Cardiff

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K so it took me 2 weeks to write this up here... my bad. slack ass.

Left work in Edinburgh on Friday morning to catch the bus down to London. 9 Hours later found myself being greeted by Travis and Michael. Travis was happy... dunno if that was down to the beers he had while we waited for my bus to come in. You never know with that boy.
Went back to his house where all the boys were already. Gareth and Chris were flying home the following monday, so this would be the last time I saw them. Out of know where came some Stroh Rum. 80%. Yum. Then Jager bombs. Mmmm. Things get hazy.
Sometime during the very early morning we all stumbled to the nearest park to let off a fuckoff sized firecracked thing. Being 2am, we had to pick the one that made the most noise (squeels and bangs), and went for like a minute or so. We had a couple of other smaller fireworks, one of which I filmed being lit, only for me to go tits over ass when I backed away from it, covering myself in mud. Somehow in our stupor I managed to put my pants in the washing machine when we got home and wash them, as they were the only pair I had.

A few hours later we woke up to head towards Shepards Bush for the bus to Wales. We WERE still drunk. I think at one stage we even skipped toward the tube station.
Got to She Bu Walky, met up with chch... one of the original IEP boys that was on our flight over from NZ. Good bloke he is.
Jumped on the bus and had a 3 or so hour drive to cardiff. Non eventful, apart from the bus singing Tom Jones' 'Delilah', which apparently is a rugby anthem in Wales.

Got into Cardiff, pretty city that. Went to a Slug and Lettuce and had a few beers to warm ourselves up for the match. Saw old Patty O'Brian at the bar, thought about making some comment about optomatrists, but thought best not too.

Trav, Chch and I went early into the stadium. So early that there was probaly only about 20 other people in there apart from officials. Well impressed by it. The roof was closed and it was definatly a site to behold. SCREW YOU AUCKLAND TREE HUGGERS. Nothing like a nice new stadium to make a city look impressive.

Slowly but surely the stadium began to fill out, and then after an eternity the teams came out. National Anthems (Hi Hayley) came and went, and then when the crowd realised that no haka was to be performed, god almighty the boos that rung out. Even a Mount Smart stadium full of people watching Russell Coutts jerk off couldn't match the bass tones of boo's that this stadium was pumping out. But alas, the rugby started and the crowd went into normal mode.
Not a lot happened as you know. We kicked ass, and apart from a streaked late in the second half (6 security guards he took), it was a pretty normal match.
Few minutes after the afermatch stuff took place, they brought a Subaru Rally Car onto the pitch (pity it wasnt a Mitsi) to do some donuts and tear it up (Later found out the entire pitch was torn up anyway to make way for a dirt track used by the WRC Rally the following week).

Slowly meandered back to our bus, to start our 3 hour sing-a-long bus ride back home. Not much to mention there apart from me dancing for the back half of the bus for a free beer. Class Julian, Class.

Next day jumped on a bus back to edinburgh. Bit of a story in itself that. First off, we were suppose to change buses about 2 hours in, but no one told our driver, so we had to turn back 15 miles to meet with that other bus.
We all jumped on the new bus, and I jumped into the seat I was on the old bus, right behind and to the left of the driver. Some way through the trip an alarm sounded on the dashboard. Not a beep beep alarm, but one of those constant AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA noises (think Dumb and Dumber - "The most annoying sound in the world"). This went on for well over an hour, and when we stopped at one of the scheduled stops, I asked the driver if there was someone he coud phone, or if he could fix it. He was typically english and said nah there's nothing anyone can do. So I resigned to having this fuckin annoying noise for the remaining 4 or so hours. About 10 minutes after my commnet he took it upon his ego to phone his surperviser.... "Dave, I think its shocking that they put this bus into service with this alarm" - "Something to do with the door lock" - "no its off" - "retard switch, next to the blahblah switch" *click* (Annoying noise stops!) "Oh - thanks dave".

I could have throttled him right there.

20 minutes later he receives a cellphone call. It's the next driver, waiting at a service stop to do his driver change. 2 minutes later we pass a service stop, and I see a guy in a high-vis vest waving at the driver. Our drivers says "shit" several times over. Proceeds to pull over onto to the hard shoulder of the motorway, says shit a few more times, then REVERSES down the motorway. Bear in mind this is a massive double decker coach. I honestly thought what else could go wrong with this journey. But thankfully, apart from hitting traffic from a football game, nothing eventul more happened on the bus ride, and I arrived back into edinburgh 1.5 hours late.

And gee, Im going to do the bus thing ALL OVER AGAIN this weeked, when me and trav head to Rome.

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Comments

[Ricky]

Pics or it didn't happen... heh, didn't know you were a beer whore Julian, all class :-)