Mr. Jam's Wild Ride

They toad us to stay home but nooooo
One summer a few years back, a friend and I decided to travel from Nowhere, Illinois to Elsewhere, Indiana. For reasons I cannot for the life of me remember, we planned to reach Elsewhere by way of Somewhere in Michigan. Sure, the Michigan segment was “unnecessary” and way “out of the way,” but it did give us some once-in-a-lifetime experiences. At least that’s been my hope (the “once” part, that is).

Since we were both (a) gainfully unemployed and (2) unfettered by the burdens of personally owned vehicles, we couldn't just jump in a car, fill the tank and go. Actually I think we did try the jump in a car thing, but soon decided the high-decibel alarm was fairly annoying and abandoned the vehicle Plan A.

We then set our prodigious brains to work on Plan E. As for Plans B, C, and D…well, let’s just say “5th Amendment” and leave it at that. I won’t bother you with the details of our highly unorthodox, ultra-creative, paradigm shifting outside the box thought processes. Even with such details I’m sure you’d be amazed to learn we needed less than eleven hours to develop our ultimate, can’t-miss plan: we’d hitch-hike.

By now you’re probably thinking whoa, you guys must have been like, Mensa or something. No; that came later, after the brain augmentation. We’ll get to that part. First things first: it’s one of my favorite meaningless expressions. Another one is “be that as it may,” though I don’t get to use it as often as I’d like...

Sorry. Hitch-hiking, from Nowhere to Elsewhere by way of Somewhere in Michigan. To be honest, I remember very little of the outbound trip. I have this vague memory of riding in the back seat of a Mustang (if you’ve ever been, you know what a joke that is) being driven exceedingly fast by a crazy person-stranger. I remember hearing his hearty laugh as he drove up a series of hills, always on the wrong side of the road. Apparently he was both amused and encouraged by the high-pitched squeals of delight he heard coming from the adrenaline-constricted throats of the two grown men jammed into the shoebox-sized space behind him.

For some reason I have almost no memory of Michigan scenery; strangely enough, everything seemed to look just like the insides of my eyelids. Be that as it may (woohoo!), we somehow managed to leave Michigan with our lives intact and our briefs unsoiled. Wish I could say the same for the return trip, during which we encountered this entity:

Part Deux – stay tuned.