Last November, I took the worst road trip of my life. Honestly, I’m not sure how or why I survived it. Even more honestly, I may not have.
Gear packed, snacks loaded, playlists curated. For almost six years, we had talked about driving from sea to shining sea, walking the Freedom Trail, and ending with a weeklong stay in Miami. Frank, Rich, and I planned everything down to the last hour. It was set to be the trip of a lifetime.
If only we hadn’t counted on Gordon.
The trip’s entourage was much larger, but the other half of the party—the dipshits—botched their car rental, leaving them a seat short. That earned us Gordon, possibly so annoying that the irritating B-team voted him off the island and onto ours. We accepted it gracefully. No man should be left out of the trip we planned. We spared the snacks, shared the seating, and welcomed him into the “Freakonoline.” The ladies love a 75-mile-per-hour Warhammer 40k Convention.
Everything went well. Good conversation, a relaxing drive.
That is, until the B-Team pulled some crap. They decided to push on and iron man the first night, rotating and sleeping in the car. The last thing we heard over the walkie was, “We will be tanned and shaggin in Miami before you make it through Harrisburg!”
“Good riddance,” we thought. “That makes the rest of the trip easier.”
Well… easier for everyone except Gordon.
Later in the hotel room that night, as we got ready to sleep, Gordon finally told us what his damage was: “They can’t get there first!!! They just can’t! We have to beat them!”
He rocked in the corner like a twenty-year alcoholic made to dry out overnight, twitching and convulsing, murmuring under his breath… “Unfair.” “Rigged.” “Have to save the trip.”
All of us were so tired. We couldn’t keep up with his banal bitching any longer than we could keep our eyes open. The last thing I heard before passing out was Gordon, excitedly, murmuring to himself in a way all too unsettling: “I’ve got it! I just need to redraw the map!”
I would figure out what he meant the next morning when we all awoke to a positively MANIC Gordon.
“LET’S GO EVERYONE! WE HAVE TO BEAT THEM. I CAN’T LET BOB AND MARK TAKE ALL THE FINE BIIIIIIIIITCHES!!!”
Rich, in a way that betrayed our soggy sleepiness, quipped, “I doubt a day of rest will make the difference for you, either way.”
“Oh yeah, it will!” He retorted. “All I had to do was redraw the map!”
“What the fuck do you mean? We have the maps on our phones!”
The thick haze of realization began to settle in. We didn’t know how far he would go.
“Ha! That’s the fun part! You don’t!”
I checked my nightstand. He was right. The phone was gone. I glanced at Rich. Frank. Same story.
“Gordon, what the fuck did you do with our phones?”
Like nothing was wrong, he continued, “Easy, I sent them forward!”
“To the Hotel!?” I exploded, “In Miami?!”
He shook his head, “No, I didn’t do that.”
The room heaved a collective sigh of relief… too soon…
“I sent it to the one in Naples.”
“Fucking Italy, Gordon?”
“Heavens, no. Naples Florida! The Golf Capital of the World!”
Six years of planning, gone.
“We aren’t even going there! That’s on the other side of the God’s Favorite Panhandle!”
“I booked tee times at Tiburon and LaPlaya this morning, so it works out!” Gordon said.
Now, stripped of our navigation and without a sense of the road ahead, we changed course. The special map Gordon was using seemed to be a “Hollywood Map To The Stars” he marked up with a raspberry scented marker. Apparently, the LaPlaya Resort and Golf Course was just a house that Mischa Barton rented from Joss Whedon in 2004 for a few months in between filming scenes for an OC spinoff nobody would ever see.
Long story made slightly less long: A man with one goal and no respect for the plan stole our phones, sent them hundreds of miles away, and redrew the map to get what he really wanted—a day at the golf courses of his dreams. He dragged us all down with him, robbing us of the experience of a lifetime and costing us a shitload of money. All of it neatly packaged as “what we always wanted…” And, as it seems, every road just led to LA.
The next trip is larger, the stakes are existential, and “Gordon” is still behind the wheel. We know where that road leads: to a golf course we didn’t want, bought with money we didn’t want to spend, all in the name of “beating the B-Team” down the road to Hell. No thanks. Please, Reader… do the right thing this November. Say no to Gavin. Say no to blatant gerrymandering. Tell Sacramento we want to be better than Texas, if only just this one time.
#NoOn50