The Never-Ending Road

           #ReedsyMomentsIt started out as a road trip along Route 50 East to Maryland’s coastline on the Atlantic Ocean. We headed out in the early afternoon, figuring it would give us plenty of time to bask in the sun of Ocean City and later frolic in the waves. Maybe we would spot a few dolphins or whales breaching in the surf. 

       We decided to stop at one of the boardwalk eateries for a little pizza and a few adult beverages before starting our trip. We would then return in the early evening to our bed and breakfast in quaint and quiet downtown Berlin–the one in Maryland, not the one in Germany.

           My girlfriend Jane and I didn’t count on a twisting and turning odyssey that would leave us hopelessly lost in a never-ending circular route not included on any map or accounted for on Google.

           The highway supposedly ended at the OC Inlet parking lot. As trusting out-of-towners who had mapped out our trip as people not at all familiar with the area we didn’t have any reason to believe the route would not take us where our previously-reliable directional aids and our waitress at lunch said they would.

          The 10-minute drive to the resort area seemed to run according to plan until we came to the point where the inlet parking lot should have ended in the ocean. Suddenly, the road veered off to the right and had us heading not toward the Atlantic, but thrusting forward on a strange uncharted highway.

       Our New England upbringing had taught us to keep following instructions given to us until our experience gave us a reason not to. Besides, our sense of curiosity told us to keep up with the exploratory expedition on which we now found ourselves.

      This proved exciting for the first half hour or so when the road started stretching and unfolding seemingly on its own. As the pavement kept reproducing itself like some type of home renovation show gone wild and darkness closed it it began to get far too creepy.

       Our hearts jumped into our throats even more quickly when we took a panicked look at our gas gauge and saw the needle heading more and more ominously toward empty.

      Of course, since we seemed to have lost control of our vehicle we found it impossible to stop and fill up.

     As if propelled by an invisible tornado, our car kept plowing not forward, but in an endless circle depositing us again and again in the same place where this bizarre journey had started.

     Also, every time we looked on our car’s dashboard clock or at those in our smartphones they kept telling us no time had passed since we started on this strange odyssey.

     The never-ending and self-duplicating pavement kept unfolding ahead of us as it continued almost in a cycloidal death march. Jane punched her smart phone for 911 in full panic mode. Even the emergency connection on the phone didn’t respond.

Nothing seemed to bring this joy ride from hell to a halt or even slow it down.

     The highway, strangely propelled by some otherworldly force, just kept laying down more asphalt hurling us back to the same place. We couldn’t slow our progress or even steer off the road.

    It seemed like we could do nothing to divert the vehicle from this path as we picked up speed and topped 60 miles per hour at some points.

      Our first night turned into another day, and another scary night rapidly approached as our blood pressures began to race at the same velocity as the indicator on our dashboard.

     We thought nothing would stop us from meeting our doom. Would this insanity never cease?

      Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, our car ride from hell began to slow and the road began to smooth out.

      Another unexplained force, probably as strange as that which had landed us in this wacko situation, eventually brought us to a dead stop as the road stopped propagating itself.

       A green light as bright as a Las Vegas strip nightclub billboard came blazing across our windshield and almost blinded us.

     The ugliest eight-foot creature I had ever seen emerged from the light and breathed an odor as foul as a backed up sewer line into the car. In what, at first, seemed like interplanetary gibberish, he indicated he had come down to Earth on an exploratory mission from a far away planet of the future seeking a place to colonize for his people, whose area had been destroyed in an intergalactic nuclear storm.

   "You understand me," the creature said, " because our people have universal translation abilities. My advanced mental state and our advanced technology have allowed me to tap into your minds through your automobile’s GSP and gather everything about your civiIization I need to know to help my people to merge into earth as ordinary humans. I will transmit the information I gather back to my home planet and we will come down to take over your earth, with no one of your fellow humans knowing the difference. Of course, once we take over, you both will die."

      Then, without warning, the creature disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Before taking off, it put us into some type of deep sleep.

      After we awoke, Jane and I both struggled to get out of our car, but we found ourselves unable to move. Because we couldn’t contact anyone to release us, it looked like this road trip from hell could turn into the final road trip of our lives.

     After an hour of plotting ways to get out of what seemed like a life-ending situation, we found ourselves sitting alone in the dark. 

       We eventually figured out a way to free ourselves and somehow escape from what had become our Ocean City prison.

         Turns out our overactive imaginations had invented an entire misadventure that never happened. Aliens had not really appeared to us and the road had not mysteriously expanded. 

      We imagined the whole scenario, because, along the way, during our stop in the resort town for lunch, we had a few too many locally-brewed craft beers. The last few hours had merely been booze-induced dreams--or should I say nightmares?

     After we woke up we aimed our car for Coastal Highway and Route 50 and returned as quickly and cautiously as we could to our bed and breakfast to continue sleeping off our strange adventure.