Elements of Dumb

On Friday I made a decision of extreme consequence. For your reading pleasure, I have detailed it, below:

The Idea:
Friday saw me in a mood of amazingly dull proportions, so I decided to do something exciting. I decided to drive to Sydney. (For those of you who live overseas, and think that Sydney is the capital of Australia and is located 'somewhere in the middle', here is a map.) Something that I had neglected to view the importance of was the local weather reports for the Central Coast - I believe the term used by the weather man was 'natural disaster area'. Did this phase me? No. I woke up at 3am, and left Brisbane with a spring in my step. This was the first element of 'dumb'.

The Action:
Having gone out the night before, I left Brisbane on 4 hours sleep. Apparently I'd forgotten the energy that it takes to drive such a long distance, and I'd also forgotten the fact that being awake is vital to the act of driving. By the time I reached the Gold Coast, I'd consumed 4 extra strong lattes, and two cans of red bull, and I was still falling asleep at the wheel. I was desperate - I had to keep driving, but I couldn't. So, as an act of last resort, a total of 3 hours into my journey, I began to sing. These were no ordinary songs - they were self-composed lyrics put to popular nursery rhyme tunes. I believe this was the second element of 'dumb', and also comprised the first stage of lunacy.

The Problem:
The weather was fair and sunny up until 20 kms before Newcastle. Then the shit hit the fan, and the land was strewn with faeces of the precipitous variety. My average speed went from 110kmh to 30kmh. I couldn't see Jayden's bonnet, let alone the road. I was, for the first time in my life, thankful for the dirty great big 4WD that I was following. We passed the hole in the highway that had previously seen the death of a small family, and that was when Jayden started to tell me that he was running out of petrol. I pulled into the petrol station only to be told that they had no electricity on the entire Central Coast so there was no petrol. My only choice was to try and make it to Hornsby on the petrol that I had. Later on, as I was parked on the hard shoulder with Jayden's little hazard lights flashing, I was again thankful for the 4WD, and Mick - the driver - who had a can of petrol in the back of his large boot. Mick, and the 4WD, saved my life.

The Arrival:
After almost falling asleep at the wheel, and running out of petrol on the highway in the middle of a cyclone, I had made it to Sydney. I crossed the harbour Bridge and almost pissed myself with sheer relief. Somehow I made it to Camperdown, found my friend, and all was good. Until I remembered that I had to drive back - here we had the third element of 'dumb' and the second stage of lunacy, that is, prior to this realisation I actually believed that I could magic myself back home.

The End:
Had I known that an excessive amount of driving necessarily causes the loss of one's sanity, I might not have chosen to commit myself to this journey. When I reached the Harbour of Coff on my return to Brisbane, the songs I was composing had reached a new level of shitness. I had unwittingly devised a 'mix' of the Pizza Hut/Kentucky Fried Chicken/McDonalds song, mashed up with Beyonce's Crazy In Love. It was appalling, it was shit, it represented atrocity of such magnitude and I am ashamed that I remember how it goes. However, it was this element of dumb, with the late addition of interchangeable lyrics, that got me through to the Gold Coast, and finally home to Brisbane.

The Afterthought:
As I'm sure you can appreciate, I won't be driving to Sydney again. I fully admit that the idea was a whole world of dumb, and I only have myself to blame. I haven't gained anything from my execution of this plan, except that I now have a deeper appreciation of the creative tendencies at work inside my head. I am, indeed, a veritable song-writing genius.