Back in high school we used to hack around doing stupid
stuff. One of my favorite things
was “The Road Rally”. It was kind
of like a scavenger hunt, except in a car.
Imagine, if you will, a hoard of sixteen-year-olds who’d just
learned to drive, tooling around town at unreasonable speeds, looking for
markers that would determine the next clue toward a mysterious destination, all
the while trying to look for short cuts.
It was my first
year of high school and the first time a boy asked me to do something with
him. I didn’t know what a Road
Rally was at the time and I’m sure my parents didn’t either or they wouldn’t
have let me go. (This was long
before movies such as Cannonball Run.)
But, when I told them it was sponsored by a church youth group, they
figured it was okay. They dropped
me off at the church parking lot where I met up with my “team” of two boys and
two girls and the next thing I knew, we were piled into an old Chevy coupe with
only a sheet of paper with cryptic instructions to guide us.
Turn up the radios, rev the engines and we’re off!
~Turn
north out of the church parking lot.
(Nobody told us we’d need a compass.)
~Turn
west at the “coffee cup”. (In
other words, look for a billboard or store sign with a coffee cup and hope you
remember which direction is west.)
~Go
as far as it takes to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and turn south. (Huh?)
~Turn
south when you see a pond. (I
thought we WERE going south!)
~Turn
two blocks after you get the “OK”.
(Who’s going to give us an ok?)
~When
you get to the ninth green, turn east.
(Seriously? Are we supposed
to be driving ON a golf course? I
don’t think that’s right.)
~Cut
through the parking lot of the heathens.
(I guess that would be the Unitarian Church… now we’re back on track!)
~After
3 blocks, turn West. (Do we count
that alleyway?)
~Stop
and get and Dilly Bar. Save the
wrapper to prove you actually stopped.
(The Dairy Queen, to be sure!
Why didn’t we read that clue first and go straight to the DQ?)
~Turn
north until you get to the big D.
(That had to be the Dahl’s grocery store sign….or was it the lingerie
store with the 36-D bra in the window? As I said, there were teenage boys involved!)
Anyway, you get the picture. Obviously I lived to tell the tale, but soon after “Road
Rallies” went out of favor. Maybe
it was all the lost hub caps and the mysterious dents put in our parents' cars. All I know is, it was my one and only
road rally.
Good times!
Good times!
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Now... jump in the car and trundle on over to Nicky and Mike's Cheese Shop to see who else is participating in "30 Minus 2 Days of Writing" today. Tell them Boom Boom sent you!
