One Wicked Trip

It was November 13, 1992. I had just gotten my driver's license. So did one of my best friends. Her parents had a 1986 Volkswagon Westfalia Bus. It was awesome. So on this particular weekend, my friend, Mira, and some of my other best buds, decide....hey it would be a great idea to split a 10 strip and go into the woods in Mira's bus.



Voila, an idea is born.



It's early Saturday morning. We converge at the Waffle House. Us, in our teenage angst wasteland, decide this is a GOOD way to spend a Saturday. We eat breakfast, and head out. I am in charge of dispensing the LSD, as I was the one who procured it. I'm cutting tabs with a razor on the little countertop in the bus, while Mira is driving. Little did I know that I was absorbing the liquid right off the paper. I eat two hits, and Mira and Chris eat one. Darrah, waits. Mira drives up on the Parkway, we head south. We are having a great time on the way. Listening to good tunes, and laughing all the way. We get to Graveyard Fields. This is where we are going to play today. We start off on the trail. It goes well until about 2/3rds of the way down the trail to the first falls. I start to lose it. Everything is morphing. Roots are moving, limbs are dancing. I can hear the heartbeat of the earth. We decide to sojourn at the the first falls. It was while I was at the base of the falls that I had an incredible urge. I had to climb that waterfall.



I watched as the water came rushing down. Over rocks, roaring to the earth. I was overtaken with a primal urge. And that urge was to climb that damn waterfall. I decided to tackle it from the west side. I don't know why, this was actually the more difficult side to climb.



I set off across the rocks to the left shore. I mushed through damp earth. I reached the first of many trees. I looked up, and saw a way. I jumped, grabbed on, and proceeded, limb by fucking limb, to the top. Through at least 20 trees, all connected in some way. I am an orangutang! OOOO EEEEEE!



So I thought. I got to the top, so exhilerated, so breathless from my climb. I was ecstatic! I did it! I climbed the waterfall! I am king of the world!



Then, I turned around. SON OF A BITCH! I was at the dead beginning of the trail. The bridge was familiar. The surrounding landscape was familiar. Well, fuck me.



I turned around and looked down the waterfall, and my friend Mira was making some strange hand gestures at me, and there was (in my opinion) a really creepy dude right behind her taking pictures of her. I thought that she was trying to tell me that he had made her cry. I was gesturing to her to watch out for that guy. What she was really trying to tell me was the she just sat on a pin, and it went right in her ass, and it made her cry. Well, I didn't know this, and was going apeshit on top of the waterfall. Our friend, Chris, decided he was going to get this situation under control. He climbed the waterfall, the exact same way as I did. He got to me and let me know everything was allright. Mira and Darrah jumped into 40 degree or below water, and swam like fish.



Chris talked me into walking down the trail, who takes the trail? Me, I take the trees....And everything is going ok, until he stepped on a rock. And that rock sucked his foot in like a super sponge. I start to instantly flip out. I mean, hell, my friend is being eaten by a rock, for God's sake!



I'm yelling at him to get off the g'damn rock! And not only that, I am yelling at any passerby, "Do NOT step on that rock! You must avoid the rock!" Needless to say, I had a few really strange looks shot my way. Chris navigates me past the rock, while I am just flipping the fuck out. We make it back down to the bottom of the waterfall. By then Mira and Darah are mere popsicles. We head back to the bus. We get in and bundle up, and start to try to cook something hot. We have brocolli and cheese RiceARoni. This event will go down in history.



Mira fires up the oven. We start the rice, water, butter mixture in the pot. Check. The water comes to a boil. Super Check! We are on our way! Then 8 mins into it, the flame dies. Nothing. Dead in the water.



Hey, isn't there a little convenience store at Pisgah Inn? Let's check it out. We go. It EXISTS! We are saved! If you count popcorn, chips, and soda as salvation. It's not what we wanted, but it'll do. We go back out to the bus after what must have been 20 mins picking out munchie food.



We forget about our previous plight of not being able to finish the Rice A Roni. Mira cranks the bus and we head out of the parking lot. She takes a sharp right to manuever through. The pot of Rice A Roni skids across the countertop. I see it moving ever so slowly. It goes off the edge. At that precise point, the pot dumped it's contents into the air. I saw rice granual after rice granual flip slowly end over end, making a strange WHOOSH WHOOSH sound everytime an end flipped over. Slowly it worked it's way through the air. The mass of rice and mixture. Then all of a sudden BOOOM! SPLAT! KABLOWIE! All over Darrah!



She was sitting on the floor of the bus, and Chris and I were in the bench seat, Mira driving. The look on Darrah's face was priceless! I laughed so damn hard I thought my midsection was going to disentigrate! I will never forget it to this day!



On the way back, we ran into another scenario, Bush I's visit to the Carolinas, and that is another post entirely. So is the one that continues into the night.



We got back to Mira's house, and let Ryden, her dog, clean Darrah, and the inside of the bus. That, my friends, was only the beginning. Stay tuned for Part 2 and 3.