We did a lot of driving on our trip to the US. I mean a LOT. Most of it was pretty harmless. Some of it reeked. Literally.
Now, I'm no stranger to stinky travelling. I recall a pungent road trip stop on a hot summer afternoon where we discovered the source of the hideous stench we were gasping at was the bloated and rotting corpse of a wild pig nearby. Then there were the olfactory antics of my dear uncle on this trip. Or perhaps there was the stifling afternoon where I was driven to a crematorium but left in the car for the service as mum felt I was too young to attend. Now, I can't be sure, but we were parked downwind of the crematorium and I never, EVER want to smell anything like that again.
They were some pretty nasty experiences. But they were not a patch, not even a whiff of what Ghost and I had to put up with on the drive from Cedartown, GA to Cincinnati, OH.
It was dark, so we couldn't be positive, but we estimate that we drove past three dead skunks, a chicken farm, an abattoir, a water treatment plant and a sinkhole leading to one of the lower, more sulfurous levels of hell. That or we were driving through the set of 'Dawn of the Dead' in Smell-o-vision.
Dear gods… just as we had driven past one unholy pong, another one was waiting down the road to greet us, each one more indescribably appalling than the last.
Now, I have driven past chicken farms and water treatment plants and abattoirs before. It's profoundly unpleasant. When you're in an enclosed space, it's enough to make you want to fart just to clear the air a little. But what was Mother Nature thinking when she invented the skunk?
The damned things smell shocking enough when they are alive, but when they are road-kill? The rancid stench of dead skunk has to be experienced to be believed. There are no words in the English language to adequately describe the horror. It makes rotting boar carcass smell positively fresh.
Now, I'm sure we drove through some very scenic landscapes along the way, but the next time I try that trip, I'll be huffing air freshener straight from the can.
Monkey Business
Another 5 
down. Well, I'd lost 6 but after laying out a feast of beer, ice cream, popcorn and lots more beer, one climbed back on again. 107 to go!
What's all this monkey business about then?
« No, really?
