Adventures of the Simple Minded

So yesterday (at this point) my friends Kyle, Josh, and I went down to Milpitas to Dave & Busters. There were supposed to be more of us going, but everybody else bailed. Boy, did they miss out...

We had planned on leaving earlier in the day than we did, but we had to wait around for one last hold out. After he fell through, we ended up getting involved in a small project of Josh's. Once that was done, we loaded up into Josh's Dodge pickup and took off at about quarter after 6. It's generally a 2-3 hour drive to D&B, depending on traffic and whatnot, but we managed to make excellent time and got down there about a quarter to 8 - an hour and a half. Remember that, it's important later in the story.

So we go in and put our name in at the restaurant, and head over to the Midway to use the bathroom, recharge our game cards, and try to play some games before dinner. We'd been told it was about a 45 minute wait, but were buzzed back after about 20 minutes. Turns out we had been given a pager that was originally given to a 7 top that had pulled their reservation and weren't scratched off the list. So the hostesses were nice enough to give us the next available normal table, about 5 minutes later.

We ended up spending 5 hours in the restaurant. Literally. That's what happens when you're drinking and have a cute, fun waitress that refuses to give you your check. I had more fun in the restaurant than I did out playing games. Melissa was a blast. Don't worry, nobody did anything to be ashamed of. Well, except for maybe Kyle, but that's Kyle.

So we finally left the restaurant area a little after one, and go play some games. After all, we'd driven all this way and that had originally been our main goal. So we mess around for an hour until 2 am, when they close up and kick us out. Make note of that - we literally left at 2 am.

Now, Kyle had lived down in the Bay Area a few years back, and Josh wanted to go back on 580 so we didn't have to pay the toll. At least, I think that's why we took 580. I was kind of dozing at that point. Anyways, we take off over the mountains on some back road that supposedly saved us some travel time from the 680. We get over to the 580, and stop at a gas station who's mini-mart was closed for the night. No potty for me. We get back on the road and see some poor girl with a flat on the side of the road. We pull back off the freeway, loop around, and come back an help her. It was about 2:30 at that point, and took us about 20 minutes.

After helping her out and turning down the proffered payment, we went over to an office for the company that Josh works for so we could go pee and wash tire dirt gunk off our hands. We farted around there for another 20 minutes or so, with Josh showing off this and that, like the big crane that they have (that's what he works on).

So we take off a little after 3. Less than 20 miles down the road, Kyle says, "Wow, that guy behind us is really having trouble staying on the road." The guy was swerving all over the place, to the point where Josh actually called 911 to report a drunk driver. The best part of that conversation came when the dispatcher told Josh he was speeding when he told her we were doing 75 (because we were trying to stay away from the guy). But the guy started taking an off ramp to Tracy (I think that's where we were), so we slowed down and let him swerve past us so we could get the make of the car and the license plate number. It was a two lane exit, so we actually followed him off the freeway because Josh was still reading off the plate number. We then got to watch the guy swerve to the left, hit some bushes, and then over correct to the right, shoot across the road, and flip over. Josh was like, "Oops, oh, he's about to crash. Yep, he crashed. He flipped over."

So, of course we stop. The guy was okay, and thankfully alone. Apparently he was just really tired and couldn't stay awake. None of us smelled alcohol, and he didn't seem to be acting like he was on drugs. Kind of hard to tell, though, since he spoke little English and had trouble using Josh's cellphone. He also kept asking us to give him a ride, and we were like, "Well, the cops are coming, so we'll give you a ride after wards." Finally the CHP showed up, and talked to Josh for what seemed like forever. Then the cop finally arrested the guy and sent us on our way.

By this time it was around 4 am. Because we had taken this off ramp, we were now committed to finding our way through Tracy back to the freeway. We managed to do so without incident, but passed a few restaurants along the way and realized we were kind of hungry. We finally ended up stopping in Stockton (I think) at a Denny's around 4:30. Of course, by that time, it had been nearly 8 hours since we had last eaten. So we grubbed some breakfast, and took off around 5.

We finally got back to Josh's about 6 am, 1 minute after his wife called to see where he was at. It had taken us 2 and a half hours longer to get home than it did to get to D&B...