My first question was, how much?
JB replied, "a few hundred dollars. Oh, and all of our food will be taken care of as well as a hotel in NY for one night plus airfare back".
My next question was, how long?
JB replied, "we need to do it in about 3 days".
HOLY SHIT! Was all I could muster.
It took some convincing, but I was soon on board.
We picked up the moving truck near the Oakland airport. Now, this was no regular u-haul type box truck. It was a freakin huge Penske moving truck. Almost as big as an 18-wheeler. I gave my friend a look and said, "uhhh, dude.... I have never driven anything this big before and I don't really feel comfortable driving this truck through metropolitan areas."
He told me not to worry and that he would drive the first shift.
So, we left Oakland around 4pm and hopped onto I80 eastbound. Somewhere in Nevada around 11pm or so, we stopped to get gas. This was where I was supposed to switch with JB and drive the next shift. Not only did I still feel uncomfortable driving the thing, I felt even more nervous trying to do it at night. So, JB agreed to drive it some more. (I found out that he was pretty pissed by my act of cowardice. We laughed about it later.) We make it halfway through Utah and it's my turn to drive. It was early morning and the roads were clear of traffic. This would be my time to shine. I drove that thing like it was my corolla. Slow and steady. Well, there wasn't much I could do since the truck had a speed regulator on it set to 70mph. 24 hours of non-stop driving after we left Oakland, we stopped at North Platte, Nebraska. On a map, North Platte is basically half way across the U.S.
We got some dinner, then stayed in some motel for the night. 5 hours of sleep later, we were on the road again.
Most of the trip was pretty boring.... lots of flat lands, corn, blah blah. Things started to get interesting in Iowa. JB and I were cruising on I80 and I happened to notice a sign for a gas station. I could not believe what I saw. The name on the sign read, "KUM and GO"
You could only imagine our excitement at this sign. I know it's juvenile, but we had been driving for a looooong time and after so many hours, you tend to run out of things to talk about. We welcomed this distraction and stopped off at the next available Kum and GO.
Our routine, when we stop, is that the driver gets to take a piss while the navigator fills the tank. Then we switch. While JB was in the lavatory, I took inventory of the patrons at this store. Lots of white people. No duh, we are in Iowa. After a while, I started to notice that every single one of the people were looking at me. At first, I was thinking, "Is my zipper down? Do I have a huge booger on my face?" Then it hit me, these people have probably never seen an Asian person standing so close to them, let alone a 6ft, 245lb one. I carried on with the re-fueling but thought to myself how great it would be if I shouted out to them, "yep, I'm Asian.... the west is growin us big out there!"
JB comes waltzing out of the store with the biggest grin on his face. I asked him what's up and he simply said, "Dude... they have shirts and hats emblazoned with the words KUM and GO, we go all out, on them. You HAVE to buy one!"
I walked in, and sure as shit, there they were. I bought 2 shirts and 2 hats. Yes, I am legit.
So we are still on day 2 of our trip and keep on with the driving. Indiana was nice. Lots of green vegetation and stuff. Ohio was cool too, there were parts that were so green and lush, I couldn't believe such places existed. The funny thing I noticed about Ohio were the speed limit signs. There would be one sign that listed the max speed during the day and another that would list the max speed during night. I couldn't understand why they would need varying speeds for day or night as there was no one on the road anyways.
Things were good going through Ohio, nothing really interesting to report. We drove until about midnight or so and thought it would be alright to get a hotel and sleep for a few hours, then make the final push for New York early in the morning. We are pretty close to the Ohio/Pennsylvania border and stop off at a hotel. All the rooms were booked. We drive a little further to another hotel, same thing, no vacancy. We drive to a 3rd hotel in Ohio and we get the same response. We are pretty pissed off now and ask the attendant what the fuck is going on. He says that there's a cheerleading convention going on and that's why all the rooms are booked. Great. So, we hopped back in the truck and drove about 20 miles into Pennsylvania hoping that it would be far enough from the stupid ass cheerleading thing so we could sleep. Success! We sleep for a few hours and get back on the road.
We drive through Pennsylvania and experience more of the same boring drive. That is, until we got to Pittsburgh. JB and I were tired and the truck needed some gas. We pulled over on the next off-ramp and drove into some gas station called the "Flying J". I would later come to the realization that the "J" in Flying J stands for jerkoffs. This gas station was different than all the other stations we had been to. We were driving a truck that needed diesel. Up to this point, every time we pulled in for gas, the pump would be on the same side as the tank. The way the Flying J set up their station, there was only 1 way to approach the gas pumps and this made it so the pump was on the other side of the truck. Well, there was another pump tank side, but it had no handles or obvious switches. We sat there for a bit and tried to figure it out. Eventually, I walked into the store and asked the clerk a simple question, "how do you use the pump? The pump is not on the same side as the tank and I don't know what that other pump is for." The clerk said she would send someone out to help us.
JB and I waited for a few minutes and then the help arrived. The following is no exaggeration. She was about 5' 4" tall, probably 180lbs or so, grey hair, glasses, and several teeth were missing. I thought to myself, "fucking fuck. we are fucked."
"So, what seems to be the problem here?" Was her question.
I explained to her the situation and after pondering what I was pondering like Pinky, she said, "Well, honestly, I don't know too much about these here gas pumps."
At this exact moment, JB shot a menacing glare at me, then at her and said, "dude, get our fucking credit card. We are out of here." I ran into the store, asked for the card, and got the hell out of there.
We drove down the street to another gas station, a smaller one and sonofabitch, the set up was the same. I reluctantly walked into the store and explained to the clerk the situation and asked her if she would be able to help me get gas. This lady was actually kinda smart. She told me that the main pump that was not on the tank side needs to be turned on. Then, I could walk over to the other pump and use that to fill the tank. It seems that 18 wheelers have two tanks and this is what that is for. HUZZZAH!!!! We filled the tank and drove off. JB, who just so happens to have grown up in Pennsylvania, apologized to me for the stupidity of his people. We talked about the beastly woman at the Flying J for about a half hour after leaving.
Things were going smooth for the rest of Pennsylvania and an interesting thing happened when we stopped somewhere in New Jersey to get gas. I was sitting in the driver seat and as I was getting out of the truck (backing out) I felt a presence behind me. An attendant appeared out of no where and stood only inches from my face. I was in shock. What the fuck? Oh man, I'm about to get into a fight right now. Turns out, the guy was making sure that I didn't pump the gas. There's some law that prevents me from pumping my own gas. Go figure.
And on to the Big Apple.... We get to the Lincoln tunnel, our last roadblock to getting into NY. We are sittin in the truck waiting for change from the toll booth. Then I notice a NY highway patrolman step in front of our truck, wave his hand, and motion for me to step out of the vehicle. It was at this moment I briefly thought, "holy shit, I never actually saw what we were hauling.... oh fuck." The cop was pretty nice and asked how we were doing. I told him that we drove from California to help a friend move some stuff.
Then the question: California? That's a long drive, you guys must be tired...
Then my stupid ass reply: Yea, tell me about it, we did it in 2 and a half days.
That was probably not the answer he was looking for. He took a step back, kinda eyed me up and down and asked, "2 and a half days, eh?" "Sir, I need you to open the truck."
FUCK!
I open the truck up and half expect to find some 15 or so illegal asians chillin in there..... Alas, it is just furniture and clothes. He shines his flashlight in there for a good minute or two and says, "alright boys, you guys drive safe"
I get back into the truck and JB asked, "dude, what the fuck happened?" I told him about how I said we drove here in 2.5 days and that was when the cop asked to see the the back. He had this astonished look on his face like "why the hell would you say something like that?" I just said, dude, I'm tired, I smell like shit, and I'm hungry. Let's go.
We drove into NY.
Unfortunately for us we had bad directions. So, instead of us making a left after the tunnel and staying on a non-busy street to get to the parking structure, we made a right and headed downtown. All the things you hear about NY drivers are true. We ended up becoming the biggest asshole drivers on the face of the planet. I was yelling "fuck you" and flipping off everyone in our way so we could get back to where we needed. Those son of a bitches were giving us such a hard time.
Well, we eventually made it to the parking lot. We parked and headed to our hotel rooms to shower up and get some sleep.
JB and I reconnected the next morning. We then helped his friend move the stuff out of the truck into their store in Soho. Afterwards, we showered, had an awesome lunch and then flew back..............
The flight back was full. Jesse and I were already seated (he had the aisle seat and I had the window). At this particular juncture, I would like to remind you fellow readers that Jesse was weighing around 300lbs at the time, I weighed about 240... so as you can imagine, that poor middle seat didn't have much room on either side of it. Well, people were boarding and no one sat in that seat. Every seat filled up except for that one and one seat a few rows up from us. For a few minutes after everyone was seated, we thought to ourselves, "holy shit, we got some primo leg room!"
Then HE walked in. He was about 60 years old, 6' 2", and had to have weighed damn near 250lbs (a fat 250, so he was sloppy). JB and I looked at each other and thought, "oh fuck, I hope this asshole sits in that other empty seat." Our hearts sank as he passed that row.
Bad, I know... it gets worse. When the guy sat down, we soon realized that he smelled of alcohol and piss. No, seriously, he smelled like a god damn drunken college kid who passed out on the street and then had a dozen or so bums piss on him. The worst part of all this was that since he was so fat, he was touching both of us. I was absolutely pissed off. I started blurting out curse words, "shit! fuck! goddammit!" JB had enough and politely asked one of the flight attendants to reseat the gentleman because we were so uncomfortable sitting like this. We pointed out the fact that the other row with an empty seat had two smaller women sitting on either side. The flight attendant looked at how pathetic we looked and asked the man to move.
FREEDOM!
We watched as he moved his drunk, piss smelling heap of a body up to that row. We watched him sit down. And then after about 5 seconds, we both got the nastiest looks from those two women. Seriously, you know that saying, "if looks could kill?" Yeah, they wanted us to burn in hell. After they stopped the icy stare, JB and I turned to each other and instantly high fived.
Of course, we talked about the guy for a good period of time. We reminisced about how he smelled so bad and what the hell could have happened for him to be in such a fucked up condition. What we didn't realize was that his wife was sitting in the row right next to us. She was sitting in the aisle seat. So, she most likely heard all the shit we were saying.
Oh well. We de-boarded the plane in SF and went home.
All in all, I would say that was an awesome trip.
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