Stuck in a dead-end town with a dull job, plodding along to the same old routine and getting older?  You’ve traveled just enough to know that the Earth is round but not far enough to prove it, so instead of comfort it gives you an attitude.  Not to mention that half of your life has passed forever and you haven’t yet had that once-in-a-lifetime experience such as you’ve seen and heard about.  You’ve become “common,” and as it quietly nags at you, suddenly at some point from out of nowhere you or your domestic partner cries out, “I’m bored!”  What do you do?  Do you finally sit up and take notice?  Do you do anything? 

His girlfriend’s plaintive cry in the wilderness of their dormant lives in Cambridge begins what Gregory McCann calls The Beastly Adventure, valiantly detailed in his raucous and raunchy road movie of an eBook available now.  Soon after Greg’s girlfriend voices her dilemma, he is hatching a scheme that would shake their lives to the roots.  When she returns home from work, Greg’s wild enthusiasm for the plan renders him momentarily incoherent.

“She had, of course, no idea what I was talking about, so she karate chopped me in the windpipe and went to make a cup of tea.  By the time she had returned, I had calmed down and partially recovered so that I could, albeit hoarsely, explain my idea of travelling the world by car instead of by plane.  She was thrilled and did a little jig before giving me a big kiss and immediately agreeing to go ahead with the purchase of the vehicle.” 
 
The vehicle?  Hop aboard The Beast, a decommissioned Land Rover 101 military ambulance, freshly overhauled and painted Massey Ferguson red for the journey to end all journeys.  If attention is the solution to boredom then it’s already a success.  Yet this screamingly funny saga has just begun, and you’ll laugh along with these four loose-knit friends presenting their party passports, ready to be stamped. 

Border crossings come and go in the daze, marking the trail of the wayfarers.  Stranger-than-fiction characters strut and fret their hours in the headlights and fade into the rear-view.  Somehow amidst the bickering, drinking and debauchery an lucid bout of travel writing travel breaks out.  Their troubles, their triumphs (and the tipple) fuel one of the wildest rides you’ll ever read.  All of it -- the beautiful and the damned -- is captured in Gregory McCann’s dry and economical prose.

“As we set off I discovered that the reason the guys had been laughing so heavily in customs, was that they thought the young customs guy looked exactly like me.  They told me he was my exact doppelganger.  I couldn’t see it but they insisted.  I told them that I had read recently that if you meet your doppelganger one of you dies shortly afterwards.  I’m cheerful like that. 
“Anyway I shook the thought and hoped neither of us would pop our clogs.  As we exited the small town on the border I began to speed up and just as I got into fourth gear (that’s all we’ve got), I noticed a series of white lines on the floor ahead of us and a small cabin at the side of the road.  I then saw a guy in the cabin brandish a white light sabre, like those used by airport staff to guide planes.  He waved it at me frenziedly as he hurried outside like his life depended on it.  I slowed down to stop and just crossed the first line on the floor.  Bad move.”

Whether you think they’re brave or foolish, you’ll admire these determined travelers as they endure every drinking buddy and befriend every mechanical setback along the way. You’ll appreciate that the most minor details can make or break an otherwise routine jaunt across Russia.  Enjoy disturbed nights and colorful days from the casinos of Tallinn to the shores of the Mekong and beyond.  Oh, the places you’ll go, and the places where you have to hold it while you’re looking for a place to go.

This is no-holds-barred travel in the classic sense, or lack thereof!  Get a hold of The Beast, its hour come at last, and get in on the Adventure!