It all started on the way back from Asheville coming off a long, cold weekend camping in the mountains of western NC. Liollio and I were both driving full car loads of people and camping gear back to Raleigh. And as with most things that involve Liollio and I, this simple trip home quickly dissolved into a competition. I’m not clear on all the details of how it began but the goal of this particular contest was to get my car in front of Liollio’s Jeep on the highway whereupon my trusty shotgun passenger Justin LaRosa would toss objects back at Liollio through my sunroof. Liollio’s goal was the same. The vehicle that took the most direct hits would be the loser.
It began as soon as we left Asheville, both vehicles jockeying for position in front of the other. And for the most part that opening stretch to Winston was fairly uneventful; we narrowly missed Liollio with two tennis balls that flew to the right. Liollio missed high with one of his tennis balls. It wasn’t until the Winston to Raleigh stretch that business started to pick up. We were out of tennis balls and had only a peanut butter sandwich left to throw. We were sure Liollio, also out of tennis balls, would be forced to resort to leftover food as well. However neither of us were willing to let the other get out in front. I will never forget hitting the I-85 I-40 split doing 100 mph, only to see Liollio, big grin on his face and all, pass me to the right. 15 miles later I witnessed Liollio use the far, far right “breakdown” lane to pass some poor old lady at God knows what speed. At this point I realized it literally might take death to beat Liollio. I had to pull back. We somehow managed to beat Liollio home by taking a shortcut through his neighborhood, surprised him as he pulled into the cul-de-sac and hit him with the peanut butter sandwich. But we both knew that this hardly qualified as victory.
In the end nobody really won and I guess you could say the real victory was that neither of us lost our license, nobody got killed and a trip that normally takes about 4 hours literally felt like 30 minutes.
- Matt Herring
