We were going to Savannah. In my most recent attempt to live the ideal college experience, I decided to join my friend Mark on an 18-hour roundtrip to Georgia to pick up a car that he had just bought on eBay. It sounded like a fantastic idea to me. Not the buying of the car, an entirely impractical Honda S2000, which is slightly bigger than a go-kart and has less cargo space than a lunchbox. But in theory, the trip itself had fantastic sex appeal:
Two dudes driving down to one of the most picturesque and historic cities in the South in a beat-up 1997 Prelude to retrieve an overpriced sports car from a man who, from all evidence in his e-mails, most likely was an axe murderer.
When Mark first told me about his plans, I figured it was safe to volunteer to ride shotgun with him, given that I was positive that his girlfriend would want to go with him and I wouldn't have to go.
"Wow yeah, that 18-hour drive sounds great Markus. I'll definitely go with you. Oh wait a second, won't Bryce -- yeah, I'm sure she will -- of course. Well, too bad, maybe next time."
It's a cunning tactic that I find college students use all the time. Pretend that you are cool enough to want to do something spontaneous, wild, stupid -- and then go get drunk instead. The matter seemed closed until the following night when I was having a barbecue dinner with Mark, his girlfriend and a few other friends.
"Dudeman, great news, you can come to Savannah. Since you want to go so badly, Bryce decided she's going up to see her sister instead of driving down with me."
At first, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do less than sit in a car for 18 hours over the course of the next two days. I chewed my delicious barbecued red corn on the cob (apparently what you do is baste it in butter and wrap it in tin foil before putting it on the grill) and thought of an excuse.
"Mark, see I'm having some -- "
"Great, we'll talk about that tomorrow when I pick you up at 9:30."
And that's how our glorious march to Savannah began. Kind of like Sherman ("Who?" Mark asked, apparently having never seen Gone with the Wind or taken seventh grade social studies), except we didn't engage in total warfare.
To be honest, I got pretty excited about the whole thing once I knew that I had no choice but to go. I'd say we were a lot like James Dean or Che, except neither of us wore leather, and we certainly weren't riding a motorcycle.
Instead, we were two dudes in a 1997 Prelude with no muffler, a busted CD player and an intake that apparently would explode if we drove through a large enough puddle on the right side.
"Oh and don't touch the glove compartment," Mark said. "I had to superglue it back together last night and I don't want it to fall apart before I get rid of the car."
We left on a gray morning that stayed gray the entire way down to Savannah. We stopped for lunch and to fill out some paperwork at Mark's parents' house in Danville and were then on our way. Before we said goodbye though, Mark's mother asked me, "A-J, what do you think of this whole adventure?"
"Well, the idea of the trip is growing on me," I said. "But I think this is probably one of the stupider things your son could have come up with."
I think she agreed, and she told me to make sure we both stayed safe.
Mark probably hadn't mentioned that he had suspicions that the seller was an axe murderer.
There's another story, or perhaps simply a longer one, in which I'd describe the old woman we met in Danville who held us up for half an hour talking about her granddaughter. Or I could say something about the guy who sold Mark the car. Suffice it to say that, although he wasn't an axe murderer, he was very likely some other kind of murderer. I could talk about the endless monotony of suburban sprawl, Wal-Mart trucks, or my first culinary experiences as a Northerner at both Hardee's and Bojangles.
And in fact I will mention my absolute hatred for SUVs. Honest to God, I will never understand why people have to buy hulking 400 horsepower, 14 m.p.g., hideous slabs of metal and then insist on driving at 140 m.p.h. Do they realize that gas is $2.75 per gallon? Do they realize that cars with low fuel efficiency use a lot of gas?
But those stories need time to age before I can start putting them down in writing. That, I think, is one of the most valuable things to learn when embarking on college "jaunts" -- out to the Blue Ridge to look at stars, up to D.C. for a weekend, or down to Savannah for approximately 13 hours.
Because one of the clearest things I felt when I got back to my apartment after driving back from Savannah with the top down on a brilliantly sunny day, aside from the sunburn on my shoulders (clearly, I found it necessary to go the whole way with my shirt off), was that stories had happened over the previous two days.
I couldn't quite put them into a readable form, but they were there. I didn't recognize if they had any value, but they were there.
Mark is not an economist, but on the way down he tried to justify the whole ordeal against his father's wrath in economic terms.
"What he doesn't realize is that I'm willing to pay for this car partly because of the adventure of going down to Savannah to buy it."
I told him there was no way that two meals at fast food restaurants, a night in a Best Western, and approximately 45 minutes of walking around Savannah could possibly be worth more than, say $1,500.
I probably called him an idiot.
We were silent for awhile.
I'm just now reconsidering my words.
A-J's column runs bi-weekly on Tuesdays. He may be reached at ajaronstein@virginia.edu.
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