Taking A Stand: Getting there is not half the fun
I think some folks are going to find out real fast I don’t travel very well, especially on trips which go past the county line.
Several of my friends and I are heading out west on a short whirlwind tour of the country which will cover about 4,000 miles. This should be very interesting given the fact I’ve never been across the Mississippi River, aside from a one-minute jaunt across the bridge from Memphis one night just to say I’d been to the other side.
While I look forward to seeing the country, I don’t look forward to being cooped up in a mini-van for a week. I’m going with friends, but I may be returning with enemies once they get a dose of Duane in travel mode. That is, if they don’t put me out somewhere in the desert because of my constant questions of “are we there yet.” I’m going to be really careful about leaving the van to use the facilities, making sure I take the keys with me to ensure I won’t be conveniently forgotten and left using my thumb to return home.
I think my dislike of long trips comes from my days in the high school band. We used to travel on buses everywhere, to contests, games and other functions. We toured more than Van Halen.
When we traveled, there were always three buses to choose from, all with their distinctively unique passengers. You had the uptight bus, where the passengers were basically the “good kids” and most of the chaperones. Then you had the wild bus, which contained, well, the wild ones. Then, you had the Pioneerette bus.
When I was a sophomore, a senior member made a statement that stayed with me. “Choose carefully Grasshopper,” he said, “because if the bus crashes, you’re going to enter eternity with whichever group you’re with.”
Seeing I was a bit wild as a teen, I generally didn’t ride on the uptight bus. Sure, they were fine people to enter eternity with, since they had references and everything, but not very fun here on Earth, and I wasn’t going to risk a boring trip across the state on the off chance we may all die.
The wild bus was more of a hoot, but hey, a person can only take so much wild and after about 100 miles, I was generally wilded out. The Pioneerette bus had its obvious upside seeing you were traveling with hotties. Clothes changing time there was always a great time for a teen-ager, for obvious reasons, while on the wild bus changing time’s only remarkable characteristic was a funny smell that permeated the bus.
The downside to the Pioneerette bus was the thick, choking mist which fell when it was hairspray time, getting in your eyes and leaving a taste in your mouth that made you hate Final Net. I mean these girls caked it on to the point where hurricane-force winds couldn’t move a hair, ending up with stiffer hairdos than Jack Lord on “Hawaii Five-O.” And, the probability of a horrible accident was always there since one spark from a lighter could spark a Hindenburgh-type explosion from all the aerosol mist. No smoking on the Pioneerette bus for obvious reasons.
I traveled these missions for three years, generally growing weary of the long trips over that time. I can still smell the Final Net since second-hand spray is just as bad as second-hand smoke.
So, it’s with these memories I set out on my cross-country adventure. There will be rules though. First, no Final Net. Second, no changing on the van unless you’ve showered in the past month or have a body like a Pioneerette. And last, get me there as fast as you can or at least pull a Mr. T on me from the “A-Team.” Conk me on the back of the head and wake me when we get there.
(Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)