Autoblog Readers Aren't Excited About Paying For Hipster Vay-Cay

Meet Brad, Sheena, and Nacho! They are in “the midst of a life-defining campaign to travel around the world”. But they’re afraid to enter Pakistan. Apparently they thought they could travel around the world without visiting any scary places, presumably because their parents didn’t buy them any Jules Verne books. They’d rather drive through China and maybe hang with our Editor-in-chief a little bit, who knows. The cost for that little unplanned detour is nearly twenty thousand dollars. That’s where you come in — helping them make their life-defining campaign as safe and easy as possible.

What? You’re not eager to do this?

When Autoblog scribe and all-around good guy Zach Bowman decided to write “Help A Couple Drive Their 1984 Vanagon Around The World” he probably didn’t expect that his readers would cover all of Brad/Sheena/Nacho’s expenses. But what he really didn’t expect was the unrelenting stream of vitriol and contempt directed at the dream-vacationing couple and their twee-named Vanagon. One of the more even-handed comments sums up the general reaction:

I know I’m echoing others here but really?! They’ve gone travelling around the world, something most of us can only dream of, and have realised they didn’t budget enough? Oops. Nice idea but in today’s economic climate, from a UK perspective a climate that is actually pricing poorer families off the road, they’ve come cap in hand to continue their journey.

It’s a brilliant idea and I wish them all the luck in the world. But begging for money, so you can go gallivanting around China, in a world where people go to sleep hungry every night is slightly tasteless in my opinion.

Other people have rather hilariously suggested that Brad and Sheena, but presumably not Nacho, engage in Pakistani prostitution to cover the tab. The tone of the discussion has apparently caused Mr. Bowman to repeatedly delete comments he finds to be offensive — and if you’ve read AB, you know that doesn’t happen very often.

The video made by Brad to encourage would-be contributors doesn’t exactly improve matters; he complains about having to eat “unidentifiable food” during his extended vay-cay and refers to the $19,000-plus bounty he expects the Internet to shower upon him as “your part in the adventure”. He also promises to write a second book about Nacho’s trip, which given the quality of his video could be plausibly seen to actually be a threat.

While Mr. Bowman is saddened at the Autoblog response to Nacho’s travails, I find it almost impossible to believe he thought it would be any other way. In an era where most young people can’t find work of any type, these two loons quit their jobs to travel the world and expect that somehow the working stiffs left behind at the McDonald’s fry counters and call centers of flyover country will unhesitatingly fund their cowardice. They deserve to be ridiculed using every means at the Internet’s disposal.

In the spirit of friendship, however, I’ll extend a slightly different offer. If Brad, Sheena, and Nacho screw their courage to the sticking-place and drive all the way through Pakistan, I’ll buy a retail-priced copy of any book that honestly details that portion of their trip. Otherwise, I’m afraid that “my part” of their adventure will consist of laughing at their presumption.