Another one, just barely after that experience.
I graduated Dec 2000. Purdue was in the Rose Bowl on Jan 1, 2001. I was moving to San Jose and many of my fraternity buddies were flying out to CA for the game. So, I got tickets and arranged it all so that I could meet up with them.
I left my parent's house in Chicago right after Christmas with my 1985 Chrysler LeBaron Turbo all loaded up, and my sister and her husband in their big truck with a bunch of my other belongings. They needed to head to the West Coast to check out a boat so they were going to caravan and help me. We drove from Chicago to Lake of the Ozarks MO where they had their house, spent a day or so there taking care of their marina, and then got on the road to CA. We planned to split the driving duties between two cars and the three of us to make it through in one shot.
So, first things first... We leave midday, head west on I-70 to the Missouri/Kansas border, and then north on I-29 to meet up with I-80. Well, by this time it's dark, and snowing. Snowing HARD. Whiteout conditions as the snow blew over the highway. I'm sitting there, again just white-knuckling in my Chrysler LeBaron watching my brother-in-law's taillights thinking "if he goes off the road, I'm going right behind him".
I don't recall whether we started heading west in Omaha or whether we took some lesser road to Lincoln to meet up with I-80, but eventually we got on I-80 and by that time there was no snow and the roads were clear. And straight. And level. And there's NOTHING ANYWHERE. I swear I could have put The Club on my steering wheel, set the cruise, and gone to sleep. We had walkie talkies and I think when I hit the Wyoming border and the road finally curved I recall mentioning it over the walkie talkie because it was the first curve we'd seen in hundreds of miles.
The rest of the trip was fun. I got a little shuteye and my sister drove across the Nevada desert, and then picked up again over the mountains through Reno/Tahoe. We eventually got to CA, crashed at a hotel overnight, and then they helped me load everything I owned into a storage unit (it was still a week before I could get into my new apartment) and they headed North to WA while I headed South to LA.
I got to drive the beautiful 101 from San Jose to LA, in daylight, which was absolutely gorgeous scenery and a terrific drive.
And here's where we get to the part of the story that astounds me to this day that it worked out.
I'd never been to LA. None of my fraternity brothers had ever been to LA. I believe ONE person had a cell phone (it wasn't me) at this point. I had managed to get the cell # before we'd left, so that was my only lifeline to my friends in a metropolitan area of millions of people. And I'm trying to find them.
Luckily that day Purdue was having some sort of pep rally off Wilshire in LA.
Mistake #1 was that when I was getting gas in Ventura, I asked the guy at the gas station how to get there, thinking someone in Ventura would know their way around LA. That didn't work. But I figured out I was about 2 hours out, called my friend from a pay phone, and we figured we'd find a way to meet at the pep rally.
I continue the rest of the way. I get off the 405 at Wilshire and immediately pull up in my 1985 Chrysler LeBaron Turbo next to a Ferrari 360 Spyder, and believe me I felt a little out of place!
Somehow I managed to find the pep rally, and after calling from another pay phone managed to find my buddies among the few thousand people at the rally. It's not like they could say "we're the ones in black and gold" lol... I guess it helps being tall to survey the crowd!
I look back on it, when we all have smartphones, text messages, Google maps, etc, and I wonder how in the hell we pulled that off. We could do things like that back in those days, because we had to. But today I feel like some of those skills have just atrophied from society and I don't know if it could ever happen again...
