Messy Dayz

Bored in the city of love, 8 hours from hell, another Ayres Rock, back to life in the Cote D'Azur, imortalised as rock gods, centurions.

Dateline: 11 am Tuesday morning, the sun sits bright and powerful in the riverian skye beating down relentlessly on the roof of the Messy Dayz Express creating an oven effect that would be unplesant in any situation. One of my kidneys sent a message down the tubes to the other asking for a final decision; shutdown or attempt to go on?

Apparently the left kidney is braver then the right and the judgment came back that we should try to keep going, so with shooting pains in my lower back I awoke. Another lost morning in the enigma that is this van trip. It all started on Thursday last, we had a big day touristing in Gaye Paris hitting some fairly impressive boxes - Notre Damme, Musee D'Orsey, and whatever that garden between the Lourve and Concorde is. When we were finally done with the touristing we retired to our favorite Parisian English pub the Freedom to watch the evenings rugby matches and 20twenty bashathon. After a heavy days touristing it seemed sensible to have a nice quiet evening in front of the box. 6 hours later found us argueing on the side of FDR boulevard waiting in an hour long lineup for a taxi to get us out to Saint Geniveve De Bois. We finally managed to get in a cab, but for some reason (that we never solved) the taxi man wouldn't take us all the way out. Despite our many cogent arguements (and some less so - my personal favorite was "you won't take us out there cause your a Zidane style terroist" - fun with people who don't speak our language...) we didn't manage to get the cab all the way, but got lucky on the final train of the evening.

Luckily we didn't have anything special on the next day, just the simple matter of Ireland vs France at the Stade De France. The city was awash with the Irish hours before the match, all very optimistic about the coming bash, the pubs were jumping and the atmosphere fantastic, being simple non biased onlookers meant we were in a strange position of being part of the party not having a huge buy in, the lads quickly went to a trashy tourist type store and got Ireland jersey's and the Kloss got le tri colour on his cheek and we were suddenly a much bigger part of it. I of course was wearing the Ireland tee I brought in Dublin in Janurary - that is how long I have been looking forward to last Fridays match.

Unfortunately the Irish, French, and Referee Chris White didn't realise that most of the people attending the match had travelled a long way and spent a lot of money to go to the match, it was horrible. Without doubt the most boring match I have ever watched (yes I know, Reds Sharks in 05 and Reds Brumbies in 07 were bad- but the Reddies were in those matches). Anyways, the match was a complete wash, the Leinster team I saw at DonneyBrook earlier in the year would have put 50 points on either side playing. Thankfully the sheer boredom that resulted from the match, and the fact that 80 000 people can not just get onto a train at the same time meant we were all in the mood to stand around boozing after the match.

We wearnt there for long but we all suddenly got in the mood for singing, so we had a lot of fun on the Train ride home- two crazy Frenchies leading the carriage in traditional French songs, then a lot of traditional Australian songs allowed the train ride to pass very quickly, the Irish were curiously silent; the Time Warp we danced on the approach to Genievive Le Boit drew cheers from all on our carriage.

Five hours later the alarms in the Dayz began to wail, it was time to start the massive drive from Paris to Montpellier for Sundays Australia vs Fiji match. The big problem with the Paris match on the Friday was always going to be that we had to drive the length of the country to get to the next game. With the monkeys who have been putting a huge drain on the Messy Dayz ticket we were concerned that a seven hundred kilometre drive would prove too much in one day. It was very, very cold and dark, yours truly did the heavy lifting of the hungover, morning first shift, which set us up perfectly to finish the drive inside of one day. With strict rules about lengths of our stops and minimum average speeds required for each stint we managed to break the back of the drive easily. The best example of our comitment to speed was the BT Kloss driver swap, 100 kilometres an hour on the A58 all of a sudden there was no one sitting in the
drivers seat of the MD Express, we lived and managed to get into Montpellier around 4 in the afternoon, a stellar performance by the tourists.

Our Montpellier experience started poorly, when we were there in July we struggled with navigation but had an all round nice time. This time around we got stuck in an 18 stop tram ride nightmare out to the Stadium, it was hot, damm hot, but that was good (at first) as it had been cold in Paris, by the end of the tram ride some nerves were frayed and some people were a little sweaty, but we were there and the crowd was in a jovial mood so we quickly got back into the spirit.

After the match we hurried into the line for the Tram as we wanted to get to see the Scotland Noveau

Sealand match, an hour later we managed to get on an actual tram and got to the main square of town in

time to see the second half of the match of the day. Standing in squares drinking is becoming a fairly

standard practice for our tourists. Old Wristy Duggan had struck gold again earlier in the day by meeting a

couple of Melbourne broads who were willing to party with Tour de Fearists so we left the main square

after the match and headed to the Ayers Rock. Australian pubs are clearly the best parties in the world,

so we were assured a great night out. Montpellier was apparently a destination of choice for a lot of

Australians as we ran into a rediculous number of friends from back home. It became a huge problem

when our Bon Soir's started being met by blank stares- so we switched to G'Days and the ladies came

running- a result. Anyways, a great night out ensured- Thooheys News 10 for 40 bucks in a bucket- good

times. Once more all went home alone, but it was so close, I'm sure were about to run into a rich vein of

form.

The change in temperature that had resulted from our trip south had a massive effect on the moods of all

involved, so we decided to buy while the time was right and head to coast, specifically Antibes to spend a

week recharging our batteries on our favorite strech Mediteranean coastline. We got into town and

immediatly jumped into Big Blue- it had been close to a month for yours truly so it was seriously refreshing to get back into the swim of things...

Afterwards we went for a walk around the port and checked into the campsite, by this time I was close to dropping, this was the fifth day of a rediculously foolish freak out that had achieved almost nothing, but then J called and said it was time to go out for a big night on the towns -my head dropped in disapointment, disapointment with myself- I knew there was no way possible I shouldbe going out, but there was also no way I would be saying no to a night out - I went out.

We started with a casual dinner, but two bottles of wine made us think a visit to the Absinthe Bar would

be a seriously good idea. The Antibes Absinthe bar has to be seen to be believed, it is a small cave pub below a bigger resturant upstairs. The walls and shelves are covered in antique Absinthe bottles, marketing posters and other assorted paraphanlia. We found out that this is because the bar is actually a museum, of course Absinthe is illigal in France so the only way they can get away with serving it is to call themselves a museum, and have 'tasting' instead of just out right serving drinks. They also have a bunch of crazy hats that you get too wear as you try the different drinks, Jase wore a boater, Kloss a bowler, Ness a thirties style fidora, Fuc a fetching top hat, and TGO went saftey first with an equstrian helmet.

Things descended quickly, we ran across our old friend Charlie on a street corner in the old part of town, we don't see Charlie often, so whenever he comes to town we feel obliged to shake the . When we got kicked out of the Extreme Bar at closing time we were desperate enough to continue the party that we walked all the way across town to the Golden Gate- the local gay bar, unfortunatly it was shut, we finally found an open bar and managed to continue the party for another couple of hours.

Dateline: Its 20 hours after I started writing, we have now been kicked out of the original campsite and are in one a kilometre down the road. We are currently stuck in the bus, its raining, we walked to macca's and the beer shop and got stuck in a rain storm, such was our low opinions of ourselves at the time we decided to walk home in the rain. So we are very, very wet, drinking warm beer, Timmy BT is sitting naked, why I don't know, but last night hurt a few of us, hurt us alot.

Last night we made a miscalculation and ended up partying till the wee hours once again, La Siesta was shut for some reason so we had to head into town to get dinner. How this resulted in us drinking till closing time and having a micro party back at the bus I do not know, but it seemed like a very, very good idea at the time.

Jump back to the story I was telling about monday night, after the last pub in town closed we got a cab back to the bus and made a little bit of noise as we woke the lads up to tell them of our adventures at the various pubs and clubs of town. At the time we thought nothing of it but a tip to the reader take note it will become important down the line.

The next day was extremely slow, we managed to get as far as the beach and that was about it, it was one of those amazing Cote days where the med sits perfectly still and the sun stays hot well into the evening. We made best use of the conditions we could spending a good five hour wack on the smoothly pebbled shores. The only incidents of note was the arrival of Paul Allen's Octopus out on the water, Ness getting stupidly sunburnt on her back (Neanderthal New South Welshmen...), and the complete and utter hard body that got her clothes off on the beach towel next to us, zoot allors.

Anyways, as Wristy and BT hadn't come out the night before they were keen to tie one on on tuesday night, so we naturally decided to head into town to offer them some support. For some reason they were drinking in an Australian bar, but I guess after three weeks on the road they are getting home sick. The most incredible game of pool in the history of the planet was played, but thats about all that happened for a long time last night. Kloss and I teamed up against the evil forces of the Duval College Pool Team and managed to shark them in such away that eventually they put up some cash, now anyone who knows anything knows that the Kapitan and I have been fleecing fools at pool tables for years. The Kloss started the blood bath with a good break, sinking two on his first go. We then carried our opponents for a few rounds, wanting them to at least think they were in the game, until the Kapitan gave me the signal and I promptly sunk four in a row, culminating in one of the top five pool shots of all time to sneak the black ball into the corner pocket and win the game. Seriously even the black ball itself was shocked that it ended up in the hole, I convinced it that it was going to the zoo but then at the last second shifted gears and it was all over. The shot to win the game created scenes of pure extacy in the Outback (the name of the pub) that have not been seen since the last rains came through. For that one perfect moment people began to believe again, I've often struggled with my status as a bringer of the truth and light but when I can deliver in such a manner I am happy to oblige.

Eventually they threw us out of the Outback, fairly handing out plastic cups so we could take our drinks with us so we headed back to the same after hours club as the night before and tied it on again. Good times. When we finally got back to the bus at around five Fuc decided it would be a good fun time if we had a round or two of Pastis (he is now a true believer) despite all our best intentions, lots of sushing, we apparently woke our neighbours up for the second night in a row (those who are paying attention will remember that this happened the night before - I did tell you to pay attention). Anyways, she wasn't very accepting of our offer of a drink when she came over to tell us to be quite so we all decided that the best result would be if she fucked off, which she did.

Thinking the incident was behind us we went to bed to recharge once more for another mediteranian day. This dream was shattered however at around nine this morning by the knocking on the door of the Messy Dayz Express by the camp manager. She's a slight little thing the manager, but she's also a very angry little thing (I never really understood why she was so angry, I mean really we didn't wake her up did we?) Anyways, she seemed to think it would the best for every one involved if we got the hell out of her camp site. I disagreed, after a heated debate (at one point the Gendames were summoned (you've never seen two bigger pussey's then Wristy and I when that happened) it was decided that we should leave the site and never return. Probably the best for all. The joke however was on them as BT managed to get a refund on his laundry tokens - I think both sides really came out ahead.

Thourghly impressed with our new status as legends of camping we drove around to a few near by sites and eventually manged to get the Dayz back into camping mode after about an hour. We decided that the best way to immortalize the day we got tossed from La Vielle Ferme was to have a party so we went to Macca's for breakfast beers and got a few cases. For some reason we thought Yatzee would be more fun if we were trying to do 100 shots in 100 minutes at the same time so the party soon got quite Messy, there was much nudity. By four in the afternoon we had drunk ourselves out of beer and life force, resulting in the massive crash that had been threatening for days. Its now nine pm and the bus is quite, we've all had naps, and dinner is long past - but no one is making any noises about the pub this evening, the only noises anyone is really making are snores. Hopefully we have learnt our lesson.