Tell a true story thread....

[ggrtrhhrtgg]

Well, I have been writing a bit lately--just stories from traveling--kind of like Velvet, just not as articulate... Anyhow, I will start by sharing a story from my first trip overseas.... At this point in time of my life, I was in love with a girl from back home... I decided to go away to Europe to get away from her, but when I told her, she wanted to come along... We went away as friends... We were involved for about 3 months, broke up, I fell in love, but, I was unable to make a move on her... Talk about frustration..Geezzz... anyways, so, I end up traveling around Europe for 7 weeks with her, and every fu©king night, I am hoping that we will hook up, but I can't put a move on her, because I don't want to complicate our trip.. getting me??? (Joseph Conrad coined the phrase "Catch 22"--great book) So, for half the trip, I am having the time of my life traveling Europe with this absolutely amazing human being, but, at the same time, I am fu©king sexually frustrated beyond belief! Well, we were on the Island of Paros in Greece, and at lunch, I don't know what got into me, but I told her about a sexual fantasy I had about her... hahaha.. I am not going to get into that... but anyways, I guess it had a bit of an affect on her... Well, that evening we got piss drunk at an Irish Pub there... We danced, laughed, just another great night, and on the way out, I reached back to grab her hand to pull her through the crowd... As we got to the street, she didn't let go...and I swear, it was one of the fu©king most serene moments of my life... I remember looking up at the star filled sky and say thankyou in my mind... Well, we were walking along the Adriatic Sea, and I suggested that we should go skinny dipping, and she obliged. We found a quite spot on the beach to strip and head into the water, I had a hell of a time trying to get my pants off---Jesus, was I excited... Well, for some stupid reason, I took off a ring... and then we headed out to sea and start messing around... We did not have protection, and she suggested that we head back to the Pension--so we quickly got dressed and started to make our way back to our room... Suddenly I realized that I had left my ring on the beach... sh!t!!! Well, I bought it in Prague, and I decided I should head back to get it...(I know, dumbass--fu©k the ring!!) Well, she, said she would continue back and told me to hurry up!! Like she needed to say that!! Well, I get back and quickly find my ring, and a stray dog approaches me.(tonnes of strays in Europe) So I give him a little loving, no, not that kind, a little ear scratch...All of the sudden, another stray shows up, and so (hahaha, you know what's funny, I am currently listening to the Dead at Shea theatre in Buffalo-79 and they are currently covering "I used to love her but its all over now" quite fitting) I give the other dog an ear scratch, scratchin two dogs, and then another shows up, then another, and another, 5 fu©king dogs, all getting pissy with each other, territorial bullsh!t!!! So, I tell them all to settle down, and I share a little love with all of them, and then I tell "come on guys, I got to go, I have been waiting for this moment for 6 fu©king months!!" So, I get up, feeling guilty mind you, and I head down the road to our Pension, and the fu©king dogs decide to follow me!! Me and five strays heading back to the room!! It was really bizarre!!! I got back and showed her, and she almost died on the spot---we didn't get a chance to get a picture, you have to use your imagination on this one, the owner came out and scared all the dogs off, hell, I wanted to invite them in!! Anyways, I got some lovin that night, the next night, heck, every damn night on the rest of our trip...

It was 7 of the best weeks of my life... It was nice to feel that much for one person, and get to share that emotion in all forms..

You know what they say--"every dog has there day" :grin ::

who's next?

[Esau]

I fill a journal at least once a month (usually a notebook size) I also write alot while travelling,especially since I prefer to travel alone (always do),after 50+ days hitching through europe,60 hitching the Yukon,1999 NYE on Baffin Island,countless canoe trips with my black lab,Hud and a funny little vacation in jail last summmer..etc etc. I actually had accumulated a few journals (18 actually),but like always I throw them away once the are filled up.

No story here from me tonight,just wanted to mention I thought it good to see others do it,although, I've never quite understood why anyone wanted to keep them...unless their memory aint so great I guess.

[paisley]

I have to be in court in 6 hours and must get to bed

word. ::

(hopefully will have a better story tomorrow night)

[Esau]

word? What word?

[paisley]

well the kids say it, thought I might be able to slip one in

just saying its 'the truth'... night all

[Esau]

Not sure I follow you at all...guess cause I'm not a kid anymore.

Good luck tomorrow

[Im going home Donny]

no one believes my true story.....Good luck Paisley, may the force be with you.

[SevenSeasJim]

I was at a restaurant on the weekend and there was a sign at the cashier that said "You can marry a Fag in Ontario, but you can't smoke one". I couldn't fu©king believe it.

[\/\/illy]

...but like always I throw them away once the are filled up.

Wow. I can't possibly imagine why you'd throw them away. Do you keep photographs or throw them away too?

[Esau]

Do you keep photographs or throw them away too?

I don't take any,usually.

[AdamH]

I'll give you three stories in three sentences.

1. I got dysentery in India from eating at a restaurant run by foreigners, and never got sick at dingy places run by Indians.

2. I was in a magic show for Indian television, playing the role of the hapless tourist/assistant who gets rolled up in a carpet and made to disappear.

3. I sat on a job interview panel where the critical questions for applicants were "What is your family name?", "are you married?" and "Are you tough?"

[Kaidy Mae]

Throwing out journals!?!?!? That sounds mad! Oh well, I'm sure you have your reasons. If you want to leave some memories behind, there's no point in toting them around with you. However, there's a great book that came from the exact journals you are referring to. Any Torontonians out there should appreciate this one (or may have read it already):

Down To This by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall

It's a beautiful story, about life's not so beautiful things.

[ggrtrhhrtgg]

well, I am kind of hoping that we might all share a story or two... come on now folks!!! whatcha got?

[CyberHippie]

Sometimes the truth is harder to belive than fiction, here is my "true story".

It's sometime in the early 90's, it's a saturday night and my friends parents have gone away for the weekend. About 4 of us head over to my friends place for a sleepover. I'm guessing we are probably around 14. I had the bright idea to bring my ouija board to try out. We set the scene, lit some candels and tow of us put our hands on the board, it started working right away. It was such a strange feeling, my eyes were actually watering. We were all a little skepticle that maybe someone was moving it around on purpose or something, but after a while we were all pretty convinced it was legit. The 'spirit' we contacted said that she was my spirit guardian. She really didn't like one of my friends though because he was wearing a St. Christophers medallion. She kept saying that he had to leave to the room. He did at first, but then decided it was bullsh!t and wasn't going to hang out in a different room so rejoined us in the living room and refused to leave. The spirit was actually getting kinda pissed, it was quite bizarre, yet we continued to ask our silly questions. The spirit grew more and more furious over the presence of my friend with the medallion. Suddenly two glass votive candel holders on either side of the board actually cracked! Now I suppose the heat from a candel could cause the glass to crack, however I would think since they are made for candles they should be able to stand up to it. But, it's a bit of a stretch that both candle holders cracked at the same time. The scene had just gotten very uncomfortable. Why didn't we pull our hands off the board? Next thing the spirit just starts spelling out, "get out" over and over and then something happened that blew my mind. The board actually started spinning clockwise, very slowly at first but picked up the pace quickly. So our hands were on the pointer thing and it was sitting still, but the board underneath was spinning around and around at an even and consistent pace. At this point we were spooked right the fu©k out and took our hands off the board. There were no other inicidents for the evening.

The next morning something kinda strange happened. My friend (who's house it was) was playing a tape in the stereo that I really didn't dig. I made a comment to the effect that it sucked, and suddenly the tape stopped (half way through the side) and actually ejected. I went home later that day, with my ouija board in tow. I stuck it up in the top of my closet. In the weeks that followed I often had an uncomfortable eerie feeling when I was in the house, almost as though I was being watched or something. On two specific occasions I opened the closet and the ouija board actuall fell down towards me from the top shelf. While I was tempted, I never used it again.

I'm not sure what we tapped into that night, but there is no doubt in my mind that it was real, otherwordly, sinister, and outside of my realm of understanding.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Calamity Jane]

no one believes my true story.....

You're not allowed to tease us like this, Howler( MY RULES!!)

HOLY F*CK CYBERHIPPIE.....I'm horipillating!. I'm glad I had the lights on when I read your story!!

I'm pressed for time, so here's my cutNpaste from another thread...apologies to those who've already read it but it is my fav travelling story.

“An album that really takes me out of my current place in the physical world and deposits me elsewhere has to be Roger Waters' “Radio Kaos”. dave and I were in Cairo, Egypt during the eruption of the first gulf war (good god that's so vile to even consider --'first' gulf war!!) Anyway, we were looking to settle there for a few months and were apartment hunting, riding around on public transit, listening to the album, overly-frequently perhaps b/c all our tapes had been stolen earlier in Portugal. Anyway, as the war escalated, the city began to clear out of tourists and tensions rose. We were hanging out with some local freaks we'd met [who, incidentally, had seen the Dead (or more accurately the spectacle of the Dead and their fans) at the pyramids when they were children -- a side tangent there] who were keeping us well-spliffed and convinced, that in Cairo, we were not in harm's way. Within a few days, all tourist sites had been closed down though and tensions kept rising. Radio Kaos, for those who don't know is (partly) about the dropping of the big bomb. To finish, the album puts me right back in Egypt, and more precisely at the pyramids, because after the pyramids were officially closed, our Egyptian friends took us there, approaching, not from the town/road, but from the desert side in a big old hummer. We had the site to ourselves!!! We wandered at our leisure without any other tourists or hawkers. It was awesome and creepy and post-apocalyptic all at the same time. 2 days later we caught the very last plane out of the country before they shut the airport down!”

[hamilton]

Whn I was in Phnom Penh, there was a famous Cambodian movie director who was making a movie, and he needed some foreigners to play a couple of parts. Somehow, this French guy and I ended up being asked to be in the film.

I don't know what the title was, or even the premise of the movie. Our bit was filmed around a swimming pool at some rich dude's place, and we had a couple of lines each, talking to the lead about his gorgeous girlfriend. I have to admit, when they first took us to this place, I thought, "What if this is a porn film?" It wasn't.

So, I'm in a Cambodian movie somewhere, playing the part of a guy named Steve.

[TheGoodRev]

So, I'm in a Cambodian movie somewhere, playing the part of a guy named Steve.

THAT is awesome, man.

I have enough stories to beat the band, but the one that comes to mind at this moment isn't even mine, it belong to a friend of mine, and he's not even in the story himself. I think y'all will enjoy it though.

So my buddy grew up in Huntsville, ON. He says it was the type of place where the local cops knew the spots were the local kids went to smoke weed, and would regularly patrol and book people for lack of anything better to do. So one evening, two of his friends head a few paces into the forest to brew bots (you know, smoke hash with assistance from a plastic water bottle). They're passing this bottle back and forth and when the one guy has had his turn and passed it, he announces that he's going to take a leak a little further in the forest. He heads off, the other guy is chilling with the bottle. He hears footsteps behind him and holds up the bottle to hand to his returning buddy to hit. Turns out, of course, to be a cop, who books the guy for possession of the amount of hash he has left on him, which amounts to approximately a speck. Like, a miniscule amount. Not only did he get booked and spend some amount of time in jail (I don't know if it was overnight or if they bailed him out quickly or what), but there was actually a small item in the next edition of the local paper, with the poor guys name and address, and the fact that he had been arrested and charged with possession of 1/30th of a gram [or some such nonsensical number] of hashish, street value approx $0.50.

[Booche]

This one time, a friend of mine had gone to heckle a girl at her work. See, he was a comedian, and she ruined one of his sets, so he decided he would go to her work and heckle her. She got so upset, she ran out of the building, and a street sweeper ran over her foot and severed her pinky toe. We called an ambulence, and spent the better part of 45 minutes looking for her little guy. Awhile later after the ambulance left, I found the toe. So I put it in a Cracker Jack box, filled it with ice, and took off for the hospital. I jumped on a bus and I told the driver, "I got a toe here, buddy, step on it!"

Then, all of a sudden, this guy pulls out a gun. Well, I knew any delay is gonna cost her her pinky toe, so I got out of the seat, and I started walking towards him. He says, "Where do you think you're going, Cracker Jack?" I says, "Well, I got a little prize for ya, buddy." Plow! Plat! Ke-yah! Knocked him out cold. Then, everybody is screaming, because the driver, he's passed out because of all the commotion. The bus is OUT of control. So I grab him by the collar, I take him out of the seat, I get behind the wheel. Now I'm driving the bus. Then the mugger, he comes to, and he starts choking me. So I'm fighting him off with one hand and I kept driving the bus with the other. Then, I managed to open up the door, and I kicked him out the door, you know, with my foot, you know, at the next stop because people kept ringing the bell.

Well, I am happy to say that the little guy is back in place at the end of the line. It's a very valuable appendage.

[Kaidy Mae]

I think I saw that movie

[ollie]

You're batman.

[Booche]

Yeah, yeah, I am Batman.

[paisley]

gotta go back for more April 13 but my paid law guy says its looking really good

(I O this thread a good story though it may not be about court... going to drink off some steam)

[ggrtrhhrtgg]

wow, some crazy stories, that oujii story is crazy!!! And Deb, Cairo fu©king rocks, I will share a story later on about my adventures there... Cambodian movie---awesome!!! And Good Rev, that freakin sucks!!! Booche, that's a pretty crazy story-- did the bus go jump over a partial highway as well?? Or did it just ride out into the sunset???

[tatterdemalion]

just heard one recently that i thought was cool.

somebody i know was driving through Wyoming back in the mid-80s, stopped in some small sh*t town to take a break, stretch it out, get irie. there's a small restaurant there, he's walking around outside, just looking at the rolling hills and sh*t when he hears a bunch of screaming from inside. he's at the back of the restaurant where the back door of the kitchen is open, walks in, realizes that some dude is holding the place up. he grabs a bat-type weapon that was found in the kitchen, approaches the robber from behind, knocks him the f*ck out thereby saving the day. cops come to the scene, offer their thanks, do some questioning, ask him what he was doing around back ... "ah, just smoking a butt."

if only they knew that the pothead saved the day. or maybe it's better that they didn't know that.

[ggrtrhhrtgg]

note: names have been changed to protect the innocent...

This is in response to the previous story involving the city of Cairo...

I was living in a flat in Belfast back in the summer of 99... I was rooming with a couple of Canadian girls, a couple locals, and a couple of guys from New Zealand..

At that time, the tri-nations cup was being played out in the summer hemisphere--(rugby--N.Z., Australia, and South Africa have a yearly home and home tournament) Both of the Kiwis boys were huge rugby fans and they convinced all of us to get sky television for our flat so that we could all watch the matches... I must have seen each game about 10 times! Man, they love their rugby... Well, on one particular afternoon, I was in the flat on my own, and I was flipping through the channels and I came across a travel show that was featuring "Cairo." I was really fascinated by the program and all that Cairo had to offer culturally, historically etc... I felt kind of remorseful, since I has resigned that I would never get the opportunity, or that I had never taken the opportunity to go there... You see at the time, I had only planned to be away from home for 6 months, and I was at about 4 to five already... Now at this point in time I was involved with a girl from New Zealand, and in a month she would move to Edinburgh and shortly after I would follow... While I was in Edinburgh, I was introduced to a friend of her's a Maouri from N.Z. I ended up hanging out with the guy pretty much every night, just trading stories and talking about where we might want to go--etc... One evening, he proposes the idea of going to Israel, and at the time the idea sounded delicious just from the sheer anticipation of an adventure that had never crossed my mind... We discussed how we could make it happen and we made our plans... It was decided that Eddie would purchase a vehicle and go to the highland for a month before returning to pick me up and head down to London and fly to Tel Aviv... It sounded great--hell why not right?? Well, we celebrated the last night of the Edinburgh Festival, got super pissed up that evening before the start of the new adventure the next day... We headed out early in the morning, trying our best to disguise our hangovers... We headed through town to the car auction wondering how the fu©k two foreigners were going to be able to buy a car and drive out of there--neither of us had international licenses, nor did or could we get insurance... But, what did we have to lose??? We got there and one of the first cars to be auctioned was a piece of junk that had to be pushed started!! No one bidded on the car until it got down to 5 quid... when Eddie raised his hand, and got the one-two-three---sold!!! I don't know if I have ever laughed so hard in my life!!! Are you kidding me??? Just like that??? well, we had to hang out for the remainder of the auction anyhow, and another car came up, a Citroen, that Eddie also bid 30 quid on, one heck of an upgrade!!! All he had to do was pay a 65 pound tax and he was given the keys to the car!!! So, we drove out of there, when we got back to the hostel no one could believe it actually succeeded... Well, Eddie later left for the Highlands, and I was left in Edinburgh with time to ponder our proposed adventure... When I decided to inform family at home, I was given the ol' "when is the rubber going to hit the road speech." Furthermore, I was dead broke, I couldn't even afford the flight there... So, I was waiting for Eddie to return, and give him the bad news... He arrived back a week early, and he was so enthusiastic about the trip that I didn't have the heart to refuse---so I explained that I couldn't afford a flight there... But, I knew I could get a flight to Athens... which is kind of close... So I told him I would fly to Athens and try and find a way there and meet him, and his response was "nah mate, this is our adventure, you go to Athens, I go to Athens." So, I took off to Fort William with him and spent a week in the Highlands making beds and cleaning a hostel for free rent--and then Eddie sold the car for 100 pounds--making 5 quid on the whole deal!!! hahaha... And we made our way to London and flew to Athens... We then caught wind that you could sleep on the deck of a ferry for 50 bucks and that would get us to Haifa... We spent three days on the deck with a Rainbow clan heading to the Sahara dessert--crazy times... When we reached Haifa, it was a sunday, and the first thing we were introduced to were beautiful young woman dressed in spaghetti strap tops and carrying an M-16 on their shoulders!!! fu©king nuts!! One girl had one of those pullout bazooka launchers on one shoulder and a leather purse on the other--(it was sunday--out of uniform day for the army) Well, we took a bus to Tel Aviv, and found a Kibbutz recruitment centre, and we were signed up for Guvlot the next day!!! While we were there, we received a very modest allowance which I spent very little of..(this was no easy task, most of the other volunteers were over budget) I eventually saved up enough for one excursion--and that was to be Cairo--we both decided that visiting another culture took precendence over Jerusalem... Well, we had to get a military escort from the boarder to the city of Cairo, in what I swear was the a-team van... when we arrived, it finally dawned on me that approximately two months before, I was sitting in my living room in Belfast, feeling bad that I would never get to visit the wonderful city of Cairo, and holy sh!t, here I was!!

You see, this to me is the essence of traveling, the closest I have ever felt to true freedom was living on the road---no boundaries---no limits---the only baggage you carry is strapped to your shoulders:: ::