One of the perks of being a car journalist is that you often find yourself flying places. This is great because you’re still working, but you get to experience places you’ve never been to. I would have never gone to Germany or France last year if it were not for this lovely career. It also means that you can witness some shenanigans. What’s the most hilarious thing you’ve seen while traveling?
The best bit of hilarity that comes to my mind is when I flew to France last year for an Audi event. I had never left American soil before, and I had no idea what to expect. As a teenager and young adult, I had heard all sorts of silly stereotypes about France, like the abundance of cigarettes and baguettes. As a car enthusiast, I heard about the plentiful Citroën 2CVs and Renault Twingos.
I was shocked to find out that, at least for the region of France that I was in, some of it had a semblance of truth. Pretty much every third or so person I encountered out there had cigarettes on their person or were actively smoking. I then loved to see all of the classic French cars that weird car people love here in America. But I lost it when I saw a first-generation Renault Twingo with four guys in it, and all of them were smoking.
To be clear, this wasn’t bad at all. I loved experiencing something so completely different. I also adored seeing how locals drove, and I even had a great time with the French version of the TSA. I still giggle when an agent found a kind of object in my bag and called it “le massage gun.”
I have to imagine the American equivalent of this would be when a tourist sees that America really is addicted to massive pickup trucks and that a large drink is absurdly huge.
The next memorable thing was probably when I flew out to Las Vegas earlier this year for an Indian Motorcycle event and caught the Vegas Sphere watching flights take off. Oh, to have the curiosity of a giant yellow ball.
This morning, Jason posted this photo in our Slack chat.
This is aboard an American Airlines flight. I admit, I’d probably sit in my seat, chuckling the whole time. There’s something so delightful about this sign. It’s remarkably crappy, like a flight attendant wrote it down on masking tape between flights. Yet, it’s still perfectly functional and does its job.
How about you? What’s the most hilarious thing you’ve seen on the road, while flying, or perhaps in another country?
I was waiting for a flight leaving Denver, and had some time to kill. Since my gate was already crowded, I sat down at a different, nearby gate area to hang out until boarding time. The gate I was at had just finished deplaning but didn’t have an outgoing flight, so it was mostly deserted.
A few minutes later, several people walked up the ramp, with a gaggle of penguins following. No, not the hockey players, the animals. Apparently, they had been cooped up a while on the flight and the handlers (wranglers? Whichever) decided they needed some exercise, so there was an impromptu penguin parade down C concourse at DEN.
Local news had a story about it the next day. Apparently the Denver zoo was getting new penguins for their habitat, and they usually travel the same way the family dog does, in a carrier. I was certainly not expecting hiking penguins in the airport, though.
I also once ran across several people waiting in the main terminal in Denver, wearing full stormtrooper kit and a Vader costume. Of course, that was on May 4.
I’ll take a penguin as a seatmate over damn near any human.
Well near me there is an exit off rte 22 where you can go to Lily or Muenster.
My dad always said there was an area in PA where you could go from Intercourse to Paradise, but if you stopped halfway, you’d end up in Blue Ball. I looked it up, that isn’t the exact arrangement of town names, but there are 3 towns of that name close to each other in Lancaster County. I guess we know what Amish do when they are drunk and bored… name towns.
I was in St. Louis for a work project and a guy I met at the lobby bar the night before was returning and valet parked a rental car that had all its airbags deployed. He apparently met up with a friend a few miles away and got t-boned in a rough part of town. The look on the kid/valet was something I will never forget.
It was probably when I was in Philadelphia for work and I saw a young woman walking down the street who had cut the back of her jeans out from the waist to 4/5 inches or so below her butt. It was sort of like those old timey pajamas with the flap in the back, only with the flap completely removed.
This is pretty minor, but just made me chuckle in the moment. I was in one of those non-descript suburban strip malls and a fancy, tricked-out mall crawling jeep wrangler came flying in, windows down, music blaring.. He aggressively backs into a parking spot while turning and hits the curb stop, resulting in about a dozen colorful rubber ducks flying out of the driver’s side window and into a big puddle. It was just so poetic and I felt so much joy all day to witness it.
The ducks! LMAO!
Please tell me you took a photo or video of the chagrined owner collecting his duckies. I’d have been laughing so damn hard.
No, I pretended not to notice so that he could maintain the last shed of his dignity.
purposely trying to drive on one era or the other route 66 results in many things you just have to laugh at. The best for us was a late night overnight at the route 66 motel, somewhere in oklahoma. 36 bucks a night should have been the first red flag. the single bed and no heat except the pull cord heater in the bathroom should have been our cue to leave, but we were tired and out in the middle of nowhere. Waking up to a cow licking our window facing the back of the hotel was funny though.
I was coming out of the bathroom of the Denver Airport. On the floor was a pack of Newport Menthols next to a half-finished cup of coffee. I took a picture of it and titled it “The Ennui of Travel”
maybe I should figure out how to link the photo here, too…
Departing San Diego a few years ago, the plane was just starting to move away from the gate when we heard an audible “bang” and felt a thump from below. The plane instantly stopped, and the captain came over the intercom saying the ground crew was going to check it out.
A few min later he comes over the intercom saying the tow hook connection to the aircraft tug had broken, and that it could be a few minutes or a few hours.
Luckily, a few minutes later he came back over the intercom saying they were able to quickly replace it, and we were good to go.
Whew! We were not looking forward to another few hours in the airport.
lol, at least it was not the fuel door, while in flight. That was a scary bang, followed by may smaller bangs. We turned around.
Sometimes it’s a good thing to turn around. The only time I’ve experienced that was in one of our corporate jets on a shitty winter day…we taxied out slowly and immediately pulled back into the hanger. Turns out we’d failed the brake test, where they applied the brakes and the plane kept moving due to the amount of ice on the runway. I was happy to turn that into a normal day at work instead.
We had a sort of similar incident on our cruise aboard the Oosterdam during it’s first season in the Caribbean back in 2003.
We were up in the observation lounge watching a packed cabaret show when we heard loud thumps and bangs from the bow.
Shortly thereafter, the Captain came on the loudspeaker and told us that the noises were because our anchor was wedged into the sea floor between some rocks and they were having difficulty getting it unstuck.
I had heard of this occurring before on a different HAL ship. That time the captain cut the anchor loose and went on his way, and when the ship returned to the same port a couple weeks later they had the entire day to retrieve it.
…but in a few minutes time we heard some more loud bangs and felt a great shudder – and then the propulsion units came on and we started away. The Captain came on again and told us all was well – we had our anchor and were proceeding to our next port of call.
My wife and I were vacationing on the Island of Hawai’i, driving between Kona and South Point, when we ran across a car that was equal parts hilarity and awesomeness. I can’t adequately describe it, so gaze upon the spectacle thy own selves: radcar.jpg
The best thing about it were the clear indications of ludicrous speeds.
A few months ago I was in a long TSA line at DFW and the woman ahead of me, who was a stereotypical Texas plastic surgery disaster stepford wife, was booted out of the airport because she wouldn’t take off her jewelry.
I came to the comments for some good stories… man, most of you guys are boring as hell.
Flying home from Helena, MT. The airport is tiny, 4 gates. 2 at ground level, 2 in an upper floor for jetways. I was leaving on an RJ from one of the jetways. From the second floor you can look right down to the lobby of the airport where you check in for your flight. The person who checks you in also loads the baggage on the plane, refuels it, plows snow from the runway, you get the idea. As I await my flight, I’m looking mindlessly in the lobby when a young lady (25 ish?) comes in to check in for her flight with 2 bags, the standard rollaboard and a rolling closet sized thing. The large one is over weight (of course). I decide to look out the windows to make sure we aren’t going to be delayed by a moose on the runway (it happens there). I look back to the lobby and the contents of this young lady’s larger bag is now strewn all over the floor of the airport as she figures out how to get it under weight. She finally figures out what magical combination comes in under the weight limit and then opens the smaller bag to pack all of the stuff that wouldn’t fit in the larger bag and there is precisely one thing in the rollaboard. A teddy bear. I am still trying to figure that whole scenario out in my head.
Over the past several years, I have flown into/out of airports with 1, 2, and 5 gates. They’re now my favorite sorts of airports. Everything from the TSA check to the rental car counters runs quickly and efficiently. You can comfortably arrive at your airport 45 minutes before boarding, maybe even less.
Burbank used to be my favorite airport in the LA area. The rental car lot was less than 100 feet from where I picked my suitcase off Alaska’s carousel. That was years ago and it’s since been remodeled and not nearly as convenient.
Even better are the domestic-only airports in certain foreign countries. Like Rotorua airport in New Zealand- not only is there no security to go through at all for domestic flights, they roll 4 separate stairs up to the plane and board through all entry doors at once, entire process takes like 5 minutes. I was late getting to my flight, got dropped off at the front door of the airport about 20 minutes before our scheduled departure, and even checking a bag I still had time for a leisurely coffee before boarding.
The odd one for me was Lexington Kentucky. It’s not the tiniest airport (at least 10 gates), because during specific times of year it’s quite busy. The thing is, the rest of the year it’s very not busy. The woman that checked us in for our flights out front was the same person that boarded us on the plane. There was one TSA agent running the xrays and the metal detectors. The gift/book store was open, there was coffee and food vendors, and all for the 20 of us that were on the flight to Detroit which was the only one leaving for 2 hours before or after.
I dropped a friend off there during college (went to UK)…man, what an un-busy place!
Agreed… I had a pocket knife that TSA at the White Plains New York airport actually held onto for me until I came back into town for business again!
I had a flight out of Fort Wayne Indiana once that was just to Midway and then home. when I got there, I looked everywhere for the gate and then broke down and asked. they called it a phantom gate next to a nondescript door. when I was called to board, we walked out to the tarmac and boarded a plane that held I think 9 people. I asked the steward about the plane size and found out she was actually the door greeter and pilot.
Yikes, it also rained over the lake to get to midway and that little puddle jumper flew way to low to miss the fun. it was a rollercoaster for sure.
I’m thinking it was a SAAB 340 used by American Eagle. Those were used for commuter service in the region for a long time from the 1980s into the early 2000s. I took one out of South Bend into Chicago; there was a similar arrangement of a fairly nondescript waiting area and door out to the tarmac. It was also way before 9/11 and the TSA.
I like smaller planes, but the 340 was awfully cramped and noisy. I’d previously (in the 1970s) flown between South Bend and Indianapolis aboard Skystream Airlines’ little Beechcraft business turboprops, which were smaller but quieter and not so cramped for the number of passengers they carried. Those were a lot more comfortable flights.
Skystream was an interesting footnote in airline history — they were actually an outgrowth of the Wheel Horse company’s business turboprop operation that became a small regional airline. They were one of the first to actively, routinely recruit women pilots.
One day I was on an interstate in a slightly mountainous and rural-ish area. Off to the right were areas where parts of mountains had been been removed to make room for the highway; they had a rough, stepped sort of appearance.
The road was almost deserted – just me and an 18-wheeler a short distance ahead. I noticed a wild turkey standing on one of the stone steps and had a bemused chuckle. Then the turkey headed for the edge of the cliff and launched himself…
directly into the side of the 18-wheeler. That poor bird exploded into a majestic cloud of feathers.
I felt terrible for laughing but it was just so cartoonish.
I was on the north side of Iowa City, and I looked down from the overpass over I80. I saw a blood stain that was covered at least 30′ of the westbound lanes, from ditch to ditch. A semi must have hit an entire herd of deer all at once.
I was travelling with a colleague and we had a late night connection in Minneapolis. We found a bar open and ordered some beers. The bartender insisted on carding us and explained it was a new rule at all federal airports. Fine enough.
In comes a very old lady being pushed in her wheelchair by a caregiver. The care giver goes to order the lady a glass of something. The bartender insists on carding the old lady. The poor caregiver is riffling through their carry on looking for the ID. Just to create extra friction. You know, smart business.
OK that wasn’t really funny. Just obnoxious.
To be fair, if you are traveling through an airport you should have your ID readily available.
But yeah, carding a octogenarian in a wheelchair is a bit extreme. The bartender was probably threatened with dismissal if he was ever caught not carding someone.
I knew a waitress who got fired for not carding people. It can happen.
My college group was riding back into the US after a day trip to Mexico. Every vehicle is being stopped. There’s like 12 of us in the van, and from what we see ahead the agents are requiring everyone hold up a driver’s license or passport. We had been told to expect this. One of the kids announces she does not have a US or state issued form of ID. Our very annoyed professor says we might all get detained now, since if Customs refuses to let her in we can’t leave her at the checkpoint to find her own way back.
It’s time for a Hail Mary- she has her school ID. It looks nothing like a passport and not particularly like a driver’s license either, but it is a small rectangle with her name and picture on it. Maybe if we all hold up our IDs at the same time the agent won’t go all “One of these things is not like the others” on hers. Guess what? The agent tells us to give him all of our IDs so he can look at them one at a time. Ruh-roh.
This dude’s clearly not near quitting time because after he picks up an ID he shines his flashlight around the inside of the van until he makes a match. He comes to school ID only girl. He looks at the ID. He looks up at the girl. He looks back at the ID. Looks back up at the girl with his eyes narrowed. Without saying a word he hands back her ID and lets us leave. Thank god she was white and had a very Anglo-Saxon name.
During this process I looked out the window towards the US to Mexico side of the border. It looked like fucking Mario Cart with everyone barreling through it without so much as tapping their brakes.
Oh, and on that trip I had one of my more autistic college moments. It takes decades of trial and error for us to figure out what things should be said and what should be kept inside. I was fidgeting with the stiff seatbelt in our van. Another student asked me why I was bothering with it at all and I bluntly replied, “Well, it would be pretty stupid of me not to.” It was then that I noticed I was the only kid using a seatbelt. Nobody spoke to me for a while after that.
Years ago, three friends and I flew to Cancun to use one of their parents’ time shares. As we were sitting on the shuttle from long-term-parking to the gates, one of them says, “do I need my passport?” We just stared at her. Technically no – at that point a certified birth certificate would work – but she didn’t have that either.
I told her we’d pull up to the gates, the other three of us would get out, then she would stay on the shuttle to bust ass back home to try to make it back to the airport on time. “That’s ok, I’ll just try talking to them.” No convincing her otherwise…it would have been a nearly 2-hr round trip to get the passport, but given how early we were, there was at least a chance it would work.
For some strange reason, her plan did not work. What followed was me attempting to tell a very sad woman on the verge of tears how to start my ’85 Caprice with a bad choke the next day to make the rescheduled flight. Sigh.
In 2007 I took a long weekend trip to meet up with some friends for a couple concerts in Seattle and Vancouver (Lacuna Coil/Within Temptation/The Gathering/Stolen Babies – the Seattle show is still my favorite concert ever). Somehow, in just those three days, all of the following happened:
Random marching band coming toward us on the sidewalk….no parade or anything, just a marching band doing their thing for no apparent reason in downtown Seattle – at roughly 10:00 pm.
Got yelled at by a passing taxi driver for supposedly being a hippie.
Saw an 80’s limo cruising around downtown Vancouver with a bale of hay tied to the roof with rope.
Picked up late-night sandwiches at Subway, and I still don’t believe it’s humanly possible to make a sandwich as fast as this guy did…it was actually insane. “Sandwich artist” on the Columbian marching powder, maybe?
Discovered we were in the same hotel in Vancouver as two of the bands and got to hang out with Lacuna Coil for a bit in one of their rooms (ok, that part was less funny and more just awesome luck).
I can beat the marching band; we were on a family holiday to Australia, and had a stopover in Bangkok. I’d had the bright idea to combat jet-lag by just not sleeping, so I’d been up for about 36 hours, but as it was only about 6pm local my brother and I decided to take a walk round the hotel. I got to see my first ever 7-11 in the flesh, and then wandering down the pavement towards us was an elephant. It wasn’t a particularly big elephant, and there was a monk-looking guy walking next to it, but apart from getting out of it’s way, no one on the street was reacting to it.
Very surreal, and given it was getting close to sunset, it did have a slightly pinkish hue. Never-the-less, me and my brother both saw it, so I’m fairly sure I didn’t dream it.
That masking tape row sign reminded me of one. I once had a flight delayed because one of the exit signs on the plane was missing (and assumed stolen). FAA rules said they could not fly without one. This was at an oustation, so none on hand as it wasn’t a common maintenance item. We had to wait for another one to be flown in.
The gate agents did not find it humorous when a bunch of passengers offered to make an exit sign for them (or steal one elsewhere in the airport).
I once had a flight cancelled because there was a crackle in the flight attendant’s intercom to the cabin. They were similarly not amused when someone provided the suggestion to just yell. Ended up causing a 12 hour delay.
Maybe this doesn’t count but I was on a business trip many years ago and as I was walking into a restaurant with a coworker we heard a loud Harley / chopper like motorcycle coming up on our right. We both looked over and only saw a fairly neglected early / mid 90s minivan going slowly through the parking lot. We turned to each other thinking wtf until the van passed and we saw there was in fact a modified Harley tailgating very closely behind. We immediately laughed because for a few glorious seconds we both assumed we’d seen either the worst maintained or the craziest modification of a minivan ever.
In the Scottish Borders, close to Claverock Castle there are several signposts to “The Savings and Piggy Bank Museum”. I often take visitors to the castle, in thirty years I have never been able to find the museum.
I love these kinds of museums. The guy this one honors, Henry Duncan, also founded a mechanics’ school.
https://tammytourguide.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/money-money-money-scotlands-savings-banks-museum/
Thank you so much I really must go and see it .
A few years ago the family went on a ski trip in Park City, Utah, and the liquor shops in the area all had posters in the windows clearly driven by the Mormon populations sway on state politics. The absolute best was a big poster that was styled like an advertisement from the 70’s that said, and I’m copying directly from my picture of it:
“PARENTS! The #1 reason kids don’t drink
MAKE YOUR DISAPPROVAL CLEAR:
97% Of kids chose not to drink when parents strongly disapprove of underage drinking”
With having known a few Mormons, and hearing the stereotypes and stories about Utah, this did nothing but reinforce them.
Wasatch brewery’s Polygamy Porter makes me giggle.
Such a shame that Monster came in, bought up Canarchy only a few years ago to get into making beer, and just shut down the Wasatch brewery a few months back.
Bummer that brewery is shut down! Somewhere I have a Polygamy Porter tshirt, says something like “take a six pack home to the wives”. They were selling them in the SLC airport.
KIDS! The #1 reason parents drink
I wonder if Utah still has the “multiple wives, a pioneer tradition” billboard we saw 20 years or so ago
Mile marker 420 in Colorado is actually labeled 419.99
I wonder if they had to change it. The ramp sign off of 5 north of Shasta now says ← College | Bend → because the one that directed towards the town of Weed kept getting stolen.
Weed is one of my favorite small towns in the world. They have a logging museum there that is a delight if you’re open to snarky commentary on the exhibits from the elderly docent.
Big Beaver Rd is mile marker 69 on I75 in Troy MI.
And I chuckle every time I pass it…
Big Bone Lick State Park in Kentucky
and Beaverlick is 3.5 miles away.
Just outside Toledo OH on the turnpike you’ll see the exit for Route 420/Stony Ridge
There was a route 666 in Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico until 2003, when it was renamed to route 491. I lived nearby, so will not comment on people stealing the Highway 666 signs.
Probably past any statutes of limitations, though.
Exit 333 on I-80 in northern Nevada is labeled DEETH / STARR VALLEY. I can’t see it without thinking “That’s no moon”.
They changed US 666 to 491 as well, partly since the signs also kept getting stolen
Exit 420 in Nebraska (Btw Lincoln & Omaha) gets stolen a lot. I’m pretty sure they just print 5 or 10 when they order new ones.
Outside Sevierville, TN, you’ll find Boogertown Road. My wife was not amused, but I sure was. Also, sometimes I’m 10 years old.
Travelling through Germany early ’00s: someone driving a Ford Aerostar down the autobahn near Munich. It looked comically out of place.
Similar feeling seeing a Ram 1500 in Croatia a few years back.
American cars don’t translate well in some countries.
I saw an old 60’s Chevy Impala sedan in Istanbul. It was just a regular car in an alley, not a show car or anything.
Not Constantinople?
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.
Look, even old New York was once New Amsterdam.
Why’d they change it, I don’t know…
I used to work in mineral exploration in West Africa. Boart-Longyear (a diamond drilling company) had an F-250 from 1996 or so running around. Must have come over in a container with some of their drill rigs. Even in a country with a bit of everything on the road it stood out.
I saw a Ram 1500 in Prague back in 2017and felt the same way.
Parts of former Soviet Eastern Europe are littered with big black Escalades being driven by Russian men in tracksuits. Apparently Sopranos cosplay is a thing there.
I saw a Hummer (H2 IIRC) once in Rome. Of all the horrid vehicles to own there!
Several Labor Day weekends ago, I was in a Jeep and off-road truck group that was traveling on the Minnesota border of border route and we were miles from anything deep in the superior national forest on a gravel road and a Nun in full habit and running shoes jogged past the lot of us. We got on the radios and went. Did everybody see that and we all said we saw it did anybody get a picture of it? Nobody got a picture of it. We were also shocked by this random nun running down a dirt road in the middle of the superior national forest that none of us thought to take a picture that same group will be going down that same route this Labor Day and hopefully we’ll see the Nun again and take a picture if it happens.
That day it was the Mother Superior national forest.
Well, that area is God’s country, so it makes sense.
In central Iowa, there’s a town called “Cumming.” They sell shirts with the outline of the state of Iowa with a heart in the general location of the town that says “I heart Cumming.” I think they sell pendants with the same design. I decided to be more subtle and buy a shirt from the Cumming Cattle Company.
Also in Iowa, Sioux City to be exact, the airport code is SUX. There’s a big ad in the baggage claim area that says “Fly SUX”. Yes. Yes it does.
There could probably be a whole article on funny/witty IATA codes. The airport right next to me in San Carlos is SQL. Yes, I am across the street from Oracle.
Rapid City, SD has the IATA code RAP, which becomes KRAP with the ICAO prefix. Of course, the FBO is stocked up on merchandise like pens and notepads that say, “I flew through KRAP to get here.”
Aha! That’s where the Robocop cars came from!
And of course the gas station chain “Kum & Go” is all over Iowa too.
We have a chain of stations in MN called “Pump n Munch” which always makes me giggle.
Alas, not anymore. A chain called Maverick bought them out and changed them.
Oh no!
There is a commuter rail stop in the north end of Toronto called Old Cummer. Apparently popular with divorcees.