"You can't sleep here!"

This is the story of the epic adventure (or epic failure for you glass half empty pessimists) that I took with 6 buddies to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, my freshman year of college. We ALMOST made it.

It started off similar to nearly every road trip I ever took in college. And by that I mean there was a bunch of dudes sitting around, date-less and dejected, on a Friday night, when someone finally said something along the lines of, "Forget chicks, dude! They're all shady! It's freekin dude's night out! Let's take a road trip!" Those 15 words and one article (BAM - Aced the grammar test) spawned what would become, in hindsight, one of the funniest nights of my entire life!

After the 7 of us gathered a few essentials - candy, soda, blankets, a gun (kidding) - we quickly realized only one of us owned a vehicle that would comfortably fit 5, much less 7. Seeing as how our checking accounts might have combined to produce $300 on a good day (Mine had like $8.25) the option to take 2 cars was quickly thrown out. So the 7 of us piled in my buddy Brian's 1980 something Jeep Wagoneer. It looked something like this...

It sat 5. We squeezed in 7, and luggage. Now I can recall repeated road trips growing up where my little brother and I had to sit on a sleeping bag draped across all the luggage in the back of our family van. So while my buddies bickered and argued over "who killed who" (Monty Python) and who'd sit where, I gladly called dibs on the "way-way back."

Fast forward a couple hours. We're driving up the notorious Jackson pass, doing a whopping 20 mph when the whole car begins to shake. The shaking was quickly followed up by smoke leaking out from under the hood. Brian, who was driving, started to panic. Pause. Panic is not the right word. You would've thought the man was pregnant and just went into labor! He pulled over and after a seriously heated, and heavily divided debate, we decided to keep going til we reached the top. The shaking, and the smoke continued as we crawled even slower up the remainder of the pass.

We finally pulled over in what appeared to be a dark, unoccupied gas station on the edge of town. Tempers flared again as we piled out of the car and and continued our argument under the moonlight. Eventually we began to think logically about possible places to lay our head for the night. After a few minutes we came to the conclusion that we could either sleep right there at the dark gas station, possibly playing paper rock scissors for who got to sleep in the car, or try and find a motel. As we wandered across the street looking for a motel our eyes started to adjust and we noticed that we were at the base of a rather large, rather steep hill. I think they're called mountains. (I'm so smart!) So as we stood their next to a chain link fence, shivering, and continuing to discuss or options, we kept looking up the mountain. Finally someone said, dude let's just jump this fence and run up the hill a little bit and sleep on the ground.

So fast forward 3 and half minutes as the 7 of us, now seriously freezing, begin running across the road and throwing our stuff over the fence like a bunch of border hoppers. I vividly remember a van driving by, coming to a complete stop, rolling down its window, and staring at us while we scampered up the hill. After catching our breath we sprawled out our blankets and sleeping bags and finally laid down. I could hardly wait to get some well needed shut eye!

Just as peace rained down on our self-made mountain side motel someone mumbled something about Brian being a pansy and worrying too much about his car. In a matter of seconds, peace turned to war, and Brian unleashed a tirade of curse words directed at anything and everyone within the sounds of his voice. Some of us cursed back at him but more than likely none of us knew what we were even saying.

Suddenly, the verbal chaos was interrupted by a strange noise. I wish I could say it sounded like your average "cow noise." But it was different. Like a cow on steroids. We went silent in anticipation of hearing it again. We did. It was definitely a cow. But not just one. Many. Many cows. The noises seemed to get louder, as if they were getting closer. Someone located a flashlight and began shining it up and down the mountain. We immediately noticed a "trail" running smack through the middle of our small town of sleeping bags. Whoops!

Sleeping on the mountain was no longer safe as the 7 of us exchanged "worst case scenarios" that ranged from an angry farmer kicking us off his property, to a herd of cows trampling our man parts in the middle of the night. Thus, forever altering our future sex lives. Naturally, we agreed that if either of those were even remote possibilities, then indeed we needed to find a safer place to slumber.

So as fast as we had made our way up the hill, we gathered up our crap and made our way back down. We threw our stuff back over the fence, and made our way back across the street to the pitch black gas station. By this point it's almost 1 in the morning, it's easily around 35 degrees, and every one of us is dang near delusional! With no motels in "seeing distance," me and 2 other kids decided the ice cold concrete was the next best thing, and allowed the others the "privilege" of sleeping in the car.

So FINALLY I slid into my sleeping bag, pulled the zipper completely shut, crawled the rest of the way inside my bag, and then folded the top under itself as if to completely seal my temporary casket. I have to admit that at that point I could have cared less about the lack of air flow and the lack of overall comfort that made up my sleeping arrangement. I passed out for a solid 2 and a half hours.

Around 3:30am I was woken up by the unmistakeable chirp of a police siren. I poked my head out from inside my sleeping bag, half conscious, and if not for the noise I'd just heard I woulda thought I was about to receive an amazing vision. Standing just outside his vehicle the cop pointed his spotlight directly into my eyes. Despite my continuous efforts to move 6 inches to the right or left of it, he was right there with me, making minor adjustments to the light beam, as if he was toying with me. I held my hand over my eyes and began looking around the now red, white, and blue "strobe-lit" parking lot. I immediately noticed my 2 buddies, also on the concrete, but who had opted to "play dead" and remained curled up inside their sleeping bags. I stood up out of my sleeping bag and walked towards the light. I came to a stop a few feet from the cop. Our conversation went something like this:

Cop: What the hell are you doing here?
Me: Uhhh. It's kind of a long story but we broke down and couldn't find a motel, so we decided to go ahead and sleep here.
Cop: You can't sleep here.
Me: Really?
Cop: Yup
Me: Dang it. What are we supposed to do then.
Cop: Why don't you sleep in your car?
Me: (Already getting a little bit irritated) Because there's like 5 dudes already sleeping in there.
The cop moved his spotlight across the empty lot til it pointed directly on our car. Then, almost like a cartoon, everyone in the car attempted to duck behind the seats. He left his blinding spotlight on the car and the conversation continued as such:

Cop: Well like I said, you can't sleep here, so you got 3 options. You can hike all your stuff up to the nearest motel, you can cram inside your car, or you can go sleep at the hospital for $8.
Me: The hospital? (I thought he was totally messing with me)
Cop: Ya they'll give you a bed for $8 a night.

Nay do I crap you I had to shake my head violently to make sure I wasn't dreaming before continuing:

Me: Well I only got like 8 bucks in my checking account so the hospitals not really an option for me.
Cop: (Obviously frustrated by what he thought was a sarcastic comment) Well, figure it out son, because I'm comin back here in a half hour and I don't wanna see you sleepin on the ground.
Me: (So frustrated at this point) Wow!
Cop: And tell your friends that are still sleepin they gotta move too.
Me: (Completely and intentionally sarcastic) OK sir, I will.

So fast forward about 2 minutes. The 7 of us are standing in the parking lot. I'm of course going off on my buddies for throwing me under the bus, and hiding out like a bunch of sissies. Well, apparently me screaming set off a chain reaction. All of us began screaming at each other. You'd swear we'd just caught each other sleeping with each others' girlfriends. (As if any of us had one anyways.)

Well out of nowhere one of my buddies grabbed everything he brought and took off up the road. Our screaming slowly faded as his silhouette disappeared into the darkness.

All of us almost simultaneously: "Dude, where you going?"
Friend that'd had enough: "I don't know man! I'm tired! I'm hungry! I'm pist! I'm gonna go find a place to eat or sleep before I freekin go insane!"

We hastily unloaded the car, gathered up our gear, and followed him up the road. After only a few blocks we rounded a slight curve in the road that had previously hid from our view what would become our final resting place... for the night. It was the golden arches! Mc-E-Deez! Mc-FREEKIN-Donalds! WOOOOOOOOO! I'd never been so excited to see a McDonalds in my life! However, as we made our way towards the entrance our celebration was short-lived. The vinyl lettering on the door read "Hours of operation: Sat: 5am - 10pm"

NOOOOOOOOO! How could this be!?!? Forget sleep, (I'd already convinced myself I'd just stay up the rest of the night) at this point I would've donated a kidney for anything on their breakfast menu! Even if it led to the immediate failure of the other one. We were ALL angry! We were ALL hungry! And we were ALL on our last leg physically, and emotionally! We were sleep-deprived drama queens throwing our hands in the air as if to say "could this day get any worse?"
Well, apparently someone had a prayer in their heart because only moments later a small Mexican man appeared in a cloud above us and proceeded to deliver greasy breakfast burritos to each of us. HA HA! I wish! But seriously, a small Mexican man did appear. Only not from a cloud above us. Instead he arrived via the entrance to McDonalds. I'm assuming he was one of the cooks who'd gotten there early and had noticed us standing outside with all of our crap.

So the guy comes outside and proceeds to ask us, in broken English, what we were doing? I'm pretty sure all 7 of began speaking at the same time. This probably scared the crap out of him. But whatever we did, and whatever we said is NOT important. What IS important is that he let us in the door, despite the fact that they didn't open for another hour.

So there we were, the 7 of us, inside a Mc-Frickin-Donalds, at 4am. So what did we do? We did what any sober, insomnia stricken college student would have done in that situation. We spread our sleeping bags out in the booths and went to sleep.

PEOPLE... I'm not making this up! I seriously fell asleep in the booth of a McDonalds in Wyoming an hour before it opened. But it gets better! Wanna know the first thing I saw when I woke up? Well before I tell you, let me just say this. If any of you decide to make this true story into a movie one day you'd better get this kid to play the role I'm about to speak of...

Folks I woke up to a kid that looked something like that picture above, sitting at a table a few feet from my booth. I vividly remember that he had a piece of what I can only assume was an egg mcmuffin, half in - half out of his mouth, and the blankest stare you've ever seen draped across his face.

So THEN what did I do? I looked at my watch (easy there - this was pre-cell phone days) and saw it was only 6:30. So I went back to sleep. HAHAHAHA! I cannot stop laughing just replaying this night in my head. Once again, I'm not making this up!

So to complete this epic adventure in a rather short manner, the rest of the morning unfolded as follows... We all met up back at the car around 8 or so, and drove to a local repair shop. Turns out Brian was low on transmission fluid, which led to the irregular shifts, the shaking, and the smoking. I remember standing around outside the repair shop, kicking rocks around the parking lot, and re-hashing the entire night with my buddies, while they worked on Brian's car.

An hour or so later we piled in the trusty Jeep Wagoneer and drove back to Rexburg, Idaho. This concludes as I said in the beginning, of the funniest nights of my life. Thank you for your time. haha!