Saamba

Ok. First things first. Starting this whole joint diary thing with my girlfriend, and I cant help but feel like there is a serious lack of material here. Since nothing really noteworthy has happened of late to entertain you with, I think it best to create a few articles of older �diary material� to get us rolling. I figured that maybe they could include some useful advice, or maybe relate some important life-lessons, especially for some of you younger, more impressionable little fucks.

We still have a lot to do with setting up the whole web page layout, but that will happen with time.

The main reason behind filling up the diary with old material is this: if people come to visit the site, and there isn�t much to look at, they will lose interest. Most people don�t realize that this is actually governed by the laws of physics, several of them, though I don�t remember which ones. For the few of you out there who don�t have a PhD in Quantum Mechanics, this phenomena is more commonly referred to as �The First Law of Boring Parties�. If you are hosting a party, and the first people to arrive have the opportunity to peek inside and see that there is actually no one there, they will conclude that the party is boring, and will leave. This, of course, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy � no one will show up if no one is there, and vise versa.

However, if you can manage to get a hold of a few cute freshman girls, handcuff them to your furniture and paint lipstick smiles on their faces, the first guests to arrive will likely conclude that the scene is worth checking out, if only to get a description for the police. Soon more and more people will be drawn to the ever increasing number of people, and before long you have an all-out rage on your hands. The next day you will be a hero for throwing such a kick-ass party, and people all over town will be talking about it and comically re-enacting the time when the two young �clown-girls� both tried jumping out of separate windows while handcuffed to the same couch.

So, to start the first in what will probably be a very short series of �important life-lessons I have learned�, I offer the following advice:

Rule #1) Never, EVER, flip-off a truck driver, even if he deserves it.

I add that last part about ��even if he deserves it� because I think it is a very important element. If you were to ask someone why they just flipped-off a truck driver, their most likely response would essentially be �because they deserved it�. No one in their right mind would flip off a truck driver for no reason, and I am going on the assumption that if you are the type of person who would, then you are too stupid or dead to read this. So, the excuse of flipping-off a truck driver �because they deserved it� would completely defeat the purpose of my rule, since that should be the only reason you would think to do such a thing in the first place. Just think of it as one of those rules that doesn�t EVER have an exception, unless of course you are a truck driver yourself, or are extremely well protected by lots and lots of other truck drivers, in which case, it sounds like you already know about why we have Rule #1.

Which leads me to my second �important life-lessoned learned�.

Rule #2) Never, EVER, EVER flip off two truck drivers when you are a 20 year-old punk ass kid driving (someone else�s) Mercedes Benz convertible alone in a remote area of the world that you are not familiar with, ESPECIALLY if they deserve it.

I add that part at the end about ��especially if they deserve it� because it stands to reason that if they really deserved it, then they have already illustrated that they probably don�t like you to begin with, have done something mean to you already, and probably don�t require much provocation to hate you any more than they already do. Just a thought.

In case you aren�t convinced that this is good advice, I suggest you continue reading the story of just how I managed to get myself into such a silly, everyday run-of-the-mill 'oopsie' predicament.

The story unfolds almost 15 years ago when I was in college, and just getting out for winter break. My parents were on vacation in Florida, and I was supposed to travel down from the upstate New York area to spend my break with them. However, due to a series of circumstances, I was given an unusual choice. I could either:

A) Fly down to Florida, hang out with my parents, and then fly back.

Or�

B) Get paid several hundred dollars by wealthy friends of my parents to drive their new Mercedes convertible down to their vacation home in Miami, hang out with my parents, and then fly back.

Well, boys and girls, since you already know which of the two options I picked, I won�t bore you with the details of how I resolved this agonizing, gut-wrenching decision. Suffice it to say that, in a moment of selflessness, I thought it best to help out other people for once in my life and stop thinking about myself. After all, these people only had one other car already down there, and chances are that they were very busy and worn out from taking care of all their other homes.

The plan was this: They would send me a couple of hundred dollars (for my trouble) and I would also get an equal if not greater amount of money to cover travel expenses such as gas (the damn thing burned fuel faster than the space shuttle), tolls, meals, and sleeping accommodations at two hotels of my choice provided they were nice enough places that the car wouldn�t get vandalized or stolen. Since my parents were all concerned for my safety, they stipulated that I should spread the trip over the course of three days, get plenty of sleep, spend two nights in hotels, and don�t go over the speed limit. Oh, yeah�...and don�t let anything bad happen to the car. Got it.

That was THEIR plan. However, being a 20 year old college student, I had a much better idea. Since winter break only lasted about 10 or 12 days, I sure as hell wasn�t going to waste 3 days of it on a slow trip to where I wanted to go. Instead, I did what any self-respecting college male would have done: I planned to drive their car as fast as I fucking could to the first party beach in Florida, party like a madman with the money for 2.5 days, and tell all the girls that it was, in fact, my car. THEN deliver the car and hang out with my parents.

It�s good to know that such intelligent, wealthy and successful people sometimes make poor decisions too.

The smartest thing these people did was to send me the money at the absolute last possible moment, which prevented me from following through with my second-best idea: use the money to fund the 1st Annual Super Mega Pre-Winter Break Blowout Party, complete with my trademark handcuffs & lipstick technique. A windfall of several hundred bucks when you are in college is the equivalent of hitting the PowerBall Jackpot, and I probably could have even afforded real beer for the party. Not having enough time to make this happen though, I instead set out from college on my new mission: To discover if girls really do like you better when you are not poor.

I managed to drag my sorry-ass Toyota Tercel (bless it�s heart) up into the mountains of Vermont to where the Mercedes was being stored and, upon arrival, immediately discovered three things:

1) It is possible for an inanimate object such as a Toyota Tercel to express emotions of jealously and hatred.

2) The Mercedes was sporting a set of beautiful low profile Pirelli performance extra wide racing tires set in chrome rims. This was important not because it gave me a boner, but because it was snowing out.

3) For some reason, this precision German engineered vehicle was only equipped with a cassette player, and all I had were CD�s. This was important because I had driven a car all the way to Florida before, and vaguely remembered that all radio stations between Washington D.C. and Daytona Beach pretty much sucked Klan-Fried-Southern-Donkey-Cock.

What happened next consisted of several grueling hours of white-knuckle driving along the snowy roads of Vermont, Massachusetts and New York. The engine produced enough torque that simply putting the car in �Drive� would make the back tires spin in the snow, and I thanked my lucky stars for each and every INCH that I was able to navigate without hitting something. When you are on a 1300 mile journey, counting your progress by the inch is a fantastic way to make the drive seem longer.

The roads and weather improved coming into New Jersey, and I eventually felt comfortable enough to make a detour to a record store to collect some all-important driving music. My actions at the record store, however, are probably the best testament to the fact that I clearly wasn�t thinking straight. Knowing full well that I had about 15 hours of straight driving ahead of me, I purchased a single (yes, one) cassette tape to listen to for the entire trip. Perhaps it was the wad of hundred dollar bills in my pocket and the guilty pleasure of driving a Mercedes sports coupe that instilled this sudden need for fiscal conservancy, I don�t know. But I walked out of the store with a single copy of Nirvana�s Nevermind, the hottest new album at the time, and soon to be the only album I would ever hear over and over in my sleep for the next three years. I didn�t even need a bag for this massive purchase.

Soon I was on I-95 South hurtling towards party-paradise at orbital speeds, trying to make up for lost time with the stereo blasting �Smells Like Teen Spirit� at maximum volume, and pretty much feeling like the coolest guy on the planet. Part of my feeling cool, however, may have had something to do with the fact that I decided to put the top down somewhere in the vicinity of Delaware, but I�m not sure.

Everything was going fine until somewhere around South Carolina traffic came to a complete standstill. Apparently there had been a serious accident on I-95, and traffic was backed up for miles. We sat there for what seemed like an eternity, and every minute that passed was cutting into the amount of time I would get to hang out on the beach buying drinks for skads of college girls who thought I was rich. With gas getting dangerously low and bladder dangerously high, we eventually crept up to a poor excuse for a service area alongside the highway, and I pulled out of line to take care of business.

Many hundreds of other stranded travelers had also done the same thing, and a gigantic line of cars had formed leaving the service area who were trying to merge back onto the highway, and I was soon stuck in this as well. Part of this problem was exacerbated by a lot of fuckheads who were brazenly using the service area as a shortcut to try and cut in line 300 yards ahead, and I wanted to single-handedly kill each and every one of them. Coincidently, so did the many of the truck drivers, who were purposely using their rigs to block people from using the emergency lane as a way to cut in line 5 miles ahead of where they are supposed to be. I applauded their efforts in this, and thought it was totally cool of them. Unfortunately, the barely stop & go traffic was making it very difficult for us to merge back onto the highway, and everyone�s road-rage meter was off the charts.

It was at this point that I had a moment of brilliance. Having watched the traffic patterns now for about two hours, and trying unsuccessfully to convince anyone to let me pull in front of them (even elderly nuns were boxing me out), I decided to try my luck in front of the tractor trailers. You see, every once and awhile, when traffic would pull ahead about a car length, I noticed that the truck drivers had a harder time closing the gap in front of them as quickly as the regular cars. I reasoned, quite soundly, that this minor delay would be just enough to time to get my ass back in line.

What I failed to realize, however, was that my grand scheme to trick all the college women of Florida into thinking that I was a 20 year old rich kid with a Mercedes convertible��..also works surprisingly well on truck drivers. And everybody else on the road, for that matter.

I saddled up next to the nearest big-rig and waited for an opportunity to cut in.

I HAVE NEVER SEEN A TRACTOR TRAILOR MOVE SO FAST IN MY LIFE. This is the crazy part; I actually got half of the car into the line and then totally bailed � chickened out � fled screaming - back out of the line to avoid getting crushed by this guy and his Peterbuilt 7000Max Preppy-Crusher. It had Steven King written all over it. I looked up at the cab next to me as it landed. I have always been of the impression that truck drivers travel solo, but for some reason this guy had a passenger in his rig, and said passenger was looking down on me from his window with a grin so wide I could see all five of his teeth. Apparently the passenger must also have been functioning as the co-pilot and navigator, because you need such people in any large machine that can FLY. Clearly there was a misunderstanding here � I was one of the good guys, right? Why is everyone acting like they don't like me?

Not to be undaunted, and pretty much because I didn�t have any other options, I tried to stop trembling and, ignoring the thundering roar of the engine next to me being gunned, I tried again to slip in front of my new trucker friend and mr. smiley. This time, having a better idea of what I was up against, I braced myself for a zero-to-sixty sprint of 15 feet that was going to be required to get in front of this beast, and then proceeded to wet myself when he lurched half the distance in a single clutch-pull and unleashed the airhorn on me. Jesus-fucking-christ-shit-shingle-shit if I didn�t just barely make it out of his way before impact. This was ludicrous. There was no way he would dare hit me, I reasoned. With all the adrenaline this brought on built up from 2+ hours of road rage, coffee and the relentless angst of Curt Cobain�s thundering misery pounding through my veins, I was beginning to get, as we used to say back then, totally miffed.

Actually, we never used to say that - I just can't think of a word to describe satan's worst thoughts.

I think I tried this misguided effort a couple of more times, safe in the knowledge that he would never dare hit me, until of course, he moved. I even tried the really, really, really slow approach of inching him out, but this was equally as futile because mr. smiley would lean halfway out of the cab and shout guidance to the driver � usually in the form of �Keep going! You got three more inches!!� when in fact he only had about two and a half. This was a first-rate game of Chicken that I did NOT have the balls to play. Especially in someone else�s car. Looking back on it now, I can�t believe I even considered it because I know my balls are much smaller today. They must have somehow shrunk since then.

Anyway, it was around this point in our satanic machine & psychology dance that I noticed that in all our fucking around, we had slowly inched to within sight of what appeared to be a highway off-ramp sign up ahead. The sight of this sign planted the seed to what would become my 4th bright idea of the week, and about 30 seconds later I said to myself�.�They deserve it�. I made sure I had just enough room in front of me to pull off the highway, turned to look up at mr. smiley, and very proudly and forcibly gave him the double-barreled �Fuck You�, complete with audio backup for those that can�t read sign language.

Mr. smiley musta been very well versed in sign language, because I think his door was starting to open before the audio backup even began. Scared, but not the least bit surprised, I returned my hands to the steering wheel and completely lit the tires. Without the aid of a navigator or co-pilot, I touched down in the grass about 10 feet from the edge of the highway and shredded a screaming line south past all the traffic that was blocking the emergency lane. It felt absolutely fucking terrific, and I laughed my ass off the whole way to the exit ramp. I had won.

The exit ramp idea was a detour that I hadn�t really planned on, and I spent a good deal of time traveling aimlessly on country roads for miles and miles in the general hope of heading south and getting back on the highway at some point in the future. If nothing else, it beat the hell out of sitting in traffic, and I was still totally pumped up from my cowardly triumph over the truck drivers. Wind blowing in my hair, Nirvana blasting on the stereo for the 27th consecutive loop, I made a loud victory cheer when I soon found myself getting back on I-95 somewhere south of the accident, and there were hardly any cars on the road.

There were, however, an awful lot of trucks.

Some of you might be wondering��why is this story still friggin� going on?�I mean, Jesus. This is the longest story I have ever heard! What�s the point?? You got away from the mean badass truck drivers�..end of story�.what the hell else is there to say??

One word: RADIOS.

I would like to take this moment to explain that I have the utmost respect for professional truck drivers. Maybe even the unprofessional ones too. I have witnessed them do amazing things for the greater good of the public. I have watched them work together to keep a clear path for emergency vehicles, systematically acting as a series of gates that block passenger cars but let ambulances through like a canal lock. I have watched them maintain a tight wall formation along the entire width of a highway to keep everyone behind them from getting past while the State Police were engaged in a dangerous chase & shootout ahead � almost everyone in the mass of cars backed-up behind them were irate until we realized what they were doing. I have stood freezing to death in an ice storm for an hour and a half while myself and four truck drivers jockeyed cars around like a chinese puzzle so that ambulances and fire trucks could get to a multiple fatality accident in the middle of a bridge over the Hudson River � none of the other 100 or so civilian drivers so much as stepped out of their cars to help and instead rudely demanded to know "on what authority" we were asking them to move their vehicle backward 7 inches. One car was moved completely sideways without the owners permission � just picked up and moved.

THATS why I respect truck drivers.

Of course, most of their ability to do these cooperative things is because they have the capacity to communicate with each other relentlessly as an entire sub-culture through the use of citizen-band radios. At least, that�s what I knew we all called it back in the 1970�s and �80s when my dad installed one in his car because he thought it was cool - they may call it something completely different today. I don�t know and it doesn�t matter. What does matter is that driving a truck can be boring, and sometimes there just aren�t any emergencies for them to focus their massive collective power on.

The rest of the story is very, very long. It ends with me getting to Florida without any bruises or physical scars. The car was delivered to the owners without a scratch, but only after a great deal of effort to remove grass and dirt from every nook & cranny of the undercarriage. I never got laid on the beach, either, but had fun trying.

On the way though, I got to experience the fun that can only come from being �gently pressured� off the road on two separate occasions, and spent the entire drive through the State of Georgia completely boxed-in by a team of tractor trailers who must be the vehicular equivalent of The Blue Angels. I owe my first grey hairs to these guys. Did you know that being pinched between several tractor trailers at 80 mph in a convertable can create a whirlwind vortext that damn-near sucks you right out of your seat? I didn't.

Lesson Learned. Don't mess with Cledus.

10-4

0 wrote to say im an idiot.