Joyride! Joyride!

The great American automobile! What a joy, or at least it should be. 

I relive some of my unforgettable experiences from my years of driving. Some of these have never been spoken! (Sorry mom and dad)

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This episode of the Lame Brain Podcast is brought to you by Tom Fuhari Auto. We are not only a full auto service center taking care of your collision brakes, engine, and transmission need, we also provide insurance. Since we are aware that the most of you bump stick drivers still need full coverage, we also ensure the next generation of high risk, high liability, zero attention span offspring that we will call reasonable rates that will break the bank. Call Tom Fuhariado for your quote today. And remember, we beat the general in the insurance battle. We're so more progressive than progressive. We're damn near Marxist. We cover 52 states, which is one more than nationwide. We provide mayhem before it happens, unlike all state. Origuana Menesca to eat the Geiko Gecko. And we park your old car in the state farm. We are Tamfu Harry Amouse. Uh the show. Forward it to somebody you know, say, hey, listen to this idiot. He's got some crazy ideas, he's got some stupid notions. Like today. Today, I have usually have questions. We'll get to that more when we have guests on the show, but today is all about topic. So today's topic is the great American automobile. It's one of my passions. I love to drive. I just love to hop in the truck, hop in the car, go for a cruise, all the things. If I was in jail, I would dream of just getting out and driving. I often think of that. I don't know why, but if it was ever taken away from me, it would be a sad, sad day. So hopefully, when I get to be an old, old man, I can still drive. Even if it is on someone's farm, just driving in a field and acting stupid. Uh I love driving cars. So, with that said, the topic of discussion today is going to be automobiles. So think of all the good times you've had in your car. It's a place to sing. You can let go of that fart. It's made you really uncomfortable for so long without judgment. You can crash out and take a nap. For some people, they can sleep off the bar before they drive home. It's a great place to call a friend, have a conversation. You can just cruise with a friend or friends. You can transport family and create memories, you know, take road trips. Uh, you can take a long drive by yourself and blissfully daydream as the road offers you the flat space to continuously do so. You could build a car, you can tinker on it, you can make it faster, you can make it lower, you can make it bounce with 16 switches, you can add a killer stereo system and ruin your hearing. It's a great place to rant. You got to rant. It's so good for you to get all that negative shit out while you're by yourself. So it's literally the best place to bitch out your co-worker, your boss, your spouse, your disobedient child, the CIA, the president, the government, dare I say the universe sometimes. Other idiot drivers, etc. You get the point. Uh the thing is, I'll put the phone up to my ear as I'm driving to act like I'm not crazy and talking to myself. But the way the cars are set up nowadays with the hands-free talking systems, now you look like an absolute psychopath if you're in your car just ranting and raving, screaming, pointing like as if you were having the conversation. Which is still healthy. It's still good for you to get all that shit out. But who cares, right? You mean you're driving along and you're just going ape shit behind the wheel, talking to no one. So who cares? The guy next to you that's got his phone out, TMZing the whole thing, because everything must be recorded and played back for attention nowadays.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Hey, check out this dude over here. He's totally fucking crashing out and I've got it all on video.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

As he's driving. Whatever, dick. But usually it's your own little bubble. Your own private echo chamber. The car is a great place for sex. I'm sure a lot of fantasies have been played out in car rides or in park cars or trucks. Uh not a topic of discussion for this podcast right now. But uh I salute you, automakers, and those who inspire to make those vehicles more than just a point A to point B tool. Who wants to drive and get the experience of just a simple four-cylinder life in the slow lane, speed limit of y Who wants to go and drive from place to place like that? You see a lot of fuddy daddies out there that do that, young and old people, just hands ten and two, just just putzing along. This is a vehicle that I get this from point A to point B. Oh, I shuttle right around those people. You people shouldn't be on the road. There should be a little bit of pep, a little bit of zip on occasion, right? But I digress. Uh the engineers, you put your little goddamn sensors on these vehicles nowadays, which whenever one of those fuckers breaks or malfunctions, it costs a stupid amount to replace it, or it causes you to take it take it to a technician, and all they do is they plug in their little device underneath your steering wheel and speak softly to your computer, your car's computer. Which is usually just a simple plug-and-play device. It's not an in-depth deep dive fishing experiment that's worth $180. Shame on you, service repair station man. I'd also like to strangle those engineers because they have made the engine base so small that you literally have to drop the engine transmission out of the bottom of the goddamn car to work on them these days. But it's just so messed up because the old cars you had the space to get your hands in there, wrench on shit, and fix your problems. Which was and still is the most aggravating experience about a car. Don't ever be in the vicinity of a man that's been in the throes of working on a car for more than, in my case, about 30 minutes. The creative siloquy of the car expletives that come from my mouth would offend at least three-quarters of the population. And I don't know where they originate from. I don't know how they formulate, but they fly, they're caused by engineers that put a bolt in no fucking place near to access it. But yeah, the shit that comes out of my mouth, I have no idea where it comes from. I don't know what what demon or previous life I had that is in there that's just trying to get out, but it's it's a terrible thing. We'll just leave it at that. So I'm I'm getting kind of worked up just talking about it, so I again I digress. Cars can be fun, and they're supposed to be in a driving experience, not just a boring vessel to get you from your old spot to your new spot. So the auto insurance ad that helped sponsor today's episode was spot on. There's a reason that some people are charged a stupid amount of money for their auto insurance. I myself used to pay $365 a month when I was about 19 or 20 years old on top of a car payment that was $270 a month. Yeah, add that up. I was working in a furniture store, making $9 an hour, and yes, living at home, thank God. Now, insurance for everybody that age is high for a fucking reason. And I'll share a few of those examples here in a minute. But uh one of the things that helped back then was the offset cost of gas. Gas wasn't to bend you over and rape you prices, it was only a $1.03 for $93, baby. When I turned 16, I was fortunate enough for my first car to be a white 1964 Chevrolet Supersport Impala. Don't be fooled by the Super Sport idea. It was not anything sporty, speedy, agile. It was none of those things, but it made a shitload of noise. It looked totally pimp, had chrome aftermarket wheels on it, cherry bomb mufflers. The mufflers came out underneath the cab. We didn't have any downspouts to direct the noise to the ground. We didn't have any pipes that extended out to the back end to exit the vehicle in the rear. So basically, it just rumbled your ass in the seat. It had a 327 V8, just a four-barrel carburetor, headers, and it had a two-speed power glide transmission. I think the two-speed may have been the most disappointing feature about the car. You could literally wrap it up in first gear, just wind it out, and then you could even get it hopping, like in the Dr. Dre videos where they bounce, they just hit their switches. I would take it, wrap it up into first gear, and then I'd get off the gas and it would drop the front end down. So you just hit the gas, off the gas, hit the gas, off the gas, and it would just bounce. Anyway, go look at a Dr. Dre video. Uh nothing but a G thing, you'll see what I'm talking about. But yeah, it would it would wind up in first gear, but then you'd hit that second gear, bam, and it calmed the RPMs right down and just left you right in cruising speed. You were just kind of stuck. So that's the way it was back then with those old cars. So now it's time for show and tell. For all the YouTube channel viewers. Here is a picture of me in great high school photo form. Hopefully you can see that really well. This is high school uh senior picture photo day. This is this is vintage lane right here. That's 165 pounds of fucking stud muffin right there. Emitting from a picture, boy. You should be thankful that it's framed. You know, you can contain contain the studliness of this picture, kind of like Vegle from Ghostbusters 2. It's like a glowing picture of Jesus Christ himself. Hey, Jesus is is in all of us, and Jesus knows that carburetor fed engines and loud exhaust is the way to a righteous and good soul. But there she is, look at that beauty. I'll post up a couple more pictures on YouTube so you can get a good idea what she looks like and what she looks like now. But the interior of that car was and still is all original. It's like a blue color, a white car with a blue interior. So it being all original, it has retained that smell. The smell of olden days, you know what I'm talking about? Maybe you have to be a karma to appreciate something like that, but it's not the smell of your grandparents' furniture. It's more of a mix of musty garage floor or ex and expended uh extra unfiltered gas, gas fumes, and just fucking nostalgia. Yeah, shit and get she would not, but she is literally a tank with a small engine. But sounded badass, that cruised well, it definitely turned heads. It's like Detroit style and Detroit metal baby.

unknown 10:54

Yeah!

SPEAKER_01 10:54

She's still around today, she's in my garage just sitting there under a cover waiting for me to be able to afford to get back, get her back to Roadworthy. You know, kids, family obligations and such kind of keep me from it. Um, and it's only there in my garage today by means of a guardian angel, a driving guardian angel. One that I truly believe I had and I still have. So anyway, go back to your first car. If you had any memories of it at all, betting you can remember what it smelled like, what it felt like when you drove it. Maybe it's cool stereo, maybe it didn't have a stereo, maybe it didn't have heat, maybe it was flawless, and all you had to do was wash it and go. Maybe it was the car that all your friends piled in when it's time to go somewhere. But there was something that ties an emotion to having it. Driving it, even if it smelled like the old lady that your mom and dad bought it from. Maybe it was from her hair treatment, maybe she had diapers, I don't know. Maybe some dude's cigarettes, maybe the dude smoked in it before he got it. So you had to cover it up by hanging all those little pine air fresheners in the by the rear view mirror, just to mask the smell, whatever it was. So cars can be interpreted as an expression also of who you are. Whether you're driving a clunker because you don't care what you drive, or because you're broke his foot. At this moment, so it is what it is. Or you're flossing a a high dollar Mercedes or BMW because you can actually afford it. Maybe you're trying to impress other people, or you just love the way that they drive. Maybe you drive a truck because you like to ride high and like to be known as the utility player. I'm kind of like that guy. I know a lot of people that are like that. Maybe you're one of those old fellas that drives the sports car just because you can afford it. Ah, it's one of my pet peeves watching, oh, check out this sports car coming down the road, then you look behind the wheel. Some old man using his retirement money and drives it about. Slow as shit. Let's just say slow as shit. There you are sitting behind the cockpit of a speed and performance machine, and there you are just but I look cool. I've always wanted one of these. You never drive it hard, and for that reason, you wear white new balances, khaki shorts, and a ball cap with the logo of said sports car on it. Good on you, old man. Uh you got the money to do it, but I wish the older guys would give up the speed cars, the speed demon cars to the younger guys just because we know how to drive them, want to have fun with them. Maybe you're one of those guys that has a uh a little Honda or a Subaru or something with a huge Crisco can that you use for the muffler. It makes that sound that I guess that wasn't a very good impression of that, but you know, if you yell into a a large Crisco can, you get the idea. Maybe you're one of those big SUV driving ladies that uh is hauling your kids around to sporting events. Maybe you're uh a minivan man, maybe you just like the space, you like the idea of uh stowaway seats and all the amenities that come with driving a uh a minivan. Good on you. But driving in general should be an enjoyable and relaxing experience. But if you wish to, you could also be an exhilarating and fun experience. So, in the spirit of that, I'm gonna share some stories. These stories were before cell phone cameras, so unless you were actually in the car with me or within my circle of friends, you probably haven't heard these stories before. Mind you, I grew up watching the Dukes of Hazard and other hard drift and driving peel-out programs that made my love for driving what it is. Not to mention my love and guilty pleasure. Every fall I have to go watch the the county's demolition derby. I mean just the reving of the engines and the beating of the cars. I don't know. There's just something in me that just has to go see that every year. Here are some things that I did in my car. So, like I said, a lot of these stories haven't been shared, so if my parents are listening, they're gonna be like, son of a bitch, that explains a lot. Yeah, regarding the Impala, we'd go and we would cruise in the neighboring town. There was a place called 2-4, which is 24-hour parking. We would cruise up and down the strip. The strip was probably half a mile of just stoplights. You'd drive from the the parking lot out of there, get into the first stoplight, go to the next stoplight, you get the idea. Just cruising down. It's like Woodward Avenue of Detroit. Famous, famous Woodward Avenue. But we would drive down, turn around the gas station and come on back, and we would just loop it for hours. Just cruise on through the parking lot. Everyone's checking out everyone's cars, everyone's sitting parked. You know, it's you've s you get the idea. You've seen the movies. You'd kind of drag race somebody from stoplight to stoplight, or you just rev the engine and just putts along. But man, we did that like every Friday night. Sometimes on Saturdays, and there would always be people there just hanging out. It's like a it's like a lost lost art. There was uh people you'd meet, talk about cars, you could talk about chicks, you could meet chicks, girls could meet the guys, and they can go cruising in their cars, and it was just cool to do. Just feel like it's not there anymore. It definitely isn't there anymore. I mean, there's nobody cruising that that town anymore. It's not a thing. Everyone in their cell phones is at home getting their little dopamine rushes, so they don't seek out to get that fun anymore. So yeah, it's just a shame. But that's one of the things I used to do with that car and another car, which I'll bring up here in a minute. But uh it was cool to cruise that car, take your friends with you and just feel the rumble, feel the wind, and good old time. Another experience I'd like to share about that car is we just this one time well, it was probably more than one time, but uh we used to go out in the country. Of course you had to do it in the country, but I think there would be a full moon out and there'd be like natural light from the full moon. Take that car out one country road or a couple of country roads where you know there wasn't a lot of hills or dips or things that would rip you off to the side of the road and shut the lights off. Going 55, 60 miles an hour, and just be out there with one car behind you, one car in front of you, and just just fly. One of the best stories I've got about the Impala, there was a party going on. It was probably my junior year. There was a party going on, some upperclassman throwing one out at his girlfriend's house out in the country, and there was just a quarter mile one-lane road going back to her house. So everyone's out there having a good time. Mind you, I didn't drink back then. I think the worst I did was like have a cigarette to get a buzz, or put a dip in just to get the buzz, and then spit it out, or else I'd puke. I'm that guy. But uh so the party's going on a quarter mile down this road. All of a sudden we see some headlights down at the end of the driveway. Word gets around inside the party that it's the girl's uncle was now there to block off the driveway and had called the cops. So he knew the party was going on, he was not gonna let anybody leave, and he pulled up just to block the driveway and keep us all there until the cops showed up and figure out what this whole mess was, whatever. I guess the drunk people had the higher vote in the situation. We all started to cruise down the the driveway, and we could see that he wasn't gonna let anybody out. Next thing you know, you see this this uh C-10 Chevy Bahan through the yard with this rebel rousing idiot in the back going, Fuck him, let's go! Fuck him, let's go! He's holding on to the the roll bar and just waving like he's you know leading the cavalry on onto battle. Apparently that started the whole thing. Everyone just started pulling into the yard and going right through the the yard to get around the uncle, and he was about four or five cars deep before he realized there was no way of stopping all these kids, so he hopped in his car and started chasing down the road after one or two of them. But the end of this driveway was like small. There was either like a four-foot ditch on either side of it, so you had to turn and go through the grass and or field if you wanted to make it out to the main road. I drove the car through the grass, 1964 with Chevy and Paula, not a truck, not any type of SUV, drove a stinking car through the grass, through the field, and then jumped from one field to the next. I didn't have my seatbelt on, but I don't know how far the drop-off was, but I literally hopped up and hit my head on the roof of the car. It was that much of a drop-off. But she took it like a champ. She bounced from one field to the other field, and I was able to get to a flat spot, got on the road, or flew down the road. It was a country, country road. So we're flying flying down the road. It was just me. I don't know what anybody else did. I thought for sure my car would be the most noticeable, so I figured that I was fucked. And they were gonna find me. So I took off and went out behind a supermarket, the local supermarket, and parked behind a dumpster and just sat there for, I don't know, maybe an hour all by myself, just shaking, stirred up, didn't know what to do. I got out from underneath or got out and looked underneath the car. There was like grass and whatever the hell else. I drug out through the field, was like in the oil, oil pan and then the sway bar and everything underneath there. So I'm underneath there giving myself something to do for an hour. I'm trying to pull off all this shit. Nobody ever came after me, nobody ever said anything, the cops never showed up. They weren't putting out an APB for a a kid driving a impala. Don't know whatever happened to the party, if it got busted or what, but I did, however, get my dad to ask me, you know, what why is there why is there grass or hay or whatever underneath the underneath the bottom of the car? And I lied. I told him that uh I was out at my buddy, my buddy Shane's house was out in the country and must have kicked up some hay from you know his his barn or something out there. Nailed it. Didn't get in trouble. He was none the wiser or whatever. That was just one of the the great tales of the Impala. But yeah, bah on it through a field. Who knew? Who knew what a stupid idea that was? Just reflexes, get out of there. I wouldn't even have got in trouble. I would have got in trouble for just being there. I wasn't drinking, so there I was, and who knows? Young kid, stupid ideas, whatever. Uh before that, or sometime or other time around that I paid a guy a a case of beer to put headers on that car. So if you've ever put headers on a V8 or anything for that matter, big tube opens up the exhaust, makes a shitload of noise. Until you get a muffler on it and get it to the right location on the car, whatever. Had him put those uh headers on, and then it sounded like a demolition derby car, sounded like a race car. So we took this thing and we just ripped it around the countryside, and it sounded so loud, it sounded like a NASCAR race. And so we're out there just cruising around, ripping around, just hoping the police don't find us and limping it through town so that maybe they don't draw too much attention to it until we get some exhaust on it. Just a lot of Of fun in that car. Another good story is I was heading to a party for uh the track team. My track coach was putting on a party. He also lived out in the country, but there was a corner about a quarter mile away from his house. I was following my buddy Shane, who had like a 1970 boss Mustang. Or no, it wasn't a boss, but it was a Mach 1. And uh he turned the corner, nailed it to see his wheel peel and made some noise, and I'm sure everyone at the party was like, oh, here they come, you know. Well, I wanted to be cool too. So I turned onto that road, stomped on the gas, spun the ass end around, and went face down into the ditch with this car. So the ass end of this car is sticking up, not straight up, but probably at about a 70 degree angle. Or nose down into the ditch. I mean, this is a classic automobile, and I've already baja'd it through field, and now I'm face down into a ditch. We end up having a local guy come over with his truck and just pulled the thing right out, spotless, nothing wrong with it, but still just fucking embarrassing. I'm trying to impress all these people at the party, spinning out, making racket, and there I go face down into the ditch. I mean, it could have been a lot worse. My dad could have just fucking killed me for something like that. I don't remember what a punishment ever happened from that, but the last and final story I'll share with you about the Impala is that a football game had ended, and woo-woo! I was in the band, right? So me and my buddy Josh or got back from this uh game, hopped in the car, decided to go down past one of my buddies' house, and he lived in town, and this road was probably about two, three blocks long. We turned the corner, his house was probably almost to the end of the street. So I turned the corner, just hammered down, flying down the road, making a bunch of noise in this car. We're gonna get up there, we're gonna go past this house, put it in neutral, rev the engine, yo, what's up, give him kind of a what's up, you know who it is, just we're out farting around. At the end of that road is the fairgrounds, so it's like a T. So basically, I'm driving 60 miles an hour towards the T. And stupidly, I don't know why, but we rev the engine, ha ha wee, and then here comes the here comes the T. And at that T was the fairgrounds, and then my grandpa's house was right here on the corner. So we could only go left or right, straight was like a fence and then a barn. So we're driving 60, rev the engine, realized what type of situation we're in in split seconds, bumped it back down to the drive, stomped on the brakes, and totally drifted. Big ass heavy tank of a car around this corner and hit the gas and just tore out of there. I don't know how, like I said, the guardian angels that protect me while I'm out driving were on point that night. I don't know how it actually happened. I don't know how we survived that. That would have been in the end of that car. But for whatever reason, going 60, slam on the brakes, slide sideways. Like I said, dukes of hazard shit, watching bullet, movies where you drift, just doing stupid shit like that. I can't believe we didn't crash that car that day. Anyway, those are some stories, crazy stories about that car. Like I said, I love to drive, so there's many more stories. Um I graduated from that car to a sweet Camaro. I know you're probably thinking, well, redneck boy, had a Camaro, did you? Well, yeah, I did. And it was a teal green metallic 1995 Camaro Z28. Had the 350 LT1 with the automatic transmission. I end up putting headers on it, Flowmaster, put a cam, a throttle body, roller rockers, aftermarket uh hood scoop, so I got the fully functional RAM air, the cam or the KN air filter, uh, but it had the stock rims on it, put new tires on it, all that good stuff. Yeah, you gotta be a car guy to understand all this. So hopefully you understand a little bit of what I'm talking about, but that car would rip. And I'll put a couple pictures up on on YouTube so you can see exactly what I'm talking about. But yeah, that car, a lot of memories in that car, a lot of drag racing in that car, a lot of cruising in that car. Uh when we used to cruise, my buddy Dave had I think a 90, maybe a 95 Z-28. He didn't have all the goodies on it, but he put an exhaust on it. So we're over in the the town where we cruised in, Bryan, Ohio, and we pull up in front of the police station, mind you. We're leaving town from cruising all night long. So it's probably 11:30 at night, 12 o'clock at night. He yelled something at me. We're both at the stoplight, faced going out of town. Both of us just stomp it, ball the tires, and take off to about 50 miles an hour, and then we get off of it. Here come the lights, cherries and berries behind us, you know. Like, oh shit. So Dave just kept on going. And the cop car pulled him behind me. I'm like, shit. Drag racing leads to reckless op, leads to a ticket, leads to points on your license, leads to the ticket showing up on your insurance for your $365 a month auto insurance probably goes up to $450 or more. All that's going through my mind. I get pulled over, and I don't remember if she was cute or not, but it was a woman. And she walked up the car license registration, please, gave it to her, and uh she said, try to slow it down, have a nice night. So I don't know. Beats the fuck out of me. Maybe she didn't want to file the paperwork, maybe she thought I was cute, I don't know what it was. I don't care. But Dave got off scot-free. We both peeled out reckless operation in front of the police station, and she pulls me over and just checking it all out, apparently. She let me go. Yeah, so moving on from that. So, yeah, the final story about the the Z28 Camaro is I killed it and I didn't die. And there again, the Guardian Angels were with me. I left uh left the the bar one night. I had only had like one or two drinks, so I wasn't like smashed, and it was just time to go home, so I went home, turned a corner of a country road, and uh got into it a little bit. I mean it wasn't pegged, it wasn't even three-quarters of the way down, but went up over a hill, the ground was wet, it hit second gear and just started fishtailing and shot me right off into the ditch. I hit that the grass and it just accelerated. I hit the brake and just felt like it kept going faster. Tried to jump a ditch and it just went straight into the other side of it, right into the other side of a culvert. Boom, airbags exploded in my face. I got ludicrous playing on the radio, boom, dead. Just it destroyed me. It's like I killed one of my friends, you know. It was it was meant to be, I ended up going to college after that. I got another car, it got me away from speed demon lifestyle and got me into my future. Let's just let's just leave it at that. But yeah, it was like the death of an era and the death of a friend. And I'm sure it probably freaked my parents out. I mean, I remember them sitting on the couch like we could have lost him tonight, but all good, all well and good, it all led to to greater greater things, but it was the death of an automobile. It was a fun car. I'll have something fast like that, I'm sure. Coming up soon. But uh Yeah, so let's get into some other stories. Me and my friends used to just drive around. That was just like our thing. Like we'd all pile into a car, a couple of us, three or four of us, fucking drive. Just go out and do stupid shit. So one of the things we used to do was we'd we'd take off and we'd go to obviously we we did the the tee peeing thing, we'd go out late at night and go teepee somebody's house, whatever. Um the other thing we'd do, we'd go get one of the buddies would have a truck and we'd go load up if it was around Halloween time specifically, we'd go up and load uh pumpkins in the back of the truck. We'd sneak into sneak into yards and grab as many pumpkins as we could fit in the back of the truck while we could still fit in the back of the truck. So the fun and excitement of going up to people's houses and you know tripping the motion lights or grabbing a huge ass pumpkin and running and waddling with it out to the to the truck and not getting caught and then tearing out of there. But we'd take those pumpkins out, of course. Well, we'd do it everywhere. It wouldn't be in just in the country road, but we'd take them out and let them roll out the back end of the truck and watch them tumble and then eventually just explode centrifugal force. Those were good times. We may or may have not thrown some of those pumpkins at mailboxes. You can't prove it, you know, statute of limitations. But uh yeah, we used to explode a couple mailboxes or at least the pumpkins on stuff that we'd try to hit with it, but that's just shit to do. That's just country shit that you do. We'd also go out and we'd buy mushrooms, like the big bulbous. I'm not sure what kind of mushrooms they are, but they're the grey edible mushrooms or whatever that you make with food. And we would take them out and just throw them at cars. We would drive by and just chuck them and see them explode on the windshield and just drive as fast as we could away. I mean, people would just be more astonished that w they couldn't figure out what the hell that was. And it was harmless shit. It would just startle people. We do the same thing with water balloons. So we would be driving down the road. Here's two examples of that. We drove down the road and just chuck them. I'm sure you've seen videos of the guy that drives by a group of kids and tosses a water balloon and its slow motion goes straight into the guy's mouth and explodes. I think that's what we all pictured when we we were doing that. But my cousin was out either walking or out for a jog or something, and we just saw a target. We were driving down the road, saw somebody out walking. I'm like, I'm gonna get this guy threw the water balloon. As soon as it leaves my hand, I'm like, oh shit, that's cousin Tate. And he's like, waves at us, super slow motion. He's like, waves at us, then realized there's a balloon coming at him. He kind of curled up, got smacked like right in the belly, and then just kind of threw his hands up, like, what the fuck? But we we drove back around, apologized. But uh the other instance is we were driving along, and I knew a buddy in town that had an old jeep and he was driving towards us, threw the water balloon out, hit his windshield, cracked the fucking windshield. Didn't end up paying for it. Good guy, good good country people, you know. Just busted his fucking windshield, cracked it, went home, told his dad hit a rock or something. Whatever. Got fixed. But, you know, we used to throw shit out of cars. More shit was thrown out of cars with my friends than stayed in cars. You know, we would uh be driving home and know somebody behind us, and we had gone to Dairy Queen and have our milkshakes with us. So they're getting pretty close to us, let's go a little faster and pull them in. And once we get going a little faster, we chuck the milkshake up in the air, and it would go back and land either on the hood or the top or the windshield and just poof, just explode on top of the person's car. Uh, we've also thrown, you know, fireworks out of cars. My buddy Derek had a convertible and he thought it'd be really funny. I wasn't in on this one, but he threw it at my house. He was driving with my buddy Josh, and he used a cigarette lighter to light a firework. Dude took, lit the firework, and threw the lighter out. And then within split seconds realized that he still had the firecracker in his hand, chucked it out at the exact moment that it frickin' blew up like within two feet away from his face. Yeah, throwing shit out of cars is just fun. There again, not not just a vessel to get you from point A to point B. One of the craziest things you can remember about cars is the experience of near death, like I said, crashing them and or almost crashing them, drifting them, almost crashing them, whatever. But one of the best stories I had was when one of my buddies, Derek, he had a convertible baron, and we went out to see my girlfriend, and it was so late at night, like one in the morning or whatever, that we're just gonna sneak down. She lived on this long half-mile driveway of just dirt, stones, whatever, between two fields, right? We just gonna creep down the driveway, get up to her house, turn the lights off, pull around in her U-shape, you know, turn around driveway, and just honk the horn and then just tear her ass out of there. Wake him up one in the morning. We did. We turned around, gunned it, started honking. I don't remember if we turned the lights on or not, but we were going down this dirt lane. Like I said, fields of probably hay, whatever it was, but it was probably at least two feet, if not three feet, high. In the convertible, top down, and he starts fishtailing for fun. Just for funzies, just starts going, we're going 50 miles an hour down this dirt lane, trying to get out of there as fast as we can. We just sliding side by side, side by side. And all of a sudden the fish tailing turns into a uh oh, we're going off going off this dirt path. So we slid off the dirt path and sent us into full 360 spins. I think we went around maybe four or five times in in the frickin' field, and you know, grass is just flying in, grasshoppers are flying in, other bugs are flying in, and we're just like spinning, just sliding, because whatever you do, you hit wet grass, wet foliage, whatever you hit, it just accelerates you. So we're spinning 100 miles an hour in 360s, finally come to a stop, just like frozen in fear or whatever, and then we just decide we we get out, can we go? And we just started driving out of the field and off down the road we went. But the whole ride home, we're like laughing hysterically and like flicking grasshoppers and other bugs out of a car. Get home and have to peel all that shit out of there. It was a mess. I mean, it was incredible just that we didn't roll it. There again, guardian angels are watching over me as I drive, so maybe that's why I dry like love driving so much. So last and final story. Um we used to go out and again group get a group of us in a car, and then we'd find a couple of our other friends, and they'd be in a car. And the town was so small that we would actually go out and play hide and seek. So we'd get like maybe three or four of us good friends that were all able to drive. We'd play hide and seek where you had to drive around, you couldn't just sit still. And we would literally drive around town and try to avoid each other. But this happened to be during the day, and for whatever reason, we were on one side of the town, and we drove by my buddy Jason's house, and his dad was out, his name was Kermit, and Kermit was just standing there just talking to somebody in his driveway, and my buddy Josh, who drives this piece of shit Buick, something or another. I mean, we beat the piss out of this car. It was his mom's car. I don't know how it didn't blow up, the tires didn't explode, uh, they didn't ask questions about it, but that was his beater car. We drove it, like I said, like the Duke's hazard. But we're driving down the side street, going next to Kermit's house, and we got going about 40 miles an hour. Drove past the house. My buddy Josh, I don't know whether he pressed on the parking brake or he just slid around the corner. It was a front-wheel drive car, fucking power slide all the way around this corner, and all I remember is him with his hands furiously going hand over hand to try to steer into it, steer out of it. I don't know whether he meant to do it or if he was scared because he didn't know how to get out of it, but this is the way he was gonna handle it. All I remember was looking to my right at my buddy's dad Kermit in the driveway, and he went from smiling expression, like, hey guys, went from a wave to like a two-finger peace sign, and his his expression just faded to like, oh my god, I'm watching these kids die. And we just fucking power slid around the corner and then took off. But it was just like one of those snapshots in your mind where you just remember someone's face, and all I remember was Kerm's face just looking at us like, holy fucking shit. Anyway, plenty of other stories to be talked about as far as driving. I'd love to hear yours. There's gotta be some wicked tales that you have of screwing around in a car, blowing up a car, uh crashing a car, your favorite car, whatever it might be, share them with me. Share them with me on Instagram, Facebook, or you put them in the comments, whatever you might want to do. Just share them with me. Comment. I'd love to hear crazy stories about automobiles. Uh, if you got pictures of your car, whether it's sweet, whether it was a beater, whatever, share those with me too. I think it's a it's a great thing to go back and revisit memories of oh god, now that you say that I do remember my first car was this, XY or Z. Or this is the car I have now. I used to drive a beater, but now I've graduated this, or this is my dream truck, whatever it might be. But share them with me. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, all the lane brain. If you got short stories you want to share with me, you can send them via email, the lane brain with two e's, gmail.com. And uh thank you all for listening. It's been a lot of a lot of fun going down uh memory lane here. Like I said, maybe my parents will listen to this and they'll have some questions for me. But there's a lot of other stories they probably haven't heard, but we're gonna get to the maybe, maybe we'll get to those if somebody asks me questions about X, Y, or Z. But anyway, it's been fun to relive some of these moments. I'm sure that there are many more. Uh, I really need to get my friends to uh come on the podcast so they can recount some of the things. Thank you all for listening. This is the Lane Brain Podcast.