About Us and Our Monster Voyage
It's crazy to think that the Chopster and I met, by chance, only three years ago through our mutual friends, Milli and Rick the Vic.
1950's Style Jazz & Burlesque night, October 2015, Cirencester, Gloucestershire.
Even then, it wasn't until the flamboyant Chaps Olympiad the following year, that we really got to know each other as we started to talk about working together and our love for horror movies.
Chaps Olympiad, July 2016, Bedford Square, London.
As you can probably tell, from our attire, the Chopster and I don't shy away from the extravagance of a good old fashioned fancy dress.
As Chopster and I began working together, it became clear that this wasn't just a work thing, we were on the way to igniting a long-lasting friendship that was soon to be known as...
The Bonster & Chopster Monster Voyage
As our friendship has grown, our random meetings have turned into daily Messenger chats, weekly calls and monthly weekend visits.
Living over 2-hours apart has meant that road trips are the staple diet of our adventures together.
With the windows rolled down and our Country, Rock and Motown playlist on playback, we rock out the carpool karaoke.
- Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can't help but move to it. That's what happens to me. I can't help it.
- Elvis Presley
It was on a road trip, just like this one, in 2017, as we rocked out to the awesomeness that is Michael Bolton, that the idea of road tripping along the Route 66 mother road came about.
Finding out that we'd both dreamt of this epic journey since we were kids, was the cherry on top.
Soul mate travel buddies on an adventure of a lifetime!!!
Of course with any new idea comes the urgency of getting straight to it.
It makes me chuckle thinking about the first couple of months of planning. What we learnt most was...
- If you're gonna do it, do it right (right)
- George Michael, Wham
Saving, saving and more saving...
With our goal set to reach a whopping £15,000 each to spend over two maybe three months on the road, we realistically set the year for 2020.
Queue the Boot Sales...
Of course, it's not all about the money...
- A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
- Lao Tzu
Chopster and I also needed to make sure that, even though we're best buddies, we could spend long periods of time together without pulling our hair out or going completely nuts.
So we upped the anti on time spent together, with more road trips, festivals, weekends away, fine dinning experiences and home movie horror fests.
On the last day in April 2018, we decided, on a whim, to launch the Monster Voyage Twitter account.
- Don't hesitate or talk about what you want to do. Just do it
- Gbenga Akinnagbe
With little or no experience of social media, only a dream to connect with like-minded travellers, the opportunity to connect with locals and find out as much as we could about the epic mother road, the account was created.
Within a month we had connected with over 1,000 people from all over the world.
As our following has grown, so has our knowledge about Route 66 and the new and exciting opportunities that lie ahead.
The power of social media has really opened our eyes to the possibilities.
We created the Monster Voyage blog so that we could share our Weird, Wacky and Wonderful adventures already in the bag and those still to come, with you.
- If you haven’t already got the travel bug, we’re hoping we might just infect you!
- Bonster & Chopster, Monster Voyage