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Since I promised the bit about Florida Being flat.
George and I rented a Neon. I did not yet know it but it was a super Neon.
Our first stop on our interim road trip was in Las Angeles. We visited friends who were moving back to LA from Miami. In the two days we spent with them their cars and furniture showed up from the move.
Because there was no furniture at our friend's house we spent almost no time at the house. We arrived went out to dinner came back crashed on patio furniture cushions borrowed from the neighbor.
The next morning we woke up and the neighbor came over. My friends had lived in LA previously in this same house. They never sold it instead renting it out for the few years they were gone. When they moved back they already knew most of the neighbors who were the same.
Including the neighbor who used to babysit for their oldest child. She came over to visit first thing in the morning. She looked exactly like what all babysitters would look like if dads did all the hiring. Hiring for a porno. According to my friends her trip to the plastic surgeon had been a smashing success as well. I wanted to ask the wife if this babysitter was part of the reason for the move to Miami in the first place but could not think of any tactful way to do this and was not inebriated enough to just go for it.
To make things even better the babysitter brought over pot. Lots of it. Decent stuff. So by 11 am we were stoned and had a few shots of whiskey in a house with no furniture. Time to go somewhere. We drove over to the beach. In LA this involves driving through the canyons that separate the beach from the rest of the city. The canyon roads are way hillier than anything in Florida. They have turns, uphill and downhill sections and even some switchbacks. It was fun to be back driving in the hills. George and I took our rental car, Lisa the wife drove herself and the two kids and Dave drove himself because he had to stop somewhere afterwards and attend to a business requirement.
We hung out on the beach for a while and then Lisa and the kids went home. Dave took us to see an old surfing buddy. The surf buddy was the quintessential California surfer dude. Jeff Spicoli grown up. He owned a surf shack house just across the road from the beach so he could check the waves from his bed. He had just gotten his girlfriend pregnant and was in the process of turning his grow room into a nursery, the kid kind.
Needless to say he had some great weed. Dave smoked a bit with us and then had to run. George and I stayed behind and smoked more. A lot more. Enough that every time I counted my fingers I got a different number. I would have called it a success and stopped counting if I had once come up with 10 or 9 or 11. Do thumbs count towards the 10 fingers we are supposed to have? Didn't I smash that bong that last time it came around to me? No? Well I am going to smash it this time. Pass it over. Holy shit! How long has Jack Nicholson been standing there? Fuck fuck fuck he is playing a cop isn't he?
Eventually all things must come to an end and the sun set literally and metaphorically on a beautiful day. The type of sunset over the Pacific that you find on the postcards in LA that don't feature busty starlets saying wish you were here. George and I headed back in the dark to find the car. Luckily there were just 2 cars in the lot so it took us only 3 tries to get the right car. A Neon can look a lot like a Suburban in a dark parking lot.
I drove back. After a brief discussion where George insisted that I turn on the head lights and I tried to cover for the fact that I was so stoned that I forgot to turn them on by claiming that in our current state we should be going in stealth mode, we got back onto the canyon roads.
While we were at the beach getting stoned road crews had come in and totally changed the road, leaving no trace that they had been there other than the radically altered topography.
“You are ok,” I told myself. All you have to do is follow that minivan in front of you. The roads were like a roller coaster. Left swoops and right descending death spirals. I wasn't sure how were were staying on the road as the banking in the turns got more and more extreme. The minivan was holding the road though so we should be ok... unless it has suction cup tires that are designed especially for these roads... no that is impossible it would sound like an octopus arming if that were the case.
The road suddenly dropped away following the canyon. I put my foot on the brake pedal thinking that it had better be attached to a parachute if it had any hope of slowing us before we reached Hades. At the bottom was a hairpin switchback and this is where things got weird.
The banking of the hairpin just kept going rotating to the left. At 45 degrees, my heart was in my throat. At 90, I was wondering exactly how I was going to die. A rock or tree coming in through my window as we slipped of the road into the ravine? A Hollywood worthy explosion...
180 degrees and nothing. We were driving upside down on an upside down road!! A small part of my brain was saying that this was impossible but all my senses were letting me know it was true. Regardless I needed to concentrate. Don't do anything foolish and nothing bad will happen. Roll the window down a bit and listen for octopus noises from the minivan. Thank god there were no turns because I wouldn't have had the slightest clue how to correctly signal.
The roads flipped back and forth a few more times before we exited the canyon. None was quite as nerve wracking as that first time. As it happened I wanted to tell George but he can be a bit nervous at times and if he hadn't noticed it by himself, I figured I would totally freak him out if I told him what was happening. I didn't think I could handle both the car and George flipping out.
