D and Me.

A while back I posted the Best Worst First Date Story Ever, and I mentioned that the guy, D, and I became good friends after that, but never dated again. We did, however, take a few road trips together, which, due to D's strange road trip Karma, never seemed to turn out quite like we expected.....

The first such road trip was actually across the state to pick up his girlfriend at the time and move her back to D's place. At this point, D was no longer managing the ranch, and was helping his dad out on the family place instead.

I had just gotten my first car, a '91 Mercury Tracer with no amenities, not even power steering. It was a little four-banger five-speed manual transmission, so it was cheap on gas, but it would still go like striped assed ape if you knew how to drive it. This was it's first long trip, and I was excited.

It was January or February, I don't remember exactly, and we had two different mountain passes to go through, each way, so we ran into some ice and snow.

I picked D up at his house around six in the morning, and we headed out, both of us groggy and grumpy, FM radio turned up loud enough to wake the dead just to keep us awake on the road.

Soon enough we were woken up and we started singing along with the radio, neither of us any good, both of us caterwauling like crazy people, trying to drown each other out. At least until we hit the mountains, and couldn't get any reception.

We made it to Durango, got to the girlfriend's place, and started loading her stuff.

It was at this point that I discovered that she had four cats. And she was bringing them with her. And she didn't have a carrier.

Picture it. A maroon Mercury Tracer, the trunk and half the back seat stuffed with black plastic garbage bags full of what I can only assume was all of her junk, three people in the car, and four cats loose.

One of the cats about caused a wreck, we were talking and not paying much attention to where they all were, because they had been in the girlfriend's lap or the back window... but one of them had come down out of the window, crawled under the driver's seat, and curled up under my brake.

We only discovered this fact when I went to stop at a stop sign and actually stepped on the brake instead of just tapping it to slow for towns. The yowl went up, my foot came off the brake and we rolled right through the stop sign as I fished for the cat with one hand and tried to keep us on the road, D went head down in my lap and the floorboard trying to catch the cat, and the girlfriend in the back seat yowled just as loud as the cat about how it was my fault the stupid little fuzzball crawled under the brake and got itself squished.

I was not amused.

I kept that cat in my lap for the rest of the trip just to make sure it didn't do that again.

Shortly after this we discovered that with three smokers in the car... we were, collectively, down to two cigarettes. I had forgotten to grab my cash that morning, and had been assured by D that he'd take care of any costs... shortly thereafter to discover that instead of the hundred dollar bill he'd thought he had grabbed, he had a twenty, and we'd already spent fifteen of that on gas. And the girlfriend was a chain smoker.

So we stopped at a convenience store in the mountains and paid an outrageous price for a pack of cigarettes that we all had to share on the remaining six hours of drive time. At this point I was getting a little cranky, the girlfriend's constant whining about being hungry, being thirsty, being tired, her cats being tired of being in the car, and a myriad of other poor-pitiful-me complaints along with the furball in my lap deciding that I was an excellent scratching post, and the ensuing lecture about proper care of animals from the girlfriend when I picked the little furry set of needles up by the scruff of it's neck and growled at it, (which brought about an argument as I explained to her that the cat wasn't hurt, and I was disciplining the thing like another cat would, which was far more psychologically effective than patting it on the bottom and saying "bad kitty") along with being hungry myself, all added up to my own little slice of hell.

That is, until a song came on the radio that reminded both D and I of a party we'd gone to where a mutual acquaintance had gotten knee-walking drunk and stripped to skivvies before her boyfriend had walked into the room and kept her from tossing her bra with a flying tackle, and we started discussing this, and other funny incidents that we were reminded of.

Now, this here is the part that I just don't get. Girlfriend had said she was ok with D having female friends. Girlfriend hadn't said a word about any of the other short bits of banter that D and I had engaged in. But for some reason, talking about mutual friends/acquaintances that did stupid things caused her to lean in between the seats, glare at D and then at me, and say "Well, maybe you two should date instead!"

And for some reason, us looking at each other and saying in chorus "Tried that, didn't work," only pissed her off more.

Ah well. We made it back to D's place, where D, girlfriend, TC, A (D's twin brother, if you missed the last story) and myself had a grand old time bsing, dancing to the music, and eventually, getting a little crude with an ice fight.

Ladies, let me tell you, when you're being held down by a big ol' cowboy while two little wiry cowboys sit on your legs and stuff ice in your bra and underwear... well, there's not much you can do about it, until they let you go.

On an interesting side note, apparently it's really hard to get ice out of the crotch of tight Wranglers, even when you go commando.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Farmgirl.