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Kickin'
Rocks
Road Trip: Winning Friends and Scoring Points
Remember that picture of Billy B sitting in a lawn chair on the salt flats taking in the rays and watching the cars go by? Well I'll bet you twenty bucks to a Krispy Creme that sometime during that day someone came up with a gunna. Someday I'm gunna make a pass down the long course, or gunna jump in the hot rod and go coast to coast. Gunnas are good, they give you a goal, time to plan. Making plans and carrying them through make for a good time, but it's the "grab you shorts let's go" adventures that get the big points. It's about 2 PM and you get the call... hey buddy, I just bought a car in to-hell-and-gone, you wanna go with me to pick it up? When car guys sign up to be car guys, there are certain mandates of the brotherhood, when a buddy calls to go do a car thing... you just go. Turns out he wants to leave in a couple of hours, be gone a couple of days... or so, depending on the number of wrecking yards and junk stores along the way. Breaking the news at home usually ends up in some quick dealing that results in some honey-dos added to the list. This is okay because the list is never going to get done anyway so what's another project or two, have you ever seen a honey-do list with nothing on it? When you go on these trips a good way to rate it's success is to keep score. For every honey-do added to the list you get 5 bonus points, additional bonus points are earned if you load up quick and head out without leaving a note, call from the first gas stop, each stop you make before calling home earns more points. If you want to show the brotherhood what you are made and give the folks at home something to do while you are gone, leave a few things laying around the house and garage that could get their minds headed in all sorts of creative directions, you know what I mean, the things you see on Forensic Files or Unsolved Mysteries. This can be fun because somewhere down the road the state police will chase your down acting as if the driver is armed and dangerous. A little suggestion here, if you carry a gun when you are on the road, and you get pulled over, quietly... quietly inform the officer as you hand him your license that you have a small fire arm in the locked glove compartment and it is unloaded and licensed. DO NOT stick you head out the window and yell as the officer approaches, I HAVE A GUN! I HAVE A GUN! Although you might think this helpful to the officer, trust me this will turn out badly but it will give you a great story to tell over and over for years to come. There is a lot of thinking time on the road, soon after you've got all your potential flying objects organized, maps on the right fold, coffee poured, corn curls open, cell phone plugged in, tapes and CDs out, everything lined up on the dash, then the recognizable scenery fades and before the conversations turn to curing world hunger, universal peace and building the ultimate rod or custom, the remorse factor sets in. You wonder...what the hell am I doing here, ...this is a long ass trip, ...I'm gonna have to sit here for hours and hours, and it's not even my car we're going after, what's on TV tonight ... I wanna go home! Well you can't go home but you can control you brain, these thoughts lead to second guessing your choice of a running partner, you start wondering if all those stories your heard about him are true. It doesn't hurt to make a list of things to keep your mind busy, don't include the license plate game or state capitols, get real, discuss how Titus' convertible might look in DP-90 or putting dual side mounts on the Flint roadster, get creative. The game items you take along are crucial to having a memorable time, other than the gun thing of course. You really only need two things, a portable 6 million candle power flood light... and a big horn, when I say "big horn" I mean the ones that rival the Sunset Limited for shock value. You get points for lighting up cars as they pass or rattle them with the big horn. As you start the game there is one rule on which your very survival depends, avoid including cars with white doors (pick-ups in some states), or driver's wearing one of those Wyatt Earp hats, unless you want another experience to add to your gun story. The flood light clearly has more range and is used most, you can keep targets lit up and the driver blinded for twenty minutes at a crack, one point for each minute of uninterrupted flooding, 5 points if the target driver puts on his sun glasses and 10 bonus points if they actually start throwing stuff out the windows to make you stop. The big horn works best if you stalk the target until you get real close or in a tunnel or between two big buildings then let her rip, 2 points, if they get startled and swerve a bit add 5. If you actually cause a wreck, no points you just automatically win, change your route as soon as possible, job well done. Going on a road trip and coming back from a road trip are different animals, like the difference between tigers and wet cats, they come from the same family but that is about all they have in common. The eagerness of starting the trip extends through reaching your destination and even continues on into starting home, but then it changes. The subjects of intellectual enlightenment have long since dried up, all your buddies cars are picked apart and it's now all about grinding out the miles, anticipating your recliner, checking the mail for new magazines. One last thing to do. As you are approaching home, oh say about two blocks away, start leaning on that big horn and flashing the flood light in your neighbor's windows, these two acts alone will inspire the entire neighborhood to turn out and welcome you home. Kick a Rock DP |