Mississippi Tango, Continued

(Continuation of The Whiskey Tango Bridge post below, mom, avert your eyes)

Now, judging from the run down state of the pickup, and the whooping nature of the fellows we were about to ride with, I should have heard that small voice inside of me telling me that maybe I should wait for another, saner looking ride to appear. However, any sense of self preservation which I may have posessed was blinded by the idea of fried turkey, so Jon and I heaved our gear into the bed of the truck, delicately packing it around welding equipment which seemingly had been left to the elements for years, and hopped into the cab of the truck. As we settled in for what we presumed to be a quick trip over the big muddy, our soon to be guides rushed out of the service station, carrying what appeared to be half of the store's supply of liquor. "Well these guys really like to do it up on Thanksgiving," I thought as they squeezed into the truck, fired up the engine, and roared out of the parking lot at what seemed like 80 mph.

Much to my chagrin, as soon as we had departed the safety of the gas station, the passenger, Mike, was opening a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and mixing an enormous red bull drink, which he immediately passed to the driver (we'll just call him Luke) to see if he approved of its strength. "Dats a good," he growled at his friend as he opened his large bottle of smirnoff ice and accelerated to 90 miles an hour, "dat's a real good." We started to ascend the bridge, our new companions whooping and hollering about how insane we were to ride our bikes all the way from Wyoming, and looked out over the wide expanse of the waterway which drains America. "Dassa Mississippi river!! Biggest river in the World!!" Screamed Luke (I was in no mood to correct him on that point). At this point, Jon made the mistake of mentioning how happy he was to see the Mighty Mississip, causing Luke to look back at us and drawl, "You wanna see the Mississippi?? I'll show you the MISSISSIPPI!!! It won't take butta sec!!"

When we reached the other side of the bridge, Luke and Mike took a break from screaming the word Mississippi, and instead pointed to a set of tire tracks ripping across the grassy median strip. They talked excitedly in a deep southern drawl about something about a police car, traffic and him going airborne across the road. "Holy shit," I thought, "we are definitely going to die." But before I could even make sense of what was occuring, Luke screamed around around a corner, reversing our direction. and roared back towards the bridge we had just crossed. Again we passed by the deep grooves in the grass, and I was able to gather that the previous night (or week, not quite sure), Luke had been tearing ass across the bridge (much like he was on this day), and suddenly came upon a line of traffic. Seeing as he had brakes which were "a little bit sketchy" (as in not really working), he was forced to swerve around a police car, jump the median, and skid to a stop on the opposite side of the highway. Jon and I exchanged looks of extreme distress as we heard this story, and sheepishly asked about the current condition of his brakes. "They'all good now," said Mike, "but dontcha worry, he used to be a dirt track racer!!" With this information, I began to frantically search for the seat beat buckle, only to find that it was buried deeply in the seat and irretrievable (obviously).

Once back on the western side (aka the side WITHOUT the fried turkey) of the river, Luke turned the car hard to the right, abandoning the road in favor of the scrubland leading towards the water. He deftly manuevered the truck up over the concrete embankment which keeps the Mississippi from flooding the area, and plowed through the marshy terrain towards the banks of the river. For a breif moment, I was convinced that we were actually going to drive into the water, but our intrepid guide stopped just short, took a large slug of his drink and jumped out of the truck. "Thissa the MISSISSIPPI," they all screamed, "you wanna go for a swim?" Thinking the idea of swimming in the nation's Toxic runoff might be hazardous to our health, we passed on his kind offer, instead insisting that we had to get to dinner (we would have really like to run away screaming at this point, but since our gear was trapped in the back of the truck, this was not an option).

Back into the truck we piled, and I resumed my desperate search for the seat belt as we jostled through the swamp back towards the road. At this point, Mike and Luke had decided that they were fond of us, and would drive us all the way to our final destination, and peeled out for the southern entrance to the city, the I-10 bridge. Driving southward, Luke got kicks in scaring the crap out of us by driving with only his elbow while he looked back at us to carry on the coversation. "THE ROAD THE ROAD!!!" I kept on screaming (inwardly, there was no way I was going to tell this guy how to drive) everytime he peered back into the cab of the truck. But luckily, we got close enough to where we were going that I could tell him to drop us off.

Once we were safely out of the truck, we said our goodbyes, and chalked up another fantastic adventure (albeit scary as hell).

Erik