Something happened today that reminded me of one of the funniest moments of my life. One of my life-long best friends had a Javelin AMX during most of our college years. The car's been out of service for almost 40 years and sitting in his barn. My friend retired a few years ago and spends much of his time restoring old cars. Today he announced on FB that his next project is to fully restore the Javelin, which brought back an old memory.
When he and I were in our early 20's, we'd been hanging out one Saturday night just cruising around in that Javelin. We stopped around midnight to get something to eat at a fast-food place when a little scrawny guy riding a 10-speed bike asked us for a ride. He said he'd been drinking and had pedaled as far as he could. He'd been to the county fair and bought a giant foam-rubber cowboy hat just like the one below, except it was gray.
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We explained that there was no way to fit his bike in the trunk, but he said he'd be glad to just hold onto the passenger mirror and let us tow him home about 3 miles away, straight up the main 4-lane drag through the middle of town. Against all good sense, we decided this would be a good idea, and away we went.
It was after midnight and there was virtually no traffic, and we got up to about 20 mph. I had the passenger window down and there was the scrawny, drunk, giant cowboy hat wearing bike rider about 18 inches to my right, holding onto the mirror with his left hand and keeping his head down so his cowboy hat wouldn't blow off. I asked him if he was OK and said "Great! Go faster" so we sped up to 30. He said to go faster, so we did. Eventually, we hit 62 mph with that drunk guy on a bike hanging on. When we finally slowed down and stopped near where he'd asked us to take him, he said, "That was a blast! Let's do it again!" So we did. Back through town for about 3 miles at 60. Then we turned around and did it once more and took him home. All the time, my friend and I were laughing until we had tears rolling down our cheeks and talking about how, if we saw a cop, my friend would just slam on the brakes and let the drunk on the bike go flying by the cop at 60.
As crazy as that story sounds, it is absolutely 100% true. The foolishness of youth. I don't know that I've ever laughed any harder in my entire life than I did that night with us pulling that guy in the giant cowboy hat on his bike at 60 up and down the street. It's a miracle he didn't get killed or us cited to hell and back for engaging in such stupidity, but it made for a good laugh and a great memory.