAY from them, actually) and I was busted fair and square and due for a huge ticket, but my trooper was either a catlover or full of the holiday spirit, because he spotted Max and we ended up discussing cats and I got a scolding and was let go. I thought I was going to soil myself when I saw the blue lights go on, too, because I was BROKE and definitely burning up the asphalt. I think I'd lose it if I had two cats in the car and one was trying to sit on my head or escape at the same time!

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2000