Road Trip

Winter holiday, Benjamin Cheng, icy Whistler down to sunny Mexico. Roads, cars, petrol stations, the list goes on. Here it is, in bitesize fun pack version.

Ben Cheng rocks my world.

road trippin'

Hello friend,

If you are at all interested in my recent holiday (I went on holiday recently), please feel free to read below. I have attached endnotes at certain useful reference points, so you can filter your level of concern.

When Ben(1) told me (two days before my departure to meet him in Canadia(2) and drive down to Mexico(3)), that the car’s transmission had all but fallen out I was immediately made poignant(4). I thus arrived in Whistler(5), the rain clouds formed, and I spent the first six days getting up early(6), hanging round with Aussies(7), sitting in a hot tub(8), and checking my profile on hot or not(9). Now, mechanics(10) are a backward bunch, and so it was that on the seventh day they actually began work, miraculously delivering old ‘Doris’(11) in the hour of four(12), to our door(13).
We set off straight away, with Ben’s Canadian(14) friend Ryan(15) in tow to subsidise fuel costs and say the word ‘somewhat’ a lot. The next few days were spent driving south all day(16), sleeping in car parks(17) and San Francisco(18) at night, and avoiding close contact with Americans(19).
We made it to Mexico in four days, crossing the border at Tijuana without even noticing(20) and heading straight for San Felipe(21). Over the next ten days we then continued driving to Puerticitos(22), Ensenada(23), San Quintin(24), Rosarito(25) and Tijuana(26), sleeping on the beach(27) and eating tacos(28).
And just like that it was more or less over. Ben and Ryan drove me up to Los Angeles, via Huntington(29) to fly home, where I arrived twenty-four sleepless(30) hours later, took a shower, and spent the day at work dressed in a poncho and a sombrero, passing out sweets with chilli centres to my unfortunate work-mates(31).

Very best wishes to thee and thine, it feels like we haven't met up for ages - let's go out for a drink sometime(32).

El Sprengiko xxx(33)



FOOTNOTES

1 Ah, what to say about the cheeky chinaman? For those who don't know Ben description is futile, but i'll give it a go regardless - he's basically a goat in the body of a Viet Kong. He is fond of saying stupid things, has a grip on reality best described as 'loose', and is exactly the type of person you should not spend a driving holiday with. His name in Chinese means 'sweaty onion'.
2 The Wales to our United States. I flew in to Vancouver, which I passed through twice - both times at night so as to save energy looking at it. I've heard its quite nice.
3 The Baja California region, a peninsular on the west coast populated solely by American real estate holiday home owners (November - September) and stray dogs (weekdays). With the exception of Tijuana, it's not 'proper' Mexico but you do get a passport stamp (if you remember to go to the 'voluntary' immigration office) and the cars are generally dirtier than in the States.
4 Sad.
5 Canadian ski resort, during the week long season that has neither sun nor snow.
6 Midday. Ish.
7 Persons with a basic grasp of the English language. There's a large number of them in Whistler, a couple of whom seemed very keen to try and grab my balls on a regular basis. Out of boredom I even allowed them the privelidge, once or twice. Two of the Aussie girls were extremely dull.
8 The highlight of my time in Whistler, the stone hot tub was situated outside the beautiful log cabin I was staying in overlooking a misty mountain in the distance, and clung to a temperature of 40 degrees for the duration. Nothing much interesting happened in the tub, except that one time I farted and nobody noticed. This did not happen later on during my time in the tent.
9 Started at about 8 and dropped to 5.5 at the blink of an eye. Despite the fact that I look really cool (like Tom Cruise sometimes does) and list ‘meerkats’ among my interests.
10 Backward bunch.
11 A Dodge van, the missing link between the modern people carrier and the sixteenth century wheelbarrow.
12 Inclusion for literal purposes.
13 Inclusion for rhyming purposes.
14 From Canadia.
15 Cheapskate, to the point that he once tried to take fifty cents out of the dollar tip we (Ben and I) paid and would complain if he had to pay more than a buck for a beer. He also had the annoying habit of saying whatever came into his head, regardless of interest or relevance. As far as I can tell he brought only three things to the trip - firstly he stopped me squabbling with Ben (as we had a common enemy), secondly that he stopped Ben squabbling with me (as he provided distractions as mundane as 'I somewhat thought for a minute it cost five bucks', when commenting unprovoked on an otherwise unmemorable meal that cost five bucks) and thirdly his own tent. Entertainingly mistaken for a girl, a hippy, a surfer, a terrorist (by a Mexican army officer with a big gun), and the second coming (in order of likelihood).
16 Mexico is practically directly south of Canada! Dodgy Doris survived the whole trip (no idea how far we drove as Ben reset the lap counter for no particular reason) despite being driven by a blind grandma (Ben - see point 20), a lunatic (me - managed to double the speed limit a few times and hit a speed bump at 50mph) and an illegal (Ryan - didn't have a licence and acted like he didn't have a brain). We did have a few problems along the way; The muffler went in the hills of Oregon, producing a noise steadily increasing throughout the trip that sounded like a tank continually crashing into a subwoofer factory. Then in Mexico we drove over a nail (producing a slow puncture, which turned into a fast one when Ben removed the offending article), a brake pad went (just the one, as if we were only ever stopping the left hand side of the car, while the right continued on with its journey), the left front speaker stopped speaking (most distressing for me when listening to anything produced after 1955), and the glove compartment had a habit of opening unprovoked at any given time and then refusing to shut (except on tuesdays when it failed to open).
17 Very uncomfortable. We'd basically hang up sheets to block the light and lie awake for several hours pretending to be asleep so as not to have to talk to Ryan.
18 Stayed in a motel in Berkley, used the BART subway (which was as simple as three ostriches attempting to decypher sanskrit), and saw a lot of sailors.
19 I have nothing much to add about Americans that hasn’t been said already, save that they begin most sentences with ‘well, ever since 9/11…’ (Particularly when involving petrol, car-parking and passports), and have a communal sense of humour to rival a dead, plastic, German shade of grey. They also appear to inhabit towns for many years and then suddenly evacuate them, leaving only a few wrinkled old ladies around to sit in diners and eat without teeth. They do similarly in the winter in Mexico, replacing the ladies with suicidal dogs.
20 With Ben driving we missed a number of things, including; me driving, being stationary, turnings, stop signs, red lights (it seemed he would often slow for orange ones for the sole purpose of driving through when they red), the correct side of the road, the road, and that we had crossed the border and were driving in Mexico. On the plus side he did drive like he lived in Jersey.
21 A tourist town without tourists. Numerous dead fish washed up on the shore.
22 Complete ghost town. With a library the size of a toilet cubicle. Didn't eat lunch there as the only restaurant in town only opened at 6pm, but the beach was very pleasantly situated in a bay and it had hot springs that stank of sulpher and could have liquidised a small child.
23 Quite touristy (comparatively). Had an excellent night out at a jazz bar and a locals' club where we danced with girls until they realised we couldn't dance 'Mexican' (as far as I could tell spinning in constant circles and taking short breaks to simulate buggery), at which point they would lose interest and turn to laugh at Ryan, who danced like he was being held upright by constant machine gun fire.
24 Another ghost town, without the town. Great beach and the unfulfilled promise of surf boards by our friendly American host. On the way down there it had been raining, and we made the mistake of driving down a mud road and getting the front wheel stuck (my fault). We eventually got ourselves out of trouble with the aid of retarded local, only for Ben to reverse into another sticky patch with his back tyre. By this point Ben had also coated half the van in mud while Ryan had managed to prove his uselessness twelve times.
25 Not much to say about Rosarito, lots of lifesize carvings of obscure animals along the roadside though, and a great deal of furniture.
26 I really liked Tijuana, though we didn't stay there long (only for breakfast) and the roads were mental. At the border crossing back into the States we were berated a number of times for having too much Tequila with us, only to be subsequently allowed straight through without so much as a sniffer dog. Which was at the time a little disappointing.
27 In tents, but right on the beach, or on the concrete before the beach. Pretty uncomfortable, but worth it for the view in the morning (Ben, legs akimbo, with a background of crashing waves and blinding sun).
28 We ate tacos pretty much all the time in Mexico. They were really good. Sometimes we'd put them in a flour tortilla (as opposed to corn) and call them burritos, include only cheese and call them quesadillas, cover them in a tasteless sauce and call them enchiladas or make them ourselves and call them fajitas.
29 Surf City, USA! We went out on the Friday night and surfing on the Saturday before leaving for the airport that night. My hideous efforts at partying, socialising and wave riding resulted in falling over, giving a girl my email without actually giving her my email, and more falling over. This was made bearable only because Ben was even worse than me and Ryan was a berk.
30 Nearly.
31 I know, I have a job!
32 Not you, Ryan.
33 For you, Ben. (Sorry).