So... Alright - Broken Down Convoy

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Geoff relives the story of the time he ended up in a convoy of broken dreams, and very nearly became a fireball. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So, a few weeks ago, gosh, maybe even a few months ago now, I told a story of when I was in high school and I was going to Lollapalooza and I drove my car into a ditch and then the car got flooded. Anyway, it was a driving foible story and I had so much fun telling it and trying to remember it because it's a, I think I mentioned at the time, but it's one of those old stories I've told a bunch and haven't thought about in many, many years. And I was thinking about, you know, older stories like that that I haven't told in a long time. And I remembered another big driving story, driving foible story, if you will. And I thought maybe I should tell that one as well. Then I'll have it

on record because I got to be honest. I hadn't thought about this story in five or six years, probably, or longer. And I had to spend a little bit of time going through it and trying to remember it properly because it had been so long. And I actually think that's part of why I appreciate this podcast. It's allowing me to take one last trip down memory lane and then record some of that stuff. Obviously, most of these stories have been recorded and told in the past in some fashion or other. But in my 20-ish years of doing this, I've made thousands upon thousands upon thousands of videos. I stopped counting when I hit 10,000. And I've told a million stories a million different ways. And

I'll be damned if I could figure out where any of these exist in old recordings. So this will be my historical record. In 19, I want to say 1996. Probably I was living in Copper's Cove, Texas, which is a suburb of Fort Hood, the military base there, which is where the 1st Cavalry Division and the 3rd AD? Shit, that's been a long time, is it? Hold on, I don't want to fuck that up. Enits on Fort Hood. Well, you know, I don't think it's 3rd AD anymore. I think that probably, when did 3rd AD... God damn it.

When did 3rd AD change at Fort Hood? Huh. I'm learning all kinds of shit. Fort Hood changed its... No. Holy shit. Fort Cavazos is a United States Army post located near Killeen, Texas. The post was named after Richard E. Cavazos, a native Texan and the U.S. Army's first Hispanic four-star general,

formerly named Fort Hood for a Confederate General John Bell Hood. Motherfucker. No shit. motherfucker no shit well i am so glad man i had this happened in last year okay i had no idea fort hood was renamed to fort cavazos well i am going to endeavor to say fort cavazos from here on out i hope i don't uh i apologize i i was stationed at fort hood and spent a lot of my life there so it might be a hard habit to break, but I'll do my damnedest. Fort Cavazos. Anyway, when I was at Fort Cavazos, it was one of the largest military bases in America. It had about 100,000 troops, I want to say, at the time. And the two biggest units were the 1st Cav, and I want to say 3rd AD, but I know that that got re-designated at some point. Okay, well, anyway, units don't matter.

re-designated at some point. Okay, well, anyway, units don't matter. Fort Hood has first Cav and third A, well, it's not third AD anymore, it's third Armored Corps now. I had no idea the entire time I was there it was named after, they don't tell you that. At least to my,

you know, you do have about a month of in-processing, but I don't remember them telling me anything about where the name came from. Anyway, it's 1996, I'm stationed at Fort Hood. I am a member of the 4th Public Affairs Detachment, which is a public affairs detachment. There are a few of them, which is assigned to a unit in the army. So I wore a 1st Cav patch. I worked out of the 1st Cav headquarters building, but I was technically a member of the 4th Public Affairs Detachment assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division. I don't know why I'm explaining that distinction to you, but I am. Through the course of that, I, as a

journalist, I got offered the ability to go to a very prestigious Army photography school. It's no longer in operation, to my knowledge there were like the way career progression worked in the army is you went if you were in journalism and public affairs is there was like a and some sort of an like an intermediate like or like additional course you could take for editing and layout and design and photography and then if you did well at that one eventually you could take this what was called the Army Advanced Photojournalism School. I believe that's what it was called. And I went to that. When I went to that, I think I was the youngest person to ever do it. And I might have been, I don't think I was the only person, but I was one

of only a handful of people, to my knowledge, that had ever been allowed to skip the intermediate school and go straight to the advanced school. And so I was very excited to get accepted into the school for photography through the military. It was at the University of South Carolina. They basically put you through like an abbreviated master's program in photojournalism, kind of hit the major points and help you build a portfolio. And so I was living in Fort Hood with my first wife, or just off base in Copper's Cove with my first wife. And I was about to go enroll in the University of South Carolina for a semester. And so my wife at the time didn't want to stay in a shitty apartment in Copper's Cove with next to no friends or

really anybody in her social circle at all. She was from upstate New York. And so the decision was made, we would drive from Copper's Cove to upstate New York, drop her off with her family. And then I would drive from upstate New York down to the University of South Carolina for my semester of school. I had a Mazda B2200 pickup truck that was pretty reliable. And so we piled into that and we drove, I think I mapped it, mapped it. This is 1996. There was no GPS. There was no Garmin. There was no MapQuest or Google Maps or Apple Maps or any of that shit. So we had atlases. And so I mapped it on an atlas and I thought it was going to take about 30 hours of driving time. Now I'm 20 years old. She was probably 20 years old

as well at the time. And so we were young and full of energy and I just wanted to get as far as I could as fast as I could. And so we drove, I want to say probably 22 or 23 hours straight. We wanted to get there as fast as humanly possible. And so we drove and drove and drove. And I want to say like maybe 14 or 15 hours through. She also didn't like to drive. And so I was doing most of the driving. I was doing all the driving at that point.

And she didn't feel comfortable driving, didn't feel comfortable driving at night. So I was doing all the driving and I got pretty fucking tired. And so we pulled into a motel. I want to say like 15 or 16 miles and maybe like, I don't even know, like Ohio or somewhere, Indiana maybe, and tried to get some sleep. But I could only sleep for about two and a half hours before I was just up and ready to go again. I don't know if you are that age or if you remember that age, but you just had energy. I just had a fountain of energy all the time. So I distinctly remember being in a motel bed, wherever the fuck we were, and laying there and thinking, I'd rather be in the car. Honestly, I'd rather just be driving than laying here with my thoughts

racing, trying to convince myself to go back to sleep. And so we piled back in the car after like three hours of rest and took back off again. And I hit like extreme exhaustion somewhere in Pennsylvania. I want to say we're about 27 hours into the trip and I just, I'm falling asleep at the wheel and I cannot handle it. And we are in the middle of nowhere. I feel like I should also mention in my head it was July 4th, but I don't think that's right because I don't think I would have, I think I would have already been enrolled in school and in like actually in class at that point, but it was a holiday. I remember that and everything was closed. And so it's like maybe one in the morning in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania. And I just can't, I can't stay awake anymore. And so I tell, I tell her I got to pull over and sleep in the car or maybe she can drive or something. And she goes, drive you know what fuck it I'll drive and so she gets behind the wheel and she starts driving

and so I just nod off in the passenger seat in the pickup truck and I want to say we were asleep for about 45 minutes when I hear I'm just awakened by a lurch and a scream and a thousand sounds all at once like complete stimulus overload i'm like just hitting rim sleep and the next thing i know she's screaming and we're going like i feel like i've been wrenched in a different direction i wake up everything's gone to hell i very quickly realized that we've hit something we're in an accident and she's pulling off to the side of the road i'm like what the what the fuck happened? I look around. I don't see any other cars. I'm still just trying to shake off the sleep. And she's like, I don't know. I hit something in the street. There's something popped up in the street and I hit it. And, uh, and I don't know

what happened. And then, and I just pulled over because, uh, it sounded bad. I'm like, what the fuck? And so, and by the way, I found out years later, she didn't admit this for fucking years, like probably two or three years later. She admitted to me. She saw a white, like a grocery bag, like a plastic grocery bag on the street in the middle of the street. And she aimed for it. She was bored and wanted something to do.

And she saw a plastic bag. And that was something to hit the plastic bag was something to do. So she hit that plastic bag. Turns out that plastic bag was full of, I don't know, a six pack of fucking bottles of beer or something. Because what happened when she hit it while I was asleep is it exploded on the rear right tire and shredded that tire. It must have been glass or metal or something. And the tire popped, which is what the loud noise was. Well, the other loud noise was her screaming. And so she, the, she started to lose control of the truck, pulled it over. I hop out. I look, my back tire is just like shredded. Like there's still tire around the rim, but it's completely

and totally fucked. Right. And I have this problem that I had meant to take care of before I went on the trip where I, i uh i bought this truck used in the early 90s and so it had like aftermarket rims on it that came with a key because they were like non like they had like an anti-theft device right and so i uh i had this little device little key that you could use to get the lug nuts off and i lost that key somehow and i didn't know what to do about off and i lost that key somehow and i didn't know what to do about that and i was just like fuck i can't like if i ever get a flat tire i can't take my spare off to put it on because i don't have this fucking thing and most mechanics

when you go there and you don't have it uh i felt like when i was younger i don't know is this the case with you but i felt like when i was younger i was always having to replace tires i was always getting like you used to be able to replace a tire for like 30 bucks. You get a used tire, they pop it on. It cost you like 25, 30 bucks. I would invariably drive... I would get a $30 tire. I would drive at $30 tire worth, which is like four or five months. And then suddenly, I'd need a new tire. It was like, that's the cycle that you get in when you're poor, where you can only afford degradated shit and then the degradated shit breaks immediately so you need to buy more degradated shit and you're just constantly uh you're just constantly in that cycle it fucking sucks right

so uh future jeff hopping in here with a quick note if if you're paying attention i just said the word degradated like five times in a row that's not a real word i was gonna cut it but it's so embarrassing and i'm so fucking stupid in this moment i'm trying to say degraded that i thought well i thought we should probably leave it in for honest historical records so uh degradated not a word meant to say degraded. Stupid Jeff out. All right. I knew that this was going to be a problem, but I just hadn't solved it yet. I don't know how to solve it yet. And so I couldn't put the spare tire on.

So I'm looking at this tire. There's not much meat left on the bone as it were. We're in, like I said, we're in the middle of nowhere on this highway, I believe. And somewhere in probably north pennsylvania and there's not another car going either way on on the road i stand there for three or four minutes just trying to figure out what the fuck to do i look around this is obviously before cell phones this is 1996 i believe and so I make the decision that made the most sense to me at the time, which I said, let's just drive this thing on the rim and busted out tire as slowly as we can. It looks like there's an exit a mile or so up the road. Uh, we'll just pull up there. There's bound to be a

gas station. We'll get it fixed. One thing I did know is that if you ever blow a tire, you're supposed to never drive on the rim because the weight and the pressure and the friction will ruin your rim, right? It'll flatten it out or it'll expand it and it'll just destroy a rim. So you're never supposed to drive on a pure rim or even on a tire that's too flat. And so I knew that, but I didn't know what else to do. And so we hopped it back in the truck and and we very, very at this point, all I know is that she was driving on the road and suddenly the tire exploded. I didn't know she had something flew, apparently flew into the road and she didn't have time to avoid it and hit it.

I find out, like I said, I found out years later she aimed for it. We pile back in the truck and we slowly like two miles an hour drive up to the exit, pull off, and everything is closed. But there is a gas station. And so I pull up to the gas station and I'm sitting there just waiting for it to open and sitting there and sitting there, probably sit there for 30 minutes, I think to go look and see when they open. Because I feel like a gas station should be open at this point this is like maybe 5 in the morning 4 or 5 in the morning at this point

and there's a sign that says close to the holiday fuck I wish I'd seen that 20 minutes ago before we just sat in this fucking parking lot you know but I'm a 20 year old idiot and it's in the wee hours of the morning and I'm exhausted and we've been driving for more than 24 hours straight

and I'm not thinking straight and I'm also young and dumb so I got like fuck this place is closed for the holiday look around there's no other businesses even around us like some houses and shit and so we discuss it and figure out the next best thing to do would be to drive to the next exit like get back on the interstate drive to the next exit and we're sitting there talking about this and i'm like i don't think we can do that because it might ruin the rim and we definitely can't afford to buy a new rim but this place is clearly not open and we're trying to figure out what the fuck to do and i and then very like very softly we start to hear this noise and we're both aware of it because it's the only noise in the world

other than fucking 3 a.m. bugs chirping. It's just going for a long time very slowly. I'm like, do you hear that? She's like, yeah, I think I do. I'm like, it sounds familiar, right? She's like, it does sound familiar. What the fuck is that? We're sitting here trying to figure it out,

and it's slowly and slowly getting louder and louder. Then I realized that's the same fucking noise we were making. And right about the time I realized that this car comes over a hill by the gas station and he's got a busted out tire and he's driving on his rim and he's going, you know, three or four miles an hour. And he goes right past this gas station we're at and just keeps going down the road. And I go, that guy's got a busted tire like we do, like exactly like we do. And she's like, yeah, that's, that's crazy. I the road and i go that guy's got a busted tire like we do like exactly like we do and she's like yeah that's that's crazy i go he's local he's got pennsylvania tags he knows where the gas station is he's going to a gas station to get his tire fixed the same

way we are he knows this one isn't open let's just fucking follow him and she's like that makes perfect sense so we hop back in the car and we pull out and we've cat we very slowly follow him and i'm thinking if he's driving on a rim he it's safe right if so we'll just convoy to the same gas station and so he ends up getting on the interstate and pulling out and going very slowly kind of like on the median and i pull up beside him and just kind of follow him for a while i want to to say like maybe 10 minutes of just this very slow, like four mile an hour convoy with sparks and shit flying. Every once in a while,

like the rim will hit and you'll see sparks fly. And that's kind of scary. And eventually he just stops and pulls over and he gets out of his car, looks at us. And so I stop and I go, hey man, what's up?

And he goes, what are you following me for? And I go, oh, sorry. I saw you had a flat tire and you're local. We also have this shredded tire. We figured we'd just follow you to the gas station. And he goes, what are you following me for? And I go, oh, sorry, I saw you had a flat tire and you're local. We also have this shredded tire. We figured we'd just follow you to the gas station. And he goes, it's a fucking holiday, dude. There's no gas stations open. I'm going home. Leave me alone. He was not happy that we were following him. He was really griffed out. And I

go, oh, there's no gas stations open anywhere. And he goes, dude, it's a holiday. Nobody's going to be open. Just fucking stop following me. And so we're like, we're extra fucked now. Okay. And so we just let him go. And we sat there for a little bit and let him get ahead of us because we just felt weird. And then eventually we drove a little bit further. By the way, still haven't seen any cars or anything at this point that I can remember. And we just keep driving on the like on the shoulder until we get to another exit. We just pull into that exit figuring anything's better than this, right? And I'm completely and totally at a loss for what to do. The sun is starting to come up. We've now been a couple of hours into this completely

destroyed tire. I've been driving on this completely destroyed tire for a while. I'm pretty convinced my rim is probably ruined. And there is a gas station where we pull off, pull up into that. It's not open. But after sitting there for about 15 minutes, just like just giving up on life, right? Like sitting there like, I guess we could call your parents, but it's five in the morning. Like we don't want to wake anybody up. And so we're just like, just wait till the sun comes up and the world wakes up and then we'll just see like, just wait till the sun comes up and the world wakes up and then we'll just see what, figure out what happened, what to do, you know? And about that time, the gas station opens up. Somebody pulls up and it's like a service station

and opens up the gas station and goes, oh yeah, I can fix it. And then it pulls us into a service station. And maybe like an hour and a half later, we were on our way. Rim was totally fine. I drove that rim in that truck for another probably six years. I probably drove that truck until 2000 and it was totally fine. So for what it's worth, I don't know if I was just extra lucky, but that rim held up like a champ. One thing I found out that day, though, later when we went to get gas much much further on down the road i pull over a gas station fill it up in gas i walk over to get a soda or whatever come back and there's just gas pouring all over the ground around my truck and i'm like what the fuck and i run over and i take

it out and i look and i can't see anything so i put it back in i turn it back on gas starts coming out of the bottom again so i stop it i look under my truck and this is when i discovered there's a filler pipe that goes clearly that goes from that, you know, from where you put the nozzle in the down, down the truck and then eventually goes into the gas tank. Whatever my wife hit kicked up enough debris that it hit that filler pipe and shredded it. It was full of holes.

And I'm looking at that and I'm thinking, How the fuck am I ever going to get gas again? Now I'm extra fucked. And I'm by the way. Beyond broke. I am 20 years old. I am newly married. Living in the. I'm an E3 in the army.

I think I'm making like $1,100 a month. My wife didn't work yet at the time. And so we were living off of $1,100 a month. I had about $600 a month in car payments and insurance, about $550 a month in car payment and insurance. So there wasn't a lot left to deal with food, let alone repairs, right? And then it hits me, oh, just duct tape. So I run inside and I get some duct tape and I duct taped it up. And it worked. I was able to fill up my truck. I drive off. I drop her off at her parents. I go down to

South Carolina. I enroll in this college. I do the whole thing. Every three weeks or so, I have to completely and totally replace the duct tape because the gas, over time, eats away at the duct tape. And then I knew... Every once in a while, I'd go to put gas in my truck, and then I'd start to see gas falling out of the bottom of it. I'd go up time to reduct tape. I probably did that duct tape thing for, I don't know, a year before I replaced it. I just couldn't afford to replace it. And duct tape was cheap or free. I was able to get it from the army.

So, uh, I just, every couple of weeks I just duct taped my filler pipe until the gas ate away. And then I had to do it again. Eventually, I got it fixed. And it was like, I don't know, 40 or 50 bucks to fix it. Probably it wasn't terrible, but the duct tape did the trick for a long time. It didn't it didn't dawn on me until much later when I woke up and I'm looking around in that truck and we're fishtailing and slowing down from going like probably 65 and I'm freaking out. We're kicking up sparks left and right. Like it looks like the back of the truck has exploded.

And when we're driving very slowly down the median, we're kicking up sparks left and right. That whole time I had a filler pipe that was just, it looked like Wolverine gutted it with his claws. Any of those sparks could have gone in there and caught a little bit of gas. And I wouldn't be having this conversation with you right now because I would have died in a fireball in 1996. It's phenomenal that that didn't happen. I feel really lucky thinking back on it in the moment and looking back on the situation that we didn't catch fire and blow the fuck up. And it's probably also incredibly lucky that for the next year that I drove around with a shredded filler pipe that the tape saved me and that it didn't happen again. So many things could have gone wrong in so many ways that night and then for probably the next year and that truck and man, knock on wood, made it through that.

in that truck. And man, knock on wood, I made it through that. That might be the last driving catastrophe story I have, but it might not. I sit down and pour over my past and see if there's anything else that comes to mind. Because I had completely and totally forgotten about that one until the other day. And that was the main story of my life for a while. I had the, I had the, the time my, my ex-wife hit something in the street and destroyed my tire. And I ended up in a convoy with another incredibly agitated dude who also had a flat tire or the time that I drove my, my car into a ditch and then it flooded and the ditch took my car away.

What, what kind of crazy car stories do you have? I'd love to hear them. If you want to send me an email at ericjeffsposs.com, let me know about your wildest car stories. Hopefully it doesn't end in tragedy. Ultimately, the only thing that was harmed in either of the stories I've told on this podcast, well, I guess I got struck by lightning a little bit, right?

I don't know the long-term effects of that, but it was mostly just time and money for me. Well, I'm glad I survived. Alright.