wait, where the hell am i?

i just took a 19 instead of a 38, and looked up from my book to wonder "where the hell am i?" (ans = blackstock road)

no, this is NOT a particularly startling example: ile impress me w.your absent-mindedness or bad orientation!!

RAN for and JUMPED ONTO train going from dundee => glasgow instead of dundee => edinburgh...
(realised after about 500 yards when the tay rail bridge was avoided instead of crossed, but then had to go 50 miles to stirling to change trains)

a mate of mine who lives in hackney got on the N38 (which goes all the way to walthamstow) at tottenham court road, promptly fell asleep and woke up, wait for it...

...back at tottenham court road!

I once managed to doze off while in the last bus to my home (yes, alcohol had something to do with it). I woke up when the bus arrived to it's final stop, which was in a part of the city I'd never been to. I had to use the map on the bus timetable to find my way home, which wasn't that easy since I'm a horrible orienteerer and the map was lacking details, plus my intoxication was beginning to wear off. It took me two and a half hours to get home; that was among the longest two and a half hours of my life.

my friend always fell asleep on the nighbus home from leeds, and ended up somewhere in wakefield. perhaps fittingly, he is now buried there

Sudbury

Erith. On the N89. Last one too. 16 quid taxi home. Though didn't get me iPod nicked that time. Gah.

Dartford - train. Luckily, only a 30 minute journey back.

Apocraphyal stories of stockbrokers falling asleep after a night on the booze and not getting off at Reading end up in Exeter / Penzance / Plymouth or somesuch. Ha ha.

I took the T one stop too many thanks to a particularly attractive young gentleman who I was chatting up despite not having a chance with. Got out at an unfamiliar part of Boston around midnight. Somehow managed to make it through the windy chaotic streets back to the place where I was staying.

Wandered drunkenly out into a parking lot. Found my friend's grey cutlass, it was unlocked, I crawled into the back seat and fell asleep. I woke up with the sun shining on me rolling down the highway with someone I didn't know driving. Turns out I was in the wrong car, and was now 500+ miles in the opposite direction of where I was supposed to be.

Okay, this didn't happen to me, it happened to my cousin B0nny. One of my favorite stories evah.

The worst experience I have of this is on the train back from Nottingham to Glasgow you have to switch at Coventry (?? or Stoke? or somewhere? I'm not exactly sure) and the switch had to be carried out in an infintessimal window (picoseconds, picoseconds) and I ended up getting on the wrong train (right platform, but one train too early) and heading straight back the way I had just come from for 30 miles. I had to wait another 2 hours in some station in the middle of England for another train going my way. Hmph. Happy days.

A few weeks ago, I was covering some lame classic rock festival. I accidently got really really drunk and was wondering around just outside the gates. Ran into some drunk kid and was talking to him and I'm not sure why, but we decided to hop the fence.
Of course the security dudes were waiting on the other side, and there I was, with my press pass (which luckily didn't identify me nor the publication I was working for).
"Why would you jump the fence?" the security guy asked.
"Just dumb I guess."
He agreed.

I may have told this before. I hope the details are the same. It was Halloween. I missed Providence coming from Boston because I was asleep. The next town on that line is New London, Connecticut, like a fucking hour away. There is nothing worse than hurtling 100 miles an hour away from where you want to be. I had an audition in three hours so I actually made up my mind to jump off when the train slowed down enough. I got my bag and my stuff together, waited until no one was looking, and jiggled the door handle violently, but it was locked, of course, as they all were. I tried hitch-hiking back and met some pretty wild characters but I only got as far as Stonington before it got dark and started raining and Stonington is fucking IMPOSSIBLE to get picked up in because it's like croquet country there, no one's going to pick up some young guy in the rain. I found a gas station and called an unlucky friend who came and got me. While I was on the phone with her a car pulled up for a fill-up and two pirates stepped out, with a tiger who walked on its hind legs and carried an umbrella.

Its probably a good thing you didn't jump. It isnt like in the movies - you actually get badly injured, as some kid here found out the hard way when, to avoid ticket inspectors on the stony point train he decided to jump out of it. Ended up in hospital unconcious with a broken leg or something.

One morning I woke up to hear birds singing and I opened my eyes and I was on the side of the road in a small green patch where my bus turns around. I got up and walked home.

I wonder how many times they got to the turn-around point before they chucked you out?

The first time I took a bus I missed my stop. It was only after I'd passed through Crackton, the industrial park and Area 51A that I realised I wasn't going to make it to the museum.

Personally, I fell asleep on the Bolognese night bus, which wasn't a disaster, as it just does a loop. Once I went past my stop and decided to sod it and walk home at 4am through 2 miles of Italian suburb where I'd never been before. It was kind of pleasant, actually.

i fell asleep on the NY subway and wound up in coney island!

also on the red line in chicago i fell asleep around belmont and ended up somewhere in the 80s. i think that's like 10 or 11 miles apart.

somehow though 99% of the time i'll fall asleep and wake up confused just before my stop. usually i have just enough time to collect my senses and get off the train but sometimes the doors close before i have my wits about me and i wind up going one stop further than planned. it makes for a rotten excuse why you're 15 minutes late to work!

also per mark looking up from a book and realizing you're on the wrong bus can be kind of scary. more often it's a bus that's been rerouted and i missed the announcement.

see also trains that suddenly are declared to run "express" but you miss the announcement.

Hang on, I'm not Lisa Simpson. Not really.

mr bergstrom says otherwise

i fell asleep on the Oxford Tube once from Victoria and instead of getting off at Hillingdon woke up in...Oxford. cost me more than double the fare to get back home, bastads. still, its a beautiful city.

I fell asleep once on the train back to my parents and ended up in Bedford at two in the morning. No return trains and cold night pushed me to get a dodgy taxi fromt he forecourt of the station. The driver whose first language was not English stressed he knew where Borehamwood was, though as he stopped for me to get cash I noticed him getting a big map out. When I got back in he asked if I wanted to him to go through Red Lights? I smiled sweetly and told him to take it at a steady pace.

A steady pace of 140 mph down the M1 followed, which was okay because there was only one other car on the motorway which was also doing 140mph. A white rover with a red stripe down the side. I guess it was probably doing more than 140mph as it caught us and made us stop. Much native swearing from driver.

We are both asked to exit the car. He is checked for driving licence (no) incurance (no again) any proof of residence (super triple no). I had been in SOAS bar for the evening so stank of narcotics. Bedfordshire police were convinced that the only person taking a hooky taxi that time of night would be a drug dealer and thought they had me penned. After a relatively intensive search they found nothing. But they could not let me go on my way because as I pointed out to them that even if legal they had just cost the driver about 100 quid and surely he would just dump me at the next intersection.

The police agree to take me on the rest of my journey - one grilling me in the back about my dealing route, the other one "accidentally" flicking on the siren for a brief second to get all the net curtains twitching down my parents street. As we left the Taxi driver he hissed at me - "This wouldn't have happened if we went through Red Light."
"That's illegal too." I correctly pointe dout.
"Red light - near Shenley."
Oh. Silly me.
Radlett.

Applause

at least by Red Light he wasn't talking about St Albans brothel sector

pete that's great!

pete that is superb.

I've often woken up at Gatwick Airport, but not on the runway or anything.

Astonishing, Pete. This however worries me:

After a relatively intensive search they found nothing.