Personal Uber to Another World

The scenery along the deserted road in the Virginia-North Carolina countryside reminded me of some of the most haunting scenes from Deliverance. To add to the negative atmosphere on this road trip from hell, my least favorite Realtor office colleague sat next to me The stillness on this Saturday night made me feel like a solo mortician closing up shop after the last mourner following the wake of the least popular crotchety old man in the neighborhood.

       My fellow Realtor, Jill McIntyre, had a voice that would attack your nerves like fingernails scraping on an old-school chalkboard. Also, if you had the unfortunate luck to look like you might lose an argument with her, her buzzsaw-like comments could leave you feeling like a worthless piece of sawdust inside of a minute.

      I had drawn the short straw as part of our office’s two-person team slated to give our Realtor Week presentation in Wilmington, NC—a nearly seven-hour drive from our Ocean City, MD home base.

      Of course, my own sales talent also had landed me in this position—I had wound up just below Wunderkind Jill on the top sales production checklist.

      This wonderful adventure started just like every other of the past business trips I had the misfortune to experince with Jill. No sooner had we hit the road than we launched into a loud debate over the most effective route from downtown Ocean City to Virginia. 

      I had what I considered the best idea, but we followed Miss Perfection’s directions—along beach traffic-jammed Route 90--earning us a two-mile-backup in Ocean Pines, MD and stone cold silence from Miss Perfect throughout the next two hours of our trip.

     We didn’t reach the three-quarter marker for our trip, Richmond, until lunchtime.

     This resulted in another verbal skirmish, because I favored an Italian place I knew well from my Army days near Virginia’s capital and what Jill considered the only worthwhile choice, a Mexican place she loved because of its ambience.

       Jill reluctantly gave in because of the location of  my choice, Cici Mama, only two blocks from the entrance to the interstate.

       To add to the wonderment of this fantastic adventure, we came out of lunch to find our minivan with a flat tire. I didn’t feel like changing a tire in my business clothes, so I called the local AAA-affiliated gas station. 

       After we sat sweating for an hour in the hot sun, the tow truck pulled up. Following another 10 minutes of fumbling with our tire, the operator presented us with the wonderful news that our tire couldn’t be repaired and, since we didn’t have a usable spare, he’d have to tow us into his station so he could outfit us with a new tire. 

      That trip took us another hour, and the station was in the country about a half hour from the entrance to US 58 West.

         After the side trip to the service station, and finally on our way back to 58, we got lost on a back-country road as darkness began to close in like the lid closing on a coffin.

      It looked like we would not only miss our own presentation, but we might have to chuck the whole Realtors’ convention. 

       As my crack navigator informed me, after driving around in a maze for fwo hours, the interstate was just ahead. We finally saw a sign saying we could pick up Route 58 in one mile.

      Before we got to the entrance, a strange green light blinded us.

      An unbelievably frightening and ugly eight-foot creature emerged from the light and stood in front of our car, preventing us from moving forward. We tried to back up, but we seemed frozen in place.

       The creature finally spoke, at first in gibberish, but finally in words we could understand. 

       “I have come to Earth on an exploratory mission from a planet whose existence your scientists have not yet discovered.  I am seeking a place on Earth to colonize for my people, whose home has been destroyed in an intergalactic nuclear storm. I have the ability to tap into your minds and gather everything I need to merge into earth as an ordinary human. Then I will transmit this information back to my home planet and my colleagues  will  take over your earth. Once we complete our mission, we will terminate all human lifeforms."

    Jill and I both struggled to get out of our minivan, but we felt bolted to  our passenger seats. It looked like the road trip to hell would turn into the final drive of our lives.

       I used what little brainpower I had left during the interplanetary transformation to replay the last few hours of our situation and try to figure a way out of this mess. 

     As I attempted to work out an escape plan with my extremely uncooperative colleague, we figured out that this whole scenario didn’t seem to add up. Why had the creature picked our vehicle from all the traffic on the far reaches of this countryside, just off a major interstate highway, rather than trying to make contact with far more important government officials in the commonwealth’s capital? 

       Why did he stop our nondescript minivan with two people in it rather than a family car carrying several more potential subjects for his potential takeover?

      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, no longer prisoners in a bizarre intergalactic plot. 

     Turns out our sidetrip, held captive by the outerspace monster, had not really happened. Our friendly tow truck operator, while we got our tire changed, had offered us a few sips of his local brew moonshine. The last few hours had merely been booze-induced dreams, or should I say, nightmares?

      After we woke up we found our way to Route 58 and continued our journey.

     Although we missed our presentation and the home office had to fly in a second team to pitch-hit for us, we did arrive in Wilmington in time for the concluding award ceremony to accept Ace Achiever Awards for being the most productive team on the Eastern Seaboard.