The Unabridged Longest Road Trip Story
For whatever reason, sometimes we have the opportunity to be thankful in spite of the most horrific circumstances. The following story is one of those “most horrific circumstances” that I am now currently thankful for (or someone is).
Star date: The end of my freshman year in college. Twas May of 1994, and I had just finished a full year of college at this institution of higher learning and even higher rules of living. Most college students leave their freshman year of college and head home for the summer. Ya know, hang out with the old classmates and brag about who went to the best parties that year. Going to PCC however left little room for conversations like these and more room to try to figure out anything at all about what was going on in popular culture,(”No, I’ve never heard of Ace of Base, are they good?”). Plus my parents lovingly dropped me off at school in September of ‘03 from my lifetime hometown of Fremont, Ohio and immediately (meaning that day) moved to Tucson, AZ – but thankfully they left me the address.
So as is the college ritual toward the end of the school year, I looked for someone to give me a ride from Pensacola, Florida to Tucson, AZ. And if you were going to LA, that would be fine too because route 10 goes all the way across the country, baby!
Allison eventually got in touch with me and asked me to meet her at the Commons one day with a group of people who would be riding across the country together. When I arrived, I found Allison, Kim, and John waiting for me and we talked for a bit, getting to know each other before we made this insanely long road trip as a group. Allison was finishing her sophomore year as a Criminal Justice major, Kim, too, would be a senior the following year, John suffered along with me in having 3 more years of college to go.
So we decided on a time and a place to meet after our schools graduation ceremony (figuring if possible we could break out somewhere in between the 3rd and 18th verses of the schools alma mater song) and exchanged pleasantries as we went, living our lives for the rest of the year.
Finally the day arrived that we would be leaving for the year. We were scheduled to meet at 11:45 am in the center of campus, pack our car up, and drive away. I guess that schedule worked for two of us as John and I were the only ones to arrive. Of course this was long before cell phones were readily available (actually, I’d be interested in knowing if you can have one at PCC) so we simply had to wait. 12. 12:15. 12:30. I’m starting to get impatient. 1 rolls around and there is still no Allison or Kim. Maybe they thought we were freaks, I quipped inside my own head.
Finally at 2:00 pm, our two heroines arrived apologetically after having dropped a friend off at the airport “and it took longer than we thought it would.” Either way, at this point already on this Friday John and I were irritated, so we let it go, packed up the car, and headed west.
When you tell someone you’ll drive their car across the country, you generally assume that the car will be in good enough condition to make the trip. You know, when the owner says, “I’ve taken care of the car and it will be fine”, a good assumption is that the owner has indeed taken care of the car and it will be fine.
We left Pensacola around 2 pm, in the heat of the afternoon and found that the car didn’t have AC. Not a big deal, but the 90 degree heat threatened to melt our faces off. Our drive started slow, as we talked about dating outings and birthdays and whether or not we would be returning to Pensacola Correctional Center for the next year. We moved from Florida to Alabama to Mississippi before we ventured into our first mishap. The car decided to overheat and we found ourselves parked in a rest area for the better part of an hour. The afternoon was flying by, and crankiness was underway.
Louisiana passed us by and entering Texas brought on more trials than any humans should ever have to bear. I had never been in Houston, Texas before, but on the east side of the city, Kim told us that she needed to stop at a pay phone (remember, cell phones were not as plentiful in those days) at the next gas station. Allison, as the driver, pulled into the first Exxon she could find. The station was actually closed down for whatever reason, and consequently was very dark. We pulled in, Kim walked to the pay phone, and we waited.
After sitting for a few minutes listening to the sounds of Houston and to Kim quip loudly about her new friends driving with her and that she was very safe with such good friends, two cars come screeching into the parking lot about 30 feet in front of us. Kim keeps talking. Two guys walk out of one car. Three guys walk out of another. They start screaming and yelling racial slurs at one another. Marty (that’s me) yells at Kim to make the conversation end quickly. Her parents roll on about how the family pet is doing. Then one of the guys form the car of three heads to the trunk of his car and pulls out what appears from 30 feet to be a firearm. Kim needs to quit talking. Marty yells louder to Kim, pleading for her to hurry.
Eventually Kim stops talking and Allison drives away. About a quarter of a mile down the road, immediately prior to getting on the ramp toward the highway, I see a cop directing traffic, roll down my window and tell him, “Excuse me sir, back at the Exxon there was some guys fighting and one of them had a firearm!” The officer looked at me and calmly said…
“Sorry, I have traffic duty tonight.”
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.
Driving the width of Texas is very similar to several things, not the least of which being waiting at the RMV (registry of Motor Vehicles) for someone to call your name, expecting that it will happen at any minute, but it never does, and hours later you find yourself trying to be entertained by some random circumstance like trying to guess the language of the people around you or attempting to count the number of those whose name have been called before yours. Thankfully the RMV now has the internet, but Scotty has not actually invented a usable transporter quite yet. So you just wait but it never happens.
It was my turn to drive and the long night nestled over Texas for what seemed like forever. Around 4 pm it started raining and then raining and then raining. Soon the rain hit the car so hard that I thought someone had jumped on the car. Other cars began to move to the side of the road, but not me. I wouldn’t be stopping. Texas was already a long enough state to drive through, plus my expert driving skills would help me out. For over an hour the rain crashed down on us, and I just kept praying for it to stop. Driving 10 mph had started to get on my nerves. I sang and prayed and thought about the fact that I didn’t have a girlfriend yet,and I was already 18 years old (What was wrong with me anyway?) By the time it stopped raining, I remember being a mess mentally, almost shedding a tear because I was so tired of the concentration it took to stay on the road through the storm. Sweat poured down my forehead, a result of the fear I experienced in the last hour. Finally it did stop, and all was quiet, and I thanked God for bringing us out safe.
Then one by one, my fellow passengers woke up, each asking me in their own way if I was doing all right driving. They know how boring the drive through Texas can be. Then I turned on the radio where a news weather report was hitting the airwaves. Apparently Texas had just come through its worst thunderstorm in 50 years (rainfall in an hour). Kim and John and Allison all laughed and one quipped…
“Thank God it didn’t rain here in this part of Texas.”
There are times you love life, and believe it’s all going your way, and then there are other times, when screaming, “Why me?” and “Why does everything always happen to me?” seems appropriate to the present circumstance. The latter makes you feel small and insignificant, like the only thing you’re good for is God’s little play toy. So we have a choice: Do we give in or go screaming?
After a major thunderstorm and what seemed to be a million other problems, it was finally time for breakfast. And really what is a trip across the lower half of the country without at least one breakfast at the golden arches? So hour number 15 of this amazing road trip meant that we would participate in the scrumptious ritual of the McD’s value meal – hash brown included of course.
For some reason now 15 years later I remember that I ordered a breakfast burrito. Kim and Allison and John ordered and we ate. Sounds ordinary right? We decided after breakfast that I would drive to the gas station across the street to finish my all night driving escapades. So I slowly pulled out of our parking spot. Unfortunately another car opposite of me slowly did the same thing. I backed out and turned, and just after I had come to a stop, shifting my gears from reverse to forward, the rear of that opposite car hit the rear of our car. This caused an accident. While no one was hurt, I muttered to myself, “Why me?”
Thankfully there was no damage to the cars, save some minor scratches to the other car, who seemed to really want to ignore the whole episode. We agreed. We just wanted to move forward. So I drove across the street. When I arrived to said gas station however, I quickly noted the extremely expensive gas the station offered. $2 was much too expensive to pay for gas in 1994, and I simply was not going to pay that much (Right now it is midnight and I would gladly put on some jeans and a t-shirt and drive to pay for $2 gas).
So I told them I’d drive to the next station, and we’d eventually get to cheaper gas. The only problem was we only had about 40 miles of gas left. I was confident however, that there would be a station somewhere along the lonely Texas highway.
Misplaced confidence leads to feelings of insignificance, and I was headed low fast. It took me 20 miles of searching for a gas station to finally see a sign that said, “Next gas station – 48 miles”. So I had no choice but to turn around and drive 20 miles away from our destination in order to buy expensive gas. After I did this, I allowed someone else to drive…
And I fell asleep for the next 3 hours.
I began these stories by telling you: For whatever reason, sometimes we have the opportunity to be thankful in spite of the most horrific circumstances. And I fully intend to illustrate this by the end of the story, but not at the beginning of the end.
I was so tired of the trip taking forever and being scared of gang wars or driving through Thunderstorms or being hit by other cars and almost running out of gas. I just wanted to be home. Of course this was the first time I would ever live at this home, as my parents had moved from Ohio to Arizona on the same day as they dropped me off at college, but that didn’t matter. Not now. I was simply read to be done with this journey.
By the time I woke up from my 3 hour nap, I was a bit refreshed and ready to talk to my fellow travelers, Kim, Jon, and Allison. We laughed and talked for the rest of the day, starting to forget about the proverbial rain that poured into our trip. Around 1:00 pm (or late lunch time, as I like to call it), we decided to stop into a Dairy Queen restaurant to eat. After lunch, we waddled back into our car and drove off into the New Mexico border. Then it happened – quite suddenly – Jon said, “I’m not feeling very we….(blahhhhhhhhhhhhh)!” And he spewed all over the seat in front of him. For those of you who don’t know, spewed is yet another term for vomit or barf or puke or hurl or blowing chunks. And when I see puke or even hear it actually, I get sick too.
So we drove into a rest area that conveniently was only about a mile away and cleaned up the car thoroughly so we could reenter without wanting to spew ourselves.
Eventually we got back in the car and drove steady into Arizona. Allison was driving about 4:00 pm when an older couple in a Cadillac decided not to pay attention to our car being on the road next to them. They just crossed over literally while I was eye to eye with the driver in the passenger seat so I yelled, “Allison you’re gonna have to get over.” She responded, “I can’t, there’s a ditch over there.”
“Then you have a choice to make” was the last thing heard out of my mouth as Allison drove into the ditch off the side of the road, and the white Cadillac drove off into the sunset, literally.
We just laughed. No one said a word, but just laughed until we cried.
After we found ourselves about an hour a way from the Tucson suburb where my family lived, I pulled the last drive responsibility before my house. I drove proudly through the desert, excited to see my new home and be with my family. Approximately 30 miles from Tucson, the car died.
I don’t mean it sputtered or moved slowly or hacked up a motorized lung, I mean it died. So my dad and a tow truck came to get us, and eventually Jon and Allison and Kim rented a car and continued to drive west. One to Phoenix. One to Mesa. And one to LA.
I guess you could say that on this trip nothing good was accomplished, but eventually good things do happen, though sometimes we don’t expect it. Because 3 years later two people who had been perfect strangers before were married.
Congratulations Jon and Allison!
