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Ok, I’m not sure whether or not road trip is two words (road trip) or one word (roadtrip) or hyphenated (road-trip), but for the purposes of this post, I’ll be going with the two word (road trip) option!  Now that the formalities are out of the way, let me explain!

Road trips are fun.  They involve a group of people travelleing from location a to location b via various other locations, x, y, and z, etc using roads.  Off-roading is allowed, as this adds to the fun.  Most commonly the vehicle of choice is a car.  Also, the reason for a road trip often involves a home movie of someone (based at location a who is part of the road trip) having sex with someone else (who has sex at location a who is not part of the road trip).  The purpose of the road trip is then to retreive the home movie containing sexual material before it reaches the person (based at location b) that is had been sent to!

Anyway, I’m going on a road trip in about eight hours time.  I don’t think our road trip involves one of these movies, but a lot can happen in eight hours.  No, our road trip is simply going to be a short holiday/long weekend for a group of friends who are travelling to Ilfracombe in Devon from Norwich in Norfolk.

Let me introduce the road trip appreciation society.  First off we’ve got named driver Kit.  He’s pretty much organised this whole thing in so much as he found a place to go, got the people together and booked and paid for everything.  Next up is A to the B, or Adam as he is also known.  He’s our second named driver, which gives Kit a break at some point.  It also gives us a good opportunity to put the hire car to the test.  Close behind Adam is DJ, although they’re not actually touching each other.  DJ is my brother, David Jarrold, hence DJ.  He is probably going to be the sensible one on the road trip.  He’s sometimes funny.  In seat No. 4 is John.  He’s hopefully going to the south pole or thereabouts later this year.  I’m not saying this because I don’t like the guy, because I do.  It just happens to be one of his ambitions for this year.  We’ve got our fingers crossed for him.  John is one of the smaller of the group.  This is likely going to lead to him being positioned at the rear of the car in the boot with less leg room than a Ryan Air flight to Dublin!  I will be filling the gap of 5th chap on the trip.  I’m J for this one, or Fun J.  That’s my name down here.  It’s because I’m Jonathan Jarrold. My initials are JJ.  Take the initial of my forename, and you have J.  The Fun J comes from the fact that I’m fun (in Norwich!).  I’m not sure if I gave myself this name, or if it was attributed to me by someone else, most likely A to the B, who is also fun.  To try and balance things out a bit, we also have two females in our midst.  Lets do the girls alphabetically.  That puts Amy well in front with the first letter of her forename being ‘A’.  Amy is brilliant and will be a valuable member of the road trip.  She is also the proud owner of my pink iPod sock.  Last by not least, and with a name that begins with G, we have Gemma.  Unfortunately, due to lack of space in the car, Gemma’s name is being shortened to Gem for the duration of this holiday.  This is not strictly true as I nearly always call her Gem, or Amy when I get them muddled up, which I don’t really do so much these days.

So, that’s seven people in total.  What seven people need most of all for a road trip to Devon is a car that will fit seven people in (plus luggage).  These are harder to come by than you would imagine.  We originally opted for the Renault Grande Scenic.  Unfortunately, this turned out to be an optical illusion on the website of our hire firm.  The car is and always has been a Vauxhaul Zafira.  The benefits of this car are that it’s brand spanking new, zippy, and has seven seats.  The downside is that there is not enough room for people to take their legs with them, let alone any luggage.  I’m exagerating, of course, as many road trip story tellers do.  The car is cool.  We’ll all fit and so will all our luggage.  Anything that won’t fit, we’ll simply buy when we get there (guitars, tambourines, other musical equipment, roller blades, longboards) and throw them away before the return journey.

Anyway, we’re not sure what we’re going to do when we get there.  The cottage we’re staying in looks pretty cool and comes fully equipped with video player, dvd player, music station, games console, toys and boardgames, etc.  This is going to be a good thing as it looks like we’re due to get a pretty strong blast of British weather whilst we’re there (rain and possible snow).

I’ll tell you all about it on my return.

ROAD TRIP!!