Move over Thelma and Louise......

Tonight I was driving home from work and passed a card with a digital speedometer and busted out laughing. I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to have to pull over because the tears were blurring my vision. Most people don’t respond this way to digital speedometers and usually I don’t either but I had a flashback from college and I just couldn’t control the laughter.

As many of you know Kim and I were partners in crime while in college. We met freshman year, my roommate (randomly assigned by the university) was someone Kim went to high school with, Kim and I quickly hit it off and became forever friends.

Typically the older you get the wiser you get; however, I don’t think that statement holds true while in college. As a matter of fact I think it might be the exact opposite, the further into our higher education we got the crazier and more daring we became……

Junior year we had a friend whose Grandmother passed away, he needed a ride to the airport so he could get home with his family. The airport in Morgantown is very small, it only has 1 runway and flies to Pittsburgh and Washington, DC only. Most of the time if you had to fly you would just fly out of Pittsburgh, shit you could drive there faster than you could fly there. Our friends flight was at 6:30 in the morning or some other ungodly hour. We decided it would be better if we just hung out all night, got some breakfast then left to get him to the airport. The ride there was very uneventful. Since I got to take a quick nap on the way there I told Kim I would drive home. She feel asleep and I was exhausted and needed to get back to the apartment STAT. So I was really pushing her car, I swear I had the pedal to the floor the whole way. Her digital speedometer went to 99 but I know I had the car going faster than that. At one point Kim woke up to see where we were and I told her I discovered her speedometer didn’t go any higher than 99. She looked at me like I was crazy and quickly went back to sleep, I am sure it is because she didn’t want to see her life flash before her eyes if we had crashed.

There was the time we were going to PA to surprise a friend for her 21 birthday. We were on the PA turnpike traveling at a rate much higher than the posted speed limit. Kim looks at me and says “What would you do if I died right now?” I looked at her like she was crazy and told her I would cry. She said “what the hell is the matter with you? Why wouldn’t you regain control of the vehicle first?” oh right because that is what would be going through my mind if the driver of the vehicle I was in died! WTF?

The reason the digital speedometer makes me laugh…. Kim leased an Explorer our Senior year. Because it was a lease she was cautious of the miles she put on it. We quickly figured out what fuse to pull to keep the odometer from moving. We didn’t realize the same fuse controlled the power windows, the windshield wipers and the speedometer. Whenever we were on a road trip we would look for people with digital speedometers, pull up next to them so I could how fast they were going and we would know how fast we were going and set the cruise control accordingly. Pretty smart thinking if you ask me.

Something that wasn’t so smart was the year we returned to Morgantown to hang out with some friends who were still in school. It was Super Bowl Sunday weekend, we ended up staying later than we wanted to and had to book it to get home since we both had to work on Monday. We were in a rented car, I forget what kind but I know it had some get up and go to it. We were cruising through the mountains of Maryland at speeds much higher than those allowed by the state of Maryland when we saw a cop. Kim quickly stepped on the break and pulled over behind a tractor trailer to slow down. She realized we were right by an exit ramp, so she quickly exited the highway and pulled into a parking lot, turning the lights off hoping we could wait it out until the cop passed. We waited for a while and get back on the highway, not before switching drivers, now that I think about it what kind of an ass am I agreeing to drive a car that just ran from the law? Anyway, we got back on the highway and wouldn’t you know it, the tractor trailer we pulled behind to slow down was on the side of the road having been pulled over by the same cop we were running from. I am sure he was cussing us.

I could tell tons of stories about our trip to Canada in a rental car that wasn’t supposed to leave the VA, MD area. We covered 5 states and a foreign country. While in Canada we made an illegal u-turn and confused the shit out of the border patrol guy, but those are stories for another day.

Our road trip adventures didn’t stop once we graduated, there was the time we went to TN for a long weekend. We stopped at a gas station and the attendant told us to be careful you know how it is “you come on vacation and leave on probation” we thought it was nice of him to give us that warning. He should have told us the rental car we were in was a piece of shit and when we rolled down the window on a snowy mountain, it was going to get stuck and we wouldn’t be able to get it back up. What a mess that was, calling the rental company and telling them the window won’t go up and we needed to trade in the car at the nearest airport. They had the nerve to try and charge a drop fee since we were returning it to a place other than where we rented it, you rest assured by the time they were done listening to me they were ready to pay us for the trouble of giving us a piece of shit car.

Our most recent adventure was when were in Raleigh and the low fuel light came on, we kept pushing our luck. By the time we got to the gas station we realized we had enough gas in the tank to go about 10 more miles. Talk about cutting it close.

Thelma and Louise got nothing on us.