Rude Awakenings

Two come to mind. Both came under the unusual circumstance of two of us being asleep while the third drove.

This required folding down the right 2/3 of the bench seat and two guys sleeping side by side at an angle -- heads at the back of the cab, legs extending out over the folded down passenger seat. Exhaustion is the best soporific. 

1) One morning Bill was at the wheel and Henry and I were sacked out, as we headed across the border from Nevada into California. Henry and I were dredged up from the depths by the sound of someone shouting and the sensation of have our lower legs pounded on enthusiastically. 

"Whuh?" one of us managed, "Whuzzz?" We had jumped to the same conclusion, I think: that our ship had been boarded and hand- to-hand combat was next on the agenda.  Finally we sat up, blinking. And there before us was the beautiful blue expanse of Mono Lake, a huge relief after the dusty, arid stretch of Nevada west of Las Vegas. 

Bill hadn't wanted us to miss it. We, if memory serves, were unfairly grumpy.

2) And then there was the night we were driving north from San Francisco. I was taking a turn at the wheel and Bill and Henry snoozed deeply. As Bill mentioned, we abandoned the 1 for the 101, to limit the curves, and I was bombing along in the wee hours, next major destination: Portland. Hadn't seen another car for what seemed like hours. 

After emerging from an overpass I did the kind of slo-mo doubletake that means your reaction time is dangerously attenuated. I suddenly realized I'd noticed a highway sign mounted on the overpass. The only problem was, it was mounted on side I'd emerged from and the back of the sign was facing me or anyone traveling in the direction I was. 

Yikes! I was instantly convinced of the only reasonable explanation: that somehow I'd gotten confused and was driving on the wrong side of the freeway, into the face of (admittedly, non-existent, for the moment) oncoming traffic! I did what seemed most prudent at the time: I stood on the brakes.

It must've been terrifying for Bill and Henry: darkness, screeching rubber, the car stopping suddenly as they continued at an unabated 70mph in an unwilling contest for who would fit under the dashboard first.

I slammed it in reverse and shot back several hundred yards to see if I could read the sign. Sounds ludicrously dangerous, except remember, at least now I was moving with the flow of traffic.

But when I got back to the sign, all it said was, "Wrong Way. Do Not Enter." 

Well, duh! 

Great yuks from the driver, general grumbling from the erstwhile sleepers.

I drove 'til dawn, pulled into a forest rest area, parked, and literally tumbled out of the car into a deliciously soft bed of fragrant pine needles. Slept a few hours like that, beside the jeep.

Then we pulled ourselves together and drove on.