We roll into Gadsden, Alabama, at the reasonable hour of 6:30 p.m. We've gone 200 miles on thirteen gallons of gas. The cops roll through our parking lot. Ted Boudalis, of Team 48 from Hoboken, New Jersey, is about to Sawzall the roof of his station wagon. "Uh-oh," he says. "They can't stop us from making a convertible, can they?" Later, after nailing Roman candles to the side panels and lighting them while he works, he shouts, "Awesome! Now we have ventilation!" -JJ
An AMC Gremlin idles for a few seconds and fills the parking lot with an impenetrable fog of oil. More beer comes out. It is a circus, sideshow, cruise-in, commune, festivale d'freak, and just a bunch of dudes fixing cars. Look left: shitbox. Look right: shitbox. Shitbox pulling up to the stop sign; shitbox leaving the gas pumps; shitbox waiting at a red light. It's like some perverted theme park. It's a Disney ride: it's a crap world after all!
(Singing! "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears; it's a world of leakage, a world of beers. There's no further we can sink, so just have another drink, it's a crap world after all . . . ") -SS
DAY 4
Gadsden, Alabama, to New Orleans, Louisiana
You don't usually notice the Cadillac's lack of structural rigidity, because its frame and its suspension flex in fluid concert. It's only when you hit the suspension's bump stops that the chassis flex becomes apparent. My foot, which is resting on the floor, goes in one direction while my ass, which is sitting on the seat, goes the other. Other teams notice a similar lack of wholeness to their heaps. Felix says the UggTruck is made of "dandelion dust and unicorn farts."
We see a sign indicating that New Orleans is only 100 miles away, and suddenly I no longer care about breaking down. As we hit 90 mph, I realize that we could have cut at least ten hours out of our trip by traveling this fast the whole way. Of course, that doesn't include the time that we'd have spent in the hospital recovering from the resultant fiery crash. -JC
The goal is to have the limo running long enough to get to New Orleans, deliver it to our eBay suck - winner, and never see it again. We have made it across Lake Ponchartrain and head immediately for the French Quarter to celebrate our triumphant entry into town. On go the prom dress and the tuxes, as a guy with an iguana on his head walks by. -JJ
We change into our tuxes - our peach-colored, polyester tuxes - on the corner of Saint Louis and Royal streets in New Orleans. By this point, the limo's roof has completely come loose and a flowing, floppy, duct-tape cape is trailing the driver's door and flapping in the breeze. As we idle down the street, Jean and Jason perched on the roof, the car is surrounded by a sea of people. Drinks are tossed. High fives are thrown. Cheers erupt up from street corners.
"What," one girl asks Jean, after seeing her tiara, "are you the queen of, honey?"
"Everything," says Jean, without flinching. More cheers. A random dude comes to my window and leans in, drunkenly. "I cannot explain why," he grins, swilling his drink, "but I'm strangely turned on by all this."
Regis, trailing us on foot for a few blocks to take pictures, climbs back into the car, shaking his head and laughing. He futzes around in his bag, looking for something. He finds it, laughs again, and sticks it in my face. "Dude!" he says. "Want a pretzel?" -SS
As we pull up to our New Orleans hotel at 5:16 p.m., I'm typing a text message to my hysterical Italian mother, telling her that she can stop planning my funeral. My typing is interrupted by an incoming text message from eBay - the limo's auction ended literally the minute we parked the car. Someone paid $394 for our shitbox! -JC
The auction is over, and we have a winner! It is us! Some fool child from across the lake in Covington has bid $394 too much to be the proud owner, and he is waiting at our hotel with his high-school friends and cash to take delivery. I break the news that we've lost the hood ornament, among other things. "We actually have a Mercedes-Benz hood ornament to replace it with," he says good-naturedly. I take his money with the same feeling.
Then we conscientiously remember to remove the live ammo we found in the rear ashtray and disappear into the French Quarter. -JJ
The next day, I find out that the limo's new owner is only seventeen years old when his angry father calls and demands that I buy back the car. I decline the offer but manage to convince him that his son got a great deal. After all, by the time we arrived in the Big Easy, we'd worked out all the bugs.
"But," I said, "you might want to have his school's metal shop weld in a center frame section." -JC