Fucked-up Roadtrip 1999

MIDDLE OF ROADTRIP 1999
We drove on through Minneapolis and St. Paul and stopped for gas around four am . I relieved the driving from Red and we packed a few bowls to smoke. I pulled bsck on to what I thought was the road back to the freeway, but actually was a back road in to a small town. I was stoned as hell when I passed a car at eighty miles an hour. The darkness was in it’s last hour and I was looking forward to getting back on the freeway which was a straight shot into North Dakota and Montana. The road I was on suddenly came to an end and gave me the options of turning left or right. I hit the brakes and the gravel crunched under the car. The car shot straight ahead and snapped a telephone grounding wire before going airborne. I saw the sky and then the ground coming toward me fast. The car smashed the ground which was actually a field that sloped slightly downward. I got scaed thinking the car was going to blow up and jumped out of the car without stopping it or putting it in to park. Ed jumped out too, but Hippie didn’t move a muscle. The impact didn’t wake him up and as the car was drifting down the field ed and I were yelling his name. Finally, his head popped up just visivle from the window. The look on his face was that of ashtonishment and confusion.
“Put the car in park,” I screamed to him.
He did and we ran down to where the Honda layed. It was dead. Smashed and unfixable. It took a few minutes to really realize the position we were in. Four am, Stuck in the middle of a field, not a building or store or anything in sight. On the country road from where we flew off from a car pulled up. Two teenage girls got out asking us if we were ok.
“Do you have a pipe?”
The one girl looked at the other as if to say, they just crashed their car off of a small cliff and the first thing that they want to do is get high. Not so unimaginable in the long run. I hadn’t come to my complete senses yet and that was what I was trying to do. Getting a grip on the pipe helped.
“Thanks for stopping,” I said. “You saw the whole thing?”
Ya,” she spoke with a noticeable Canadian accent. It was like being in the movie Fargo. “You guy guys went airborne, ya.”
The girls called for a tow truck and then were kind enough to drive us to their house where we cleaned up and hung out for a bit deciding what to do. I found a guy that would sell us a $300 dollar Pontiac Le Mans in Fargo, ND. We influenced the girls to drive us the hour and a half to get the car.
When we pulled up to the address we were given of the carowner’s we parked on the street and I went to talk to the car owners. The Le Mans was parked in the driveway and she was a wreck. It was the longest car I had ever seen. Probably 20 feet long and rusted all the way around. We named her Rose.
The couple said they’d throw in a CB for $50, but the wheels were all we needed. I only hoped it could get us through the second half of the country.
We thanked all the Northeners for their help and packed the car up with the remaining items we salvaged from The Honda and headed West.
It took us a while to get used to the huge, leather steering wheel, the metal frame sticking yp through the backseat that stabbed anyone attempting to take a seat in the back.
We figured out pretty quickly that their was a bad oil leak and needed to be topped off every 60 to 100 miles, so, we bought half a dozen cases of oil and packed them like cargo in the backseat. The radio didn’t work, but Hippie attached the light fixture on the ceiling of the car to the boom box’s battery.
She drove like a dream.
I’m not sure where it happened, but I remember it was dark. The car started smoking and we pulled over to the side of the highway. I think we figured Rose needed to cool down so we sat in the car and waited. As time went by we started laughing and became lightheaded before slowly relizing the car’s floorboard was on fire and we were breathing in whatever fumes emitted. It could have been ten hours or ten minutes, but a tow truck pulled up and helped us out. I don’t think we were too much help to him. Three city boys whacked out on toxic car fumes and stoned. We sure did get a lot of help in the North Dakota, Montana regions.
We drove through Montana with no floorboard under the passenger’s feet. The highway streaking underneath my shoes and all I could think of was the part in Drugstore Cowboys when the addicts deliberetly carved a hole in the car’s floorboard to dump their stash of drugs in case they were pulled over. But coming out of Norh Dakota and in to the great state of Montana we were making good time. Montana’s a long, long state to drive through and we stopped in a few cities along the way to sleep, eat and party with locals.
We ran out of pot in Montana and it seemed on que we struck gold. The only place we stopped in Missoula was a gas station to refuel. We got in to a small conversation with the station attendant.
“Where you boys heading to?”
“Oregon.”
We may of well worn signs on our head saying ‘stoners’, but couldn’t figure out at that time why the gas station pumper asked if we needed any pot. My eyes lit up and before thinking said, hell ya, we need some pot. I followed him to where his car was parked on the side of the station and he opened the car door. The aroma of marijuana swept out and in his backseat were colas or top of the plant buds the size of my arm.
“Pick whichever ones you want.”
I bought a $50 cola from the only man we spoke with in Missoula and now had enough pot for the homestretch.
Once we got to the Montana, Idaho border Hippie took over driving and I went to sleep in the backseat, but not without being probed by the metal wire manhandling me.
We made our way through the winding roads of Montana’s South Western Mountains which continued in
to Idaho and finally Oregon.
It was mid afternoon when Hippie was driving, I was riding shoitgun and Red was in the backseat. We were all awake brcause we were lkiteraly fifteen minutes outside of Bend when the red and blue lights hit us. I looked back and sure enough the state TROOPER WAS SIGNALING US TO STOP. Hippie pulled over and the trooper came to the window. He leaned in to the window and took a look at the three of us and then stood again.
“How are you guys today,” asking ain friendly tone and not that of a dickhead cop.
“Uh, ok.” I said
“Alright. Are there any questions you have for me.”
“Uh, no..”
“Alrighty. You boys are free to go.”
As he started to walk away I asked if he wanted me to drive since I had the drivers license.
“No, no. Your friend was driving just fine. Just slow it up a little, ok?”
“OK”
And he was gone.
The three of us looked at each other, like, did that just happen?
Hippie started the car back up and we drove as if nothing had happened. Three thousand miles and the only time we got stopped by the police was twenty minutes from our destination.