See Me Squeegee

February, 1998.  Early in the days that the crew was even together, we embarked on a roadtrip that still makes me laugh.  I don’t know that too many of us remember too much about our actual Spring Break in Fr. Lauderdale, but the drive may well be my favorite experience from college.  To set the scene, first know the cast of characters:

Dudes Car: Brent, Curt, Me, Padley. Vehicle: Ford Explorer.

Girls Car: Katie, Stephanie, Leanne, Jill. Vehicle: some compact rental…think Ford Escort.  Note: Alexa flew down to meet us.

(and, yeah, we had dudes and girls cars…weird, I know)

Now, to get a full idea of how this would go down, you have to know the people.  Katie was the social director – the whole trip was her idea, she organized beautifully for the girls, and we dudes just glommed on to it and tagged along.  Stephanie, Leanne, and Jill were just cool to hang out with – easygoing, beer drinkers, great conversationalists on most  topics.  Just a great carload of humanity there.  In our car, Padley was just a tall, happy-go-lucky fellow – such a good dude, never a bad word to say about anyone, and always happy to be around people and hanging  out.  You’ve read about Curt – he’s the hard luck star of “Curt Loses His Coat” and “The Chicken Boots”.  Bad things happen to Curt for some reason.  He’s nice to a fault, generous like nobody’s business…you couldn’t script a better roommate.  And then there was Brent, the wild card.  Looked exactly like Napoleon Dynamite at the time (his words, actually), had a little bit of a temper on him, could play all roles – the great guy to hang out and watch sports with or the loose cannon you knew was going to get himself in trouble.  Brent’s antics include:  punching out every window we passed on our way to a party the last day we were in the dorms; getting lost in Toledo trying to buy weed even though he doesn’t smoke; sitting silently, rocking back and forth, having torn apart a wooden massage toy/tool thing, inconsolable for hours…because a frat party wouldn’t let his buddy in.  Tremendous guy to have in the mix for a situation like this and a great guy in general, but his antics would play a major role here.

We left Michigan on a Saturday morning to caravan down from Ann Arbor, and things started smoothly. Brent was driving his Ford Explorer, the girls were in their car, we were holding up signs when we wanted to communicate back and forth (between the two cars we had one “car phone” – this was before cell phones got big), the music was going well.  We stopped around Cincinnati to get gas – the girls’ smaller car had a smaller tank – and either Curt or Padley took the wheel in our car.  Brent didn’t like giving up control of his ride and even protested a little, so the next time one of the girls had to use the bathroom Brent took the car over again.  He would not give it up the rest of the 24-ish hour drive down.

We cruised through Tennessee into Atlanta, ate something at a Waffle House somewhere in that stretch, and it was dark out from Georgia on down.  Brent entertained all of us by setting the cruise control at 69 for a good stretch, baffling the girls who wanted to make good time in the other car and thought he was being overly careful while we cackled laughing in the back.  And soon we crossed into the Florida panhandle, stopped for gas and felt the southern warmth on our skin even thought it was close to midnight  Life was good.

About an hour from Orlando, we hit a freaking monsoon.  Brent had been driving for a healthy dozen hours straight or so at this point and we were all eyes up to the front windshield trying to help him see.  We lost contact with the girls, we couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of the car, and the storm stayed ugly for a good 40 minutes or so…until we broke through the other side and things started to get clear again.  It was well after midnight now, but we figured we’d be all the way down to our hotel by early morning to sleep it off on the beach and get Spring Break off to a good start.  We slowed up a little, reconnected with the girls, and it was smooth sailing…until traffic stopped dead.

(Note – the story is about to get good)

As it turned out, the road was shut so they could clear an accident.  We sat for maybe a half-hour waiting, and during that time Katie came up alongside the driver’s window to say hello.  She knocked, Brent rolled down the window, and after saying hello she mentioned “Hey, your back left tire looks a little low; you may want to check it out next time we get gas”.   Brent, ever the charmer, replied “Stick to your dolls and let the men do the driving,” rolling up his window.  Katie stared at us, we all shrugged, and soon enough the road started moving again and we figured we’d patch things up at the next stop.  Which would come sooner than we thought…

About 45 minutes later, the girls started flashing their brights and honking, so we pulled over and they told us the news: evidently when Katie got out of the car she had knocked her wallet off the seat and lost it outside.  In her wallet she had about $500 in cash for the trip – a fortune for college students – and without it she was broke for the week, plus as kids we didn’t know what happened if you lost a credit or debit card or anything like that.  We’d have to turn back, but we were on the Florida Turnpike where exits only come up every 35-40 miles.  So we had to drive on another 15 miles or so, get off and get back on in the opposite direction, pass the accident area by several miles, get off and get on again, and try to figure out where Katie left her wallet.

That’s right: we had to return to a general area of the highway.  To find a black wallet.  On a blacktop road.  In the middle of the night.

When we got to the area, there was still one police car there filing accident paperwork, so we knew we were in the right zone.  He told us that he’d leave his police lights on so that people would be cautious while we drove up and down the shoulder with our brights on trying to illuminate the road.  And we did, for well over a half hour, watching the ditches for alligators, swatting insects, and hoping against hope.  And miraculously – Curt found it!  (Of course he did – his bad luck is personal…he’s actually good luck for everyone else)  We celebrated, took pictures, and got  back in the cars triumphantly, happy to have such a good Spring Break story only on day one.  And so when the girls needed gas a couple exits later we took in the sunrise, felt the warm air, and felt pretty good about ourselves.  Well, all but one of us did.

Brent refused to even pull up to the pump.  By his estimation we were maybe 100 miles out and he had enough gas to get there, and why should he bother pumping gas when “it was the girls’ fault that they wasted all that gas chasing wallets”.  So we got back to his car in a parking spot, waited for the girls to finish fueling up, and followed them out of the gas station and back onto the highway…

In the wrong direction.  They got on the turnpike North instead of South.

And with the exits so far apart we might not have noticed it until one of the girls remarked “hey, wasn’t the sun on the other side of the freeway before we got gas?”.  We pulled over, determined that – again – we’d need to get off 10-15 miles down the road, get back on again, and recover the same ground.  Brent, mind you, was still driving – his hair having gotten at least an inch or two poofier since the wallet situation…it got about a half inch poofier per hour by my calculation at the time.

We got back on after the backtrack/looparound, and finally headed south again.  We passed another exit and as we were moving past Curt asked Brent how he was doing on gas.  Brent said he was fine and we cruised past, but then we clicked his overhead info station a few times to see that we had something like 26 miles until empty.  Within a minute, we saw a sign “next exit/services: 38 miles” or something absurdly farther than what we had left.  So Brent kicked into gear:

Fearing that any touching of the brakes would require him to re-accelerate and burn more precious fuel, he refused to brake.  He passed on shoulders, leaned on the horn as we approached slower cars, and drove maniacally as we looked out the rear window at the girls’ surprise.  What was this madman doing?

This continued for 30+ miles, a no-sleep-or-rest-in-24-hours Brent flying down the highway as terrified to use his brakes as we were of his driving.  And soon enough we could see the Shell logo beckoning a mile down the road at the next exit.  We were going to make it!  But Brent wasn’t so sure.  Ignoring the fact that even if we coasted to a halt on the exit ramp it would be a 10-minute transaction to walk there, get a gas can, and get back (or just push the car there), he took that exit ramp at easily 50 miles an hour.  It felt like we were on two wheels, all of us were pressed up against the driver’s side from the G-force, and as we straightened out to get to the toll booth we were still pushing at least 25-30 mph.  As the toll booth woman’s eyes widened at the barreling-down Explorer, we wondered how this would end.  Would she lift the gate?  Would we plow through it?  Would it stop us or shatter the front end?  She must have hit the gate lift button because the gate opened as we cruised through, but not before Brent threw a wad of bills from his pocket out his window at hers, yelling as an explanation of his lunacy:

“Lady, we’re fucked!”

Postscript: We did make it down to Ft. Lauderdale and we had a good week as far as I remember. Beaches, basketball games, dinners, lots of drinks, lots of late night drinks and singalongs on the beach.  Just a good trip.  And it mellowed old Brent out some, so much that as we crossed the state line from Florida into Georgia on the return trip, he offered to abdicate the driver’s seat and let Padley take a turn at the helm.  And within 20 minutes, Padley controlled a blowout and coasted us to the shoulder for safety.

The very rear left tire that Katie had warned us about a week earlier had blown out.