The Longest Road Trip ever, part 3
When you take a road trip, you begin to develop a sort of bond that you could not have without the road trip sort of experience. The type of bond that we get when confined to others in close quarter situations. We either become attracted to those around us (not necessarily in a Freudian way) or repulsed. I’m thankful for these adventures.
Driving through Houston after the last episode did nothing to make us want to scout, visit, or in any way pay attention to the huge Texan city of Houston. We did however, desire to get out, so we drove through I-10, until we decided to get gas and scarf down some snacks at a gas station off the highway. As we ejected from our cars and stumbled inside after a long 7 hours of driving, I noticed a patrol car slowly circling the building vulture style and paying particular attention to the single brown car in the gas station. Ya know, the one from which the four college students were stumbling out. I mentioned it to Kim, Jon, and Allison, who figured it was just a bored officer with nothing to do on a Friday night. I kindly reminded them that this was Houston and their basketball team was playing game 3 of their conference semi-finals with Phoenix, so really, there was plenty to do. They ignored me. Non-sports fans do that sometimes.
We bought our Pringles and Surge, preparing for the long night ahead, and went on our way. One thing I’ve neglected to mention throughout my story proved to be the eventual reason for the officer’s circling. The owner of the vehicle was an amazing fellow from California who had no use of his legs whatsoever, and despite this apparent setback, never let it change his life in any way. He did everything I did at this time in our lives, including play basketball and flirt with girls. But he also drove, and this was his car, and plastered on both license plates was the universal sign of disabled persons.
Finally heading outside of the Houston city limits proved to be the end of the “making good time” portion of our evening as the patrol car finally decided to pull us over. Probably because we were going to Arizona and the Suns were playing the Rockets in the playoffs and all that, but he said something about crossing lanes too fast and that he thought we stole the car. To me he looked the traffic cop in part 2, but Allison assured me he was not. I told her while he was checking our credentials out that there was no way she could know that while he continued to smoke a cigar in our presence because the cigar and the smoke partially hid his face like a character from the Twilight Zone. He walked clumsily back to our car and told us to have a good day. If I knew then what I know now, I would have told him to relax, and that everything is going to be all right.
I drove through the night listening to soft rock stations and buzzing from certain drinks I had ingested earlier, when eventually a newscaster came on and informed me that a huge thunderstorm was arriving into the area early this morning. I didn’t believe him as the sky was absolutely beautiful and I was singing quietly to myself. I have this theory that bad things don’t happen to me when I sing quietly to myself. Although at this time my musical experience was limited to Al Denson and the beautiful music of the PCC ensembles.
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