Road Trip

When I was in the Marine Corps, I was stationed at (now closed) MCAS Tustin.  This is in the heart of Orange County, California, and everything was close by.  I could be at the beach in less than 30 minutes.  Disneyland was less than an hour away.  I could be in the mountains or the desert in about an hour.  LA was about an hour away, San Diego was about 90 minutes away, and I could be in Tijuana in less than two hours.  Every weekend was a road trip.

One weekend night, I loaded up my VW Bus with a bunch of my Marine buddies for an evening of cruising Newport Beach. Relatively early into the evening, I saw a young woman, obviously quite intoxicated, staggering around a parking lot.  She was in bad shape!  She could barely stand, she was slurring her words to the point where I could hardly understand what she was saying, and her pants were missing.  I knew that if she didn't get home, something very bad would probably happen to this young lady.

I convinced her to get into the van with us, letting her know we were taking her home.  This was before the days of cell phones.  I asked her where she lived, and she slurred "Inshunithus."  I couldn't understand what she was saying.  I asked again, and she again slurred "Inshunithus!"  I asked her to spell it, and she replied "E... I... N... I... Inshunithus!"  She then passed out in the lap of one of my buddies, and she was down for the count.

I had one of my buddies dig into her purse and locate her driver's license to find her address.  She was saying "Encinitas," which was over an hour south of our location. One of my friends grew up in Oceanside, which is close by, and knew how to get to that city.  Once we got there, we were able to wake her up, and she was able to give us directions to her house, where we dropped her off and waited by the door until she got safely into the house.  Again, it was before the days of cell phones, so we didn't have GPS to guide us.  We were fortunate that she was just coherent enough to give us turn by turn directions to her place.

When we looked at her license, we learned it was her 21st birthday, which explained why she was so snot slinging drunk.  It didn't explain her missing pants (or skirt, whichever it was.)  To this day, I have no idea what happened to her after we dropped her at her door, and I have no idea how she got so far away from home.  I can't help but wonder if she had a "Dude, Where's My Car?" scenario.  And if so, did she ever find it?

All I know is that we planned an evening cruising the beach, and we ended up taking a road trip to E.. I... N... I... Inshunithus!  We had hoped to pick up some chicks, but not exactly like this.  As is usually the case though, the best road trips -- nay, the best stories -- are the result of an unexpected twist of fate that changes your plans.  Kind of like another road trip, where my buddy Fred and I decided to drive to San Francisco for a newspaper and a Coke, and to drive across the Golden Gate Bridge, not realizing that San Francisco was eight hours away.