At the end of the year you’ll see that many blogs are popping up their year lists. About the things people or companies have achieved in the past years. Followed by predictions of what to come in our near future.

I myself wanted to start off with a different kind of list, so that’s how you end up reading the first session of my year lists: My Stupidities of 2010 in a list.

I had to think about it for a while, but ended up with the following events that can be posted at the top of the most stupid things I have done myself – personally – in this year.

Stupidity Number 1:

In April this year I went on vacation to Australia. Together with my Dutch best friend Antal. Together we bought ourselves a nice van (which we named Jack – naming your car was supposed to bring good luck) and drove the entire stretch from West coast Perth to East coast Sydney in only four weeks.

Hold on, road tripping Australia is absolutely not a stupid thing to do!

I even made a little dashboard movie about that trip:

It was quite a lot of driving and a lot of overnights at caravan parks where we certainly would be the youngest people ever to have stayed there. It seemed that only retired Australians stay at these overrated places.

Anyway, let’s get to this first point of stupidity.

I was driving the car on a one-lane road that was sided by lush green trees. That’s basically driving through rural Australia. If there are no trees, there isn’t anything else. And with driving through Australia you always have to keep in mind that traffic is different here. So are the signs on the road. If a sign says T-crossing ahead it actually says that pretty much AT the T-crossing. If you even don’t see that sign, you will be in for a surprise.

And what a surprise I experienced. The road just stopped! We could only go right or left, but the car was still going 95 km/hour and we were very close to the crossing already! So Antal screamed STOP!!! and I hit the brakes immediately.

And of course the van didn’t just stop. It screeched and slipped, but there wasn’t a real signal or an upcoming full stop. I pushed the brakes to avoid slipping even more and heard this sound of the horn of a truck.

There was a fuel truck coming from our right! A fuel truck!

The end of the road was coming very near us, but also did that truck and there was no way that that honking truck driver could stop his road train for us. Ever. (Road trains never stop, actually. It takes them minutes to get going again.).

Finally we stood still. On the middle of the T-crossing. And that truck passed us with an almost thundering sound by a mere meter. Probably less.

Of course Antal threw some names at me. I was to blame, as I was the driver at that moment. We turned right and continued as nothing has happened, but we more focused on the road and its signs than on the lush green trees that surrounded us.
Or Australia’s big nothing.

To be continued with My Stupidity of 2010 – part 2. Stay up to date and receive notices of the next updates in your mailbox.