So as we usually do when me and my friends are together and bored on a Saturday night, the four of us hopped into Luigi's car for a nice, late-night drive. "Let's go out on an adventure," we planned, "and conclude it with a nice Mantalk at that lookout where it overlooks the entire city." It was a good plan for what had potential to be a great experience.
We set out with ambitions of doing what we do best - doing things we shouldn't do. Remembering the good times had on our previous trespassing excursions at the local elementary school (where we were busted by the cops once and chased down by them a second time), we decided to re-live the old adrenaline rush of trespassing, but now with a new target in mind: the high school. We drove down the highway and turned left into the suburbs so as to cut through to the street that the high school was on. The moment we turned onto this street though, we knew something was up. There were kids everywhere, lots and lots of them. And there were three cop cars, all with lights flashing. A party had been busted. We chuckled as we drove by, but deep down, we all recognized this as a bad omen for the night to come.
We exited the survey and reached the high school, but after driving into the parking lot, Luigi (who was driving) realized this was a bad idea because our school has plenty of surveillance cameras, and by simply driving into the parking lot, his license plate was now recorded on video. We decided to immediately leave the school without causing any havoc. We then set off to just explore and take a journey; anywhere was fine.
We drove down this country road for a while when all of a sudden, we noticed that we could no longer see much of anything. There was a heavy fog; we could probably see 50 feet ahead of the car and that was it. The road was hilly and curvy and dangerous enough when one's vision isn't impaired by fog, so naturally, being a group of reckless teenagers in a car, we were speeding. It was a blast, we were all shouting and cheering as we went up and down hills at speeds which were clearly unnecessary.
This road led to a highway called Guelph Line. You may have heard of it. We turned right onto the highway and the fog cleared up here. With our visibility back, we noticed something- there were no other cars on the road. This highway was one empty-ass highway. So Luigi, being Luigi, FLOORED it. We had a huge burst of speed, but only for a moment - a pair of flashing lights had appeared behind us in the distance.
"Shit man, the cops are on us. Pull over," I said.
"Nah dude, I don't think they're following us, they're pretty far back there. I think they might be after someone else," replied Luigi.
"Nobody else is on this road. That police car turned its lights on almost immediately after you began speeding. They're coming in the same direction as us and there isn't another car between us and them. I don't see how they could possibly NOT be on us right now," I said quite logically.
"Yeah dude, but look how far back they are. They can't be after us," said Luigi, and kept going.
After maybe 30 seconds of chase, the cop car's lights behind us disappeared. "See?" said Luigi, "They were after somebody else."
"Well if you ask me," I said, "When a cop pulls someone over, they leave their lights flashing. That cruiser turned its lights off. That means they didn't pull someone over, which means they weren't after someone else. They gave up chasing us, probably because they deemed it unsafe to try and catch up to us now that this weird fog is coming back. I assume they might have called on their radio something akin to, 'If there are any cruisers close by, we have a speeder in a green Chevy Malibu heading southbound on Guelph Line toward Burlington who is evading arrest.' I bet you anything when we reach the intersection of Guelph Line and Dundas Street where it hits Burlington, we're going to run into another cruiser."
Except I didn't actually say that part out loud. I thought it all in my head, but didn't want to say it because the general consensus among the group was that Luigi was correct, and if I said anything against consensus I would sound paranoid. I wish I'd said something, because I pretty much turned out to be right.
We were approaching the intersection of Guelph Line and Dundas Street when ahead of us, we saw a cruiser make a turn off Dundas Street onto Guelph Line to head in our direction. "Shit," said Luigi and immediately pulled into the turning lane, and got off Guelph onto Dundas.
From here we decided to head back to our town, call off the adventure, and skip straight to Mantalk. Little did we know that the adventure was nowhere near over yet.
We reached our town. Drove by the familiar places and... what the fuck? Right up ahead, three police cruisers were all pulled over at the side of the road, lights flashing. Just how many police cruisers were we going to see tonight? There were three at the busted party, one on Guelph Line, one on Dundas Street, and now three here. But don't worry, we were going to be seeing plenty more. Anyway, counting cruisers aside, we decided to take a look at what was going on. A dead deer. There was a dead deer lying in the middle of the road. Why was that necessary? Was this night not already fucked up enough? There just had to be a dead deer as well? Oh well, fuck it. Moving on.
We headed down the road that leads to the lookout. Luigi, not being one to learn his lesson, decided it would be a wonderful idea to start speeding again. As soon as we began speeding, two cars coming from the opposite direction both flashed their highbeams at us. For those of you who are unaware, a flash of the highbeams from another driver, under the given circumstances, generally has one meaning: a cop is doing radar ahead, and you should slow the fuck down. It's kind of a universal bonding code between drivers; sticking up for each other against the police. We slowed our asses right back down to the speed limit until we reached the lookout.
When we finally made it to lookout, I was amazed. I'd never been here before, at least not at night, and I could not have possibly prepared myself for what I was about to see. Now, I'm not much of a fan of the city, I'm more of a country guy myself, and the city sights have never been much appealing to me. But this view was fucking spectacular. It honestly looked so beautiful I could hardly believe it. What a great location for Mantalk; that would surely make this night full of mishaps all worthwhile. We pulled over to the side of the road and stood out in the cutaway for the lookout. A car passed by and, seeing our car parked at the side of the road (and obviously assuming our car was a radar cop) slowed right the fuck down. Me and my friends all laughed. Then we decided this location was too cold for Mantalk to be enjoyable, and we got in the car and drove away.
We were going back to Luigi's house, we decided. There we could have a proper Mantalk and put all these mishaps behind us. Little did we know what was to come.
I present you with a diagram:
Exhibit A is our car. Our car was heading in the direction of the white arrow at about 90km/h (20km/h over the speed limit). The fog had returned. We couldn't see where we were going. Because of this, we were unaware that the road branched off in two directions here. We were mindlessly driving straight ahead until we saw Exhibit B: yellow signs that warn that the road is turning and act as a guideline to keep drivers from going off the road. The problem? We saw Exhibit B much too late to execute a safe turn at the speed we were traveling. But because we couldn't see anything thanks to the fog, we didn't know that the road actually continued going straight.
"What the fuck, where does the road go?!" Luigi shouted and cranked the steering wheel to the left. The car skidded. He straightened the car out so it wouldn't flip, and then kept trying to turn to the left. The car skidded and headed toward the ditch. Suddenly it felt like the car was no longer on the ground. Were we fucking airborne? My question was immediately answered by the jarring feeling of the car slamming into the grassy plateau on the other side of the ditch.
When I think back to this moment, I can't help but to watch the entire scene play out in slow motion. I could be dead right now. I can't believe how lucky we are. I thank God that the crash wasn't more serious. I could honestly be dead right now.
Back on topic now. We were kind of trapped on this grassy plateau, separated from the road by a ditch too deep and steep to cross with the car. The path to get back onto the road would be impossible to follow with the vehicle:
So we sent James out to scout the area on foot and he returned with good news: there was a way back onto the road! We drove across the grass, which turned out to be part of some guy's yard, and then we got onto his driveway, which took us back onto the road. We started driving again back toward Luigi's house. On the way out, we drove past a tow truck coming toward us. We assume he probably got a call from a passing "Good Samaritan" motorist about our off-road excursion. Evidently, we got out of there just in time, because otherwise we would have gotten picked up by the tow truck and would have had to pay a pricey bill, which would mean Luigi's parents would probably end up finding out about the whole deal, which was now our number one concern.
As soon as we reached the highway that led back to Luigi's, we saw a police car with lights flashing on the side of the road and someone was pulled over. We laughed nervously; just another police cruiser to add to the night. As if we hadn't seen ten of those that night already. Heading back through town, we once again drove by the site of the dead deer, which was still on the road. We had all forgotten about it too; it was like it reappeared to us simply to remind us just how fucked up this night was.
We finally made it back to Luigi's and all piled out of the car to inspect and see if there was any damage caused by the crash. Remarkably, there was no noticeable damage... oh wait, there was a huge fucking piece of plastic casing dangling off the bottom of the car. "My parents aren't home yet - we have to get that thing fucking gone so they don't find this out," Luigi said. He ran inside the garage and grabbed a pair of shears, then told us to all get back in the car.
We drove back out of his driveway and down his street until we found a nice little cutaway in the street that would be nice and hidden so no one would see us attacking the car with a pair of shears. We got out of the car, and very inconveniently, a random-ass minivan pulled into the cutaway right beside us and just fucking sat there. We waited for a minute to see if the jackass would give us some privacy, and when he didn't, we pulled away to find a new spot. When we reached the end of the street (his street is of the "no exit" variety), we decided we had enough privacy to do our dirty work.
We got out of the car, not wanting to attract any attention because, well, four guys attacking a parked car with a pair of shears is going to look like we're doing something fucking bad. We hoped for silence and privacy. So of course, a dog starts barking its ASS off. And then as if that wasn't enough, the moment we first hit the shears to the car, the alarm went off. And we couldn't figure out how to stop it for a good minute or so. When we finally got it shut off, we were sketching out hard. But we decided that dogs bark and car alarms go off all the time, so we should stop being such pussies and just cut the fucking hunk of plastic off the bottom of the car. So that's what we did, and then we drove back to Luigi's and went inside and crashed on a couch and had a long awaited Mantalk. In a final ironic twist, the Mantalk sucked; we couldn't come up with any conversation topic because we were so exhausted after this night.
Everything you just read occurred on Saturday, November 14th between 9:30pm and 11:00pm.
One and a half hours. All that shit happened in one and one half hours. 90 minutes.
Next week I think we're gonna just take it easy and rent a movie or something. Fuck.