Silliest road trips ever.

[JessicaMelrose]

So I had this discussion at work today about the worst road trip ever...
Everyone thought they had it in the bag but mine (I have 2, both involving the same dog) took the cake.
Annually, I used to drive from Tucson to New York and back for the summer with our 2 dogs, a golden and an aussie heeler / german shepherd / coyote mix. Needless to say, the mutt (Olivia) is a handful.

Anyway, on our way back (through Ohio) we stayed at our friend's parents' house in their basement, which opened up to the backyard. We let the dogs out before going to bed and Olivia came back in all wet. SKUNK.

It was almost midnight, we had just come back from a wedding and my husband had to go out to walgreens to find SOMETHING to alleviate the smell. I don't remember what he brought back but whatever it was didn't work.

One the way, he was pulled over by the police for driving too slow (he had no idea where he was going)[img][img][/img][/img]...the officer couldn't come within 10 feet of the car because of the smell. I believe his exact words were "BOY, YOU STINK!" The cop felt sorry for my husband and sent him on his way...

So, we left town the next day headed back to Tucson with a stinky dog and several days ahead of us in the car. After calling everyone we knew asking for remedies, my dad suggested summer's eve douche.

So, we stopped at the next middle of nowhere pharmacy and cleared out their douche supply before checking in to the nearest motel 6, at which point we proceeded to douche the dog in the shower.
It worked...a little, but enough to convince us that it needed to continue, so we left the motel 6 the next morning, leaving behind 6 or 7 empty douche bottles and a shower full of dog hair and did the same thing that night at another motel 6.

Rinse and repeat, at least 3 more nights before finally arriving home in Tucson.

I've wondered since that day what the motel 6 cleaning staff thought of the trail that we left behind...

[emmylou]

Haha what a hilarious, terrible, fantastic story! (Definitely try the hydrogen peroxide/baking soda method next time. I haven't had to use it, but I hear it works well )

[JessicaMelrose]

We heard a lot of things worked well. Poor pup.
Another time my friend Jose and I were going to fly to new York for Christmas and we were putting Olivia under the plane with the luggage in a crate.

We went out for Korean food the night before and Jose ordered the spicy seafood stew but couldn't finish it so he put it in the fridge. When we woke up, the stew was gone, but the container was still in the fridge. He blamed me and I wasn't eating meat at the time!

So, we packed the car (with Olivia) and started the 2 hour drive to the Phoenix airport. It started to smell like the worst dog farts ever! EVER!!! Olivia was able to open that fridge and was notorious for eating leftovers and sticks of butter.

We had to pull over to make sure she didn't poop in the car... Jose kept saying in his Chilean accent "are you chore chee didn't chit?"

We were so worried the recirculating air would waft Olivia's farts from the luggage compartment on the plane to the cabin, but it didn't.

6 hours later we got to LaGuardia and my mom picked us up. As we're driving through queens toward jersey my mom says "man it's been a while since I've driven through queens but I don't ever remember queens ever smelling so bad"

It wasn't over for Olivia just yet I guess

[evolvingdodo]

Jose kept saying in his Chilean accent "are you chore chee didn't chit?"

omg this is tooo funny

[epowers816]

Hahahaaaa! I just wonder what the cashiers at the pharmacy thought when you guys were buying out their supply of douche! And I'm sure the hotel cleaning crews still share the legend of the 'super doucher'!

[evoetsch]

Mine is also dog related...

In March of 2008, I decided to take a road trip from my home in Indianapolis to San Diego and back, driving Route 66 for as much of it as I could. My only companion would be my puggle, Rudy. One of the caveats of this was that I was in an MBA program, and couldn't miss my once-a week class. Another was that I was maid of honor in my best friend's wedding immediately prior to taking off on this trip. Sooo...I had the better part of only 11 days to drive what would eventually turn into 6,200 miles.

We spend the first night driving through a snowstorm in Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. White out conditions, scary, and slow-going. Everything is pretty much fine after that, except for the fact that Rudy decides he will absolutely not lay down in the car, and wants to straddle the space between the back seat and my armrest, leaning on me the entire time. And whining. Oh, and he decides the trip is so stressful that he won't eat either. And he escaped the car on a major highway in Arkansas while we were in standstill traffic. Luckily a semi driver going the opposite direction (full speed, there was no traffic on their side), was kind enough to slow down and honk at him, scaring him enough to send him running back to me.

So in addition to tracking down hotels that accept pets when I get too exhausted at night to drive any more (usually after 15 hours of driving at midnight or 1am - thank God Motel 6 leaves the light on...), I'm trying to coax a dog into eating anything he will deem edible, which turns out to only be those expensive dried chicken breasts for dogs. Which, it turns out, give him a nasty case of doggy diarrhea. I woke up at least once a night to having to clean that up off of a hotel room floor, checking out ASAP in the mornings, and praying that the cleaning crew doesn't decide to tack on extra charges for having to deep clean the carpet (though, it was mostly Motel 6, so do they really clean those rooms anyway?)

On this same trip I also managed to:
1. Clip a yellow parking pole at the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas and damage the driver's side of my Jeep. ($950 in damage)
2. Overheat my engine (probably somewhere in the mountains) and melt a piston, resulting in me having to get a new engine upon my return (luckily it made it home, and was covered under warranty still!)
3. Get a speeding ticket in the middle of nowhere Colorado.

Other than that, it was a really great trip! Here's my old blog link for pictures in case anyone's interested - it took Rudy all the way til Death Valley to finally fall asleep in the car!: http://evoetsch13.blogspot.com/

[evolvingdodo]

Oh my! I had never heard about Motel 6 before reading you guys' stories, wow that place must be full of pets on fire! I don't have any super exciting story but here's a couple which came to my mind.

The first one involves a dog, just to stay in topic. It was I think spring of 2006 and I was driving through the center of Italy with my gf. One night we were driving back from Viterbo, where my brother lives. We went down there to pick up his huuuge grey great dane Elliot. So we're all crammed in my Fiat Punto headed to Tuscany. Elliot layed down in the trunk and my backseats where down for him because he was so big! And I didn't have any net in that car as due by law when you have a big dog with you. We had all our backpacks and sleepingbags thrown around in the car and my gf still had her superlong dreads back then. I guess we looked like hipsters. A lot. It was around midnight, we were running out of fuel and hadn't seen a gas station in half an hour and we were starting to be very worried, when finally I see a far sign like a mirage in the desert. I keep going trying to focus on the sign and see if it's a station when my gf says "stop!". It was a gas station, but there was also a police bloc and a policeman was in the middle of the road waving at me. I didn't see him at all. So I pull off the window and he starts asking "did you see me miss?" and I go "well of course I did" end he goes "really, cause you almost ran over me" (just for the record I am always a very good and careful driver, I was really just absorbed into that magic sign!).They take a look at us, inside my car and look very, very perplexed. Then they notice Elliot behind and I think "ok we're screwed." They look at him for a while. He had just woken up and looked at them all sleepy and sweet. And the policemen start going "ooooh!!!! what a beautiful dog!!!!" Then they ask for my driving license and of course I just had lost my wallet in Rome, so I had a copy of some paper they gave me at the police station there. And this guy tells me that paper is nothing, I need to show the original paper of my complaint. Which of course is in some office in Rome. They look at each other with a "from where do we start" kind of look, and during all this several times they would turn at my dog and start talking to him "you're soo beautiful!!!" "how sweet!". In the end they start whispering something to each other and then one guy tells me "Listen, if we start writing down all the wrong stuff here we end tomorrow morning. So, you may go." They say bye to Elliot and we incredulously go get some fuel. So when they tell you pretty girls don't take fines, believe it works a lot better with a good looking dog.

This picture is from that trip:


One other time we were in Rome - actually probably it was the same trip of the Viterbo-Tuscany episode, just a couple days before the previous story - and after spending a sleepless night at some friends' house we were sooo tired so we decided to drive my car in some quiet parking lot and try get some sleep pulling our seats back. So we find this small parking lot on a long long empty road in the southern periphery of Rome and fall asleep. It was around 6 am I think. We deeply sleep for a couple hour, then we wake up and hear so much noise. Our eyes have to get used to the sun and being awake, and as we're squinting we see a policeman standing outside the parking lot. I squint again and see a white and red tape all around. Then I see a guy running. And another. And another. As I am fully awake I finally get it: the giant Rome Marathon. On that road. All had already begun. We had peacefully slept in the middle of policemen putting the tape, closing the road, and athletes running all around. Don't know how many people saw us, certainly we didn't hear a fly fly! Of course our car was stuck there for the whole day. But that will always be remembered as the day when we visited the whole Rome walking. And when I say the whole Rome, I really mean it!

Oh boy the more I write the more I recall things. One other time, three years ago, we were in Tuscany driving back from Rome again. We stopped in a tiny pretty medieval town called Pitigliano. As we arrive there, my car stops. Dead battery. In the middle of the main street of the town. On Sunday, when everything's closed. In the middle of the lost Tuscan hills. Some young boys who were playing with waterguns understand what's happening, and without saying nothing they run to my car, shoot some water at me with a gun (!), and start pushing my car to bring it into a parking spot. We get down the car and all the people gathered at the bar come out to meet The Two Girls From The North and their dead car. The barman tells to some of these boys to go to the house of the mechanic and call him. We were all paranoid thinking of this poor man being called at home on a Sunday late afternoon. After a while the boy comes back and behind him there's the mechanic, looking all nice, parfumed and pomated, ready to go out on his free night. I felt so bad!!! He takes a look at my car, and says he must go to his shop and take a new battery. So he walks to his shop and comes back after 15 minutes. Meanwhile all the towns people is still following what happens and we keep on getting more famous. He comes back and starts working at my car in his beautiful black shirt. He fixes it in 2 minutes and doesn't want to be paid!! There is no way to give him any money and we don't know what to do. We see he goes into the bar to drink with his friends, so the only way we can think of to pay him back is to go in there, join them and pay them all a glass of white wine.

Ok last one I promise - this trip was by bus. I was heading in the south-east, to visit a friend in Termoli, Molise. I headed to Rome by train and then had to reach this town by bus. It was a 4 hours drive, and I fell asleep. I wake up hearing the driver saying something and see all the people getting down, so I quickly grab all my stuff, my backpack from the locker, my book and sweashirt on the next seat, and run down the bus. I didn't expect to arrive so early, the timetable I had looked at said we should arrive one hour later. In fact when I walk to the little station I read "Campobasso". Another town, 1 hour away from Termoli. This middle stop was not written on the table, damn Italian transports services. Then I notice I forgot my cellphone in the little net on the chair back. Dammit! The bus had already left. Plus, I don't have no money, I had to get some cash at the ATM. The lady at the bar tells me the closest ATM is like 2 miles away - the bus station was outside Campobasso. Did I mention it was august and it was terribly, terribly hot. So I asked if I could make a call from the tickets office phone, I called the only number I knew by heart and asked my gf to tell my friend in Termoli I didn't know when I'd arrive. The lady told me I hd to buy a new ticket because the only other bus heading there was another company's. So I walked 2 miles to the ATM and got money for the ticket. She said meanwhile she'd try call the driver of my bus and see if they found my phone. When I got back - melting down - to buy my new ticket, she told me "the driver has found your phone and your milk and he gave them to the next driver who's stopping here after the next ride." My milk?? I suddenly remembered when I left my house in Tuscany there was some milk left and I didn't want to waste it, so I poured it in a small plastic bottle and brought it with me. I kept on imagining this driver who took the time to look for my stuff and gave to his colleague my little bottle of milk too! When I am ready to jump on the bus for Termoli, this other bus arrives at the station and the new driver, my savior, in his shiny uniform walks towards me in slow motion, solemnly brandishing my bottle of milk which shines in the sun's rays. At least, this is how I like to remember the scene.