Shit just got real

Even though Steph and I will be leaving in about twelve weeks time, it suddenly felt a whole lot closer as we sat down to book the tickets for the flight home. Now I can't stop thinking about the fact we'll soon be hitch-hiking about 2000km (or about 1300 miles if your an old person or American) and the simple act of booking the flights kind of woke us up to the fact it really is happening and made us a little anxious. We took forever searching for reasonably priced travel, until eventually found that the best way to do it was to just search for really vague criteria and looked for flights from ANYWHERE in Morocco to ANYWHERE in Britain and we'd just fill in the gaps in the journey with coach rides. I'm starting to wonder how far our money saving ideas will go. We're already planning on camping by the side of the motorway during the nights for the whole journey. This all seems so easy; I'm beginning to wonder what homeless people are complaining about, an insincere inflammatory remark which I can get away with making so long as they don't have internet access.

Anyway, we ended up finding the cheapest flight on skyscanner.net, the website LCD suggested in the first place, but a suggestion we stubbornly failed to heed until last. It's a Ryanair flight that ended up being between Marrakesh and Bristol for about £60 each (£100 including tax and stuff) followed by a Megabus trip from Bristol to Manchester for a tenner each, a massive difference when compared to going from Marrakesh directly to Manchester for around twice that amount. We even considered heading back to Gibraltar and getting a series of trains home, until the website snorted at us "a mode of transport that uses significantly less fuel and fewer staff? For this far less convenient mode of transport we will graciously charge you well over three times the price of your flight." Surely only people deathly terrified of flying would ever agree to that!

It's good stuff. No Battle of the Blands here.

The gig at the Ship Inn is almost all sorted. Only a month until that all happens. Charlie designed the cool poster you see before you, which we will be plastering around the campus and Preston in the next few weeks. So come, drink, listen to good music and in the meantime, you can click the following links to subscribe to these posts and also to sponsor me.

Also, don’t forget that if you are interested taking part in Hitch 2011 yourself, in doing something life affirming and impossibly awesome that also helps other people live better lives too, something that scientists refer to as “freaking bitchin’”, then you only have until the 1st of February only nine days from now, to register!