#jesusmobile

[captainpirateface]

[beartoothbarry]

No longer looking for the papally blessed rosary beads. I have had ENOUGH of the rosary

[messmersflame]

jesusmobile

[thanksforthefush-blog]

[LAZGAR] Linda and Zoe's Great American Roadtrip

TLDR; Linda and Zoe are alive. Linda turned 25, got blackout drunk (no surprise there). They decide to embark on a 3 month road trip and live in a van in very close quarters. They buy a car off a sweet, elderly man with the plate JESUS. They don't get to keep the JESUS plate but the van is named the Jesusmobile. There is a special place in the 7th circle of Hell reserved for them.

Okay so I didn’t mean to take another hiatus but the last 2 months have been the most stressful experience of my life. This will most likely take a few blog posts to cover so buckle in. Where do I even begin?

I celebrated my 25th birthday in America, which is pretty insane to think about it because the adult I am at 25 is most definitely not the 25-year-old adult I imagined when I was 18. I thought I’d be coming along in my profession, perhaps saving enough to put down a mortgage on a home (obviously this train of thought was most definitely before Auckland’s insane housing prices because I am currently in negative equity and can currently afford one cheeseburger) and perhaps be settling down with a partner, possibly kids on the horizon.

A post shared by Linda (@ltranny) on Aug 12, 2017 at 11:29am PDT

How it really turned out: I embarked on a 4-day bender, each night more blackout drunk than the last, got more tattoos, ended up on the front page of Reddit and topped it off by seeing J Cole and Anderson Paak in DC. So, no job, no house and no kids but had the best birthday imaginable so I guess it sorta evens out. And at this point was soon to be homeless as Zoe and I were going on a 48-state road trip and my lease was up at the end of August. I feel like I’m back at my first week of university again where I didn’t attend the orientation the week prior and so had fuck all idea of what I was supposed to do while everyone else seemed to have their shit together so someone please tell me if I managed to skip the orientation for my mid 20s?

A post shared by Linda (@ltranny) on Aug 9, 2017 at 10:56am PDT

Zoe’s internship ended at the end of August as well, and we decided to commit to the road trip. This meant looking at options at how we were going to get ourselves around the States and what our finances were (honestly, I don’t know about Zoe but mine were pretty bloody bleak since I spent all my money went towards rent, alcohol and Ubers in that order). We weighed up renting a car, trying to get companies to sponsor us to go on a road trip (lol, this did not work), taking public transport around or just buying a car and converting it into a camper.

The most cost-effective option was to buy a car and convert it into a camper. No one wanted to sponsor us (for obvious reasons, like who are these girls and their 100 followers on Insta) and renting a car meant we couldn’t convert it and we wouldn’t be able to resell the car onwards after to recoup some of our costs.

And so, the car hunt began.

Guys, do not take TradeMe for granted. It has a fantastic car selling service that is easy to use and navigate. Here in the States, the most common way of finding a car is through Craigslist. Its interface has not been updated since the 90s. It is hideous to use and there is no rating system so 9 times out of 10, you’ve probably found a dud. The site is archaic and has no place in modern society. How is it that the nation that brought us Uber and SpaceX the same nation that still uses Craigslist? Unfathomable.

It burns my retinas

I can write an entire blog post about my gripes with the DMV and buying a car in the US because it deserves its own standalone blog post. It is so awful, so inefficient and brought Zoe and I to tears. The process delayed our trip by 3 weeks at which point we decided to forego the 48 states plan, a plan I painstakingly created via spreadsheets and countless hours of planning and we will now never witness its glory (if you're curious, here is the link (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pX4bAfO-faQ44t3w0rVGcEL7NJYVw0PsOp-I6tVSEHU/edit?usp=sharing).

However, we are retaining its essential essence which is to visit all the Six Flags in America and we are well on our way onto that goal.

During this time, Zoe and I also had our first fight. We have been friends for years now and our threshold for each other’s shenanigans is pretty damn high. We have dealt with each other at our absolute worst (she has literally seen me black out drunk and completely naked) and nothing rocked us quite like dealing with the bureaucracy that is the DMV. We fought, we cried, we made up and then got really, really drunk to get over it and all was right in the world again.

We are currently on our road trip now so the spoiler alert is that it all worked out in the end. We ended up buying a $3250 Chrysler Town and Country off a sweet elderly man off Craigslist whose number plate was JESUS. We were obviously not worthy of such a license plate (in Pennsylvania, you take your number plates with you, unlike NZ where the number plate goes with the car) and have affectionately named our van the Jesusmobile. This is a vast improvement on the last nickname bestowed on the van used for our 8 day bender last New Years which was a Mazda people mover named the Mazdabator (credits to Snitch for the ingenuity).

The car was in fantastic condition and immaculately maintained as it was used as a church van. It had done just over 100,000 miles and was a steal for the price and condition we got it in. The idea was to get a car big enough so that Zoe and I could sleep in the back while we traversed the States. So far, it has worked out fantastically.

A post shared by Linda & Zoe (@thanksforthefush) on Sep 20, 2017 at 6:12pm PDT

I’ll eventually get around to writing up the specifics of the car conversion but we’ve been on the road for over a week now in the campervan and it’s pretty damn comfy. We’ve slept at Walmarts and quiet streets and have snuck into a Catholic university to use their showers so I’m sure that this was just the icing on the cake to ensure our place in the 7th circle of Hell.

We actually started the first leg of our trip, affectionately named LAZGAR for short, in Florida during the imminent Hurricane Irma which I’ll save for the next post.

[hiibastian]

The Jesusmobile has resurrected. Praise the Autolord

[james30rock]

Stressful week ended nicely when I got my car back today