Where did you wish you were not?

[hoopdriver]

Chad, Papua New Guinea, Ecuador, Cameroon, a ghastly field camp in Tanzania for weeks on end, on board a ship coming up the Mid Atlantic Ridge from South Georgia to the Canary Islands (six lonely weeks at sea) with norovirus making the rounds over and over and over, down with a virus and high fever in a research camp on Livingstone Island in Antarctica with the stench of seal and penguin ripe in the air...

I have taken the scenic route through life...

 

[gbb]

Where was I that I wished I wasn't ?...at times, Kafr Al Zaiat, Egypt.
The overall experience was fine, but laying in bed at night with large ants and occasional cockroaches crawling around the accomodation floor and loads of mini mozzies flying round the room, every one intent on my blood, homing in on me as I lay there, sheet pulled tight up round my head. You've no idea the high pitched noise they make when inches from your ear...little barstewards.
134 bites the next morning, each one like a volcano....christ, I wished I was back home at that point.

 

[slowmotion]

In the back streets of Herat, Afghanistan, 1973, the kids chucked stones at me too. That fizzing noise as they pass close by your head is something that stays with you. For the Afghan kids it was just a little game. For the Mexican adults it was a completely nastier agenda.

 

[Accy cyclist]

The North.

Of what,Watford or the North Pole?

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

'Bonking' several miles from home and having to get my rather amused but also irritated parents to pick me up from Gartocharn.

Also

Going for a ride when I started cycling and getting pu*cture, again quite a few miles away from home..... Without a puncture repair kit...... Without money (to be fair, I hadn't really intended to get as far as I did)..... No prospect of being picked up...... In freezing rain, and I only had my AG2R long sleeve top on because the weather had been good when I'd left the house and forgot to check the forecast...... And the top soaked up all the rain and made me very cold indeed!!

I eventually got to the nearest railway station (Bishopton @Sheldonator), by this time shivering quite badly, and had to somehow get home without a ticket.... Via Glasgow Central which I somehow managed (possibly the site of a very cold and wet cyclist swung in my favour as the ticket people didn't really bother with me. Either that or they saw my AR2R jersey and felt sorry for me!! ).

I certainly learned my lesson THAT day!!

 

[Markymark]

Of what,Watford or the North Pole?

....Wanstead

 

[nickyboy]

Worst ever....in a factory in China buying some stuff for a company I worked for. A mob turned up outside, the factory gates got locked and they tried to storm the factory. Seems they were rentamob, the female factory owner was divorcing her husband and he wanted to get his hands on the factory equipment. Rocks coming over the factory walls, no way to escape.
After an hour or so, police arrived, mob dispersed.....we high tailed it out of the factory in our minibus as fast as it would go

Cycling....after only about 4 months of cycling, I entered a super hilly audax. 65 miles, 7,800ft of climbing. I wasn't really prepared, not fit enough, not aware of nutrition enough. Inevitable happened. Bonked big time. I remember just about being able to keep going with a 34-32 gear on a hill I rode up yesterday with 34-19. Had to get my wife to pick me up from the finish although it was only 5 miles from home. Couldn't figure out how to get the QRs undone to get the bike in the car I was that frazzled.

 

[Fnaar]

Cycling one; Was doing what was meant to be largely canal-towpath based route from Northampton down to London, (part of a longer tour) but this day's leg was to take me off-route to meet a friend in St Albans and stay over for the night. Glorious day, riding was going really well, met other cyclists, pub lunch and a nice chat, etc, carried on and somehow I LOST THE CANAL just south of Leighton Buzzard... I have no idea how I lost it, but I did. I ended up pushing my heavily-laden tourer along an increasingly inaccessible river bank.
Then the heavens opened.... really opened, thunder, lightning, peeing down rain. 'The map' was on my phone... that got wet and stopped working. Left the river, rode up a few lanes, got totally lost, nobody around to ask. Found a road pointing me towards Aylesbury, and I though OK, I know my way from there, but it's a main road... the A41. So, I cycled the A41 from (near) Aylesbury to Hemel Hemptstead in torrential rain... busy dual carriageway, spray leaping from lorries and cars whizzing past inches away at full pelt... I could not have been wetter, to be honest.... and the rain didn't stop till I got to St Albans.... but at least my waterproof panniers lived up to their toughest ever test.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

You can just moor up, chuck another log on the wood burner and get a few glasses of red wine down you.

View: http://youtu.be/pl4plPGRG8o

 

[Dayvo]

August 1985, hitching around Eire for three weeks and managed to avoid talking about politics and religion.

It was my last night and spent it in a pub in Bray in Wicklow (an IRA area) and somehow got dragged into a heated debate about both those subjects. A man just supped his Guinness alone in the corner and just looked at me with an expressionless face.

Walking back to my digs in the early hours, pitch black in the countryside, a Land Rover drove past at high speed, suddenly came to a complete halt and four men jumped out. I was already saying my prayers, but they ran to the roadside and had a pi$$, before resuming their journey.

I had a great holiday, except for the last two hours (of nearly my life) on my last evening.