Austin, Texas, an inland city, home to the University of Texas flagship campus. Austin is known for its eclectic live-music scene which consists of country, blues and rock. All sounds great doesn’t it…that’s not the experience I had! In fact I literally thought I was going to die! To cut a long story short, my best friend and I had worked in a UK HMP Prison as teachers for almost 5 years and it was literally destroying our souls from the inside out. We made the decision to leave; we walked out on the very same day! We wanted to do something big, something worth walking out of that safety net, that stable job security which society has programmed us to believe is the only way to live, when in fact, all you do is race, you’re part of the rat race! We decided to get a flight to NYC, fly to California, rent a car and drive back to NYC, no big deal right? We had a plan, first stop San Fran, San Diageo, Arizona, Las Vegas, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia Beach, Washington DC, then back to NYC, easy for two females from the UK with no experience, other people do it, why can’t we? That was our thinking! We didn’t even comprehend the fact we would be driving well over 6,000km in 21 days! Fun fact! We did it! We only diced with death twice, which to be fair, I think is an accomplishment to be proud of. We stopped at random gas stations where people were intrigued by our accent, ‘where you girls heading?’, so we’d fill them in with the above, the response being ‘OMG you girls are so brave’ totally southern accent! I thought brave, are we really so brave? Hindsight, a wonderful thing, ‘stupid’ was probably more fitting! We stayed at ‘The Guild’ downtown Austin in an amazing apartment block, brand new, very modern, yet each room was unique. We stayed in some real dives over the previous few days and so decided to have a bit of luxury. There was an old vinyl record player with some bluesy type 45 on, we had washing machine, gym, all the amenities you could ask for, we were delighted. Once in Austin you have to go out and explore the night life, we found this really cool little place called ‘Ah Sing Den’ a cocktail lounge, which the female waitress told us, décor came from an infamous opium den in Victorian London mixed with a multitude of Asian cultured furnishing. The waitress appeared to like us so much she began sending over shots of absinthe. By the time we left, we were quite literally drunk. At which point we ended up in an array of different bars, before I knew it we had a small crowd in tow. We ended up in some ‘roadhouse’ in the middle of nowhere with a couple that had drove us there. I sobered up and reality struck, I knew, potentially, we were in deep trouble. The couple kept mentioning ‘we much have so much money doing this road trip’ which freaked me out. As I searched for my friend through the darkness, flashing lights, crashing music and smoke filled floors, all I could think was ‘where are we and how the hell are we going to get back?’ I saw my friend with 3 guys dancing around her, the couple reappeared and wanted us to leave, the 3 guys were adamant we were leaving with them to go to a ‘party’. I grabbed my friend and told her I fancied our chances more with the couple, they didn’t look so tough but these guys looked like big time drug dealers, I sensed that the type of ‘party’ we’d be going to would be one that found us spiked, gang raped and left for dead. We took our chances and went with the couple to their house. The guy was crazy talking about how many guns he had upstairs and at this point I could see he had clearly been consuming more than just alcohol. Luckily, I regained signal on my mobile phone and got us an Uber. I’m playing along with the guy all the while checking my app. As soon as I knew our Uber was within running distance I grabbed my friend off the sofa and headed for the front door. We ran up some random street in the middle of Austin, Texas, and flew into our Uber! Moral of the story is, if you’re two females travelling alone to random destinations, do your research, always check trip advisor and download the Uber app!