16. Spring Break

Two short words... eleven measly letters: that’s all it takes to put a twinkle in any college student’s eye. Spring break is revered as an escape from the stress and studying of school, and looked forward to as an indication of summer’s rapid approach. At the very least spring break means leaving campus, but for those with money saved up it’s an opportunity to do something much more exciting than sitting at home for a week. Don’t get me wrong: home is great and family’s even better, but spring break is a time to spend a little cash and get some sun. It’s a tradition no one would want to end.

Second semester midterms are looming, but spring break is near and I’m getting excited. I’ve been out of town with friends on evening or weekend trips here and there, but never anything close to spring break proportions. The three-day weekend of fall break four of us went on a mini-road trip, and shortly prior to Christmas break a group of guys and gals drove to see a light display. Both trips were a lot of fun and proof that getting off campus with cool people is great, even if it’s only for an evening. With this in mind, how much better will spring break be?

Campus Crusade for Christ starts early hyping the trip they’re going to take. I am talked into signing up and as the date nears I’m happy with the decision. A huge group of us will be spending a week in Panama City, attending a conference on evangelism, enjoying the weather, and talking about our faith with students on the beach. Some of it sounds scary, but for the most part it should be a lot of fun and I don’t want to miss out.

Everything seems to be mapped out – as of Thursday night, 140 have registered for the trip. Crusade is borrowing four University vans and has chartered two buses, leaving 30 of us to drive down in separate cars. I’ll be traveling in style in my friend Taylor’s small sedan with Taylor (of course), Dan, and Ryan, a sophomore brother in the fraternity that Dan and Taylor are pledging. As soon as I’m finished packing, I spend my last afternoon before break in hibernation. Tonight’s car trip will be huge compared to anything I’ve done all at once, and I’d like to be Responsible Awake Boy for the whole thing.

At 5:30 Dan calls to let me know they are on the way, so I gather my things and run one final inventory in my head as I go downstairs and across the parking lot to the church next door. Many of the “bus people” are already there, but the buses themselves are nowhere to be seen. Dan, Taylor, and Ryan show up around 6:00. We grab a copy of the directions, I load my things into the last empty spot in the trunk, and we are off.

The sun is already going down but the first leg of our journey will be an easy one – only about 45 minutes before a stop at Dan’s house for dinner. Once there we talk to his brother, watch some TV, and jump on the trampoline before his parents get home. After a quick dinner and several caffeine-heavy sodas each, we’re back on the open road.

The four of us are already in trip mode, eager to reach our destination but prepared for the long haul. It’s around 9:00 when we get back on the interstate, but we make good time and before 11:00 catch up to our group’s University vans. I spot them in the right lane as we close in, and Dan decides he’ll hang out his window to wave as we go past doing 75. Only a few people recognize him, while the rest give us the ‘who is that psycho kid hanging out of a speeding car and yelling at us’ look.

After a short time Ryan and I talk him into keeping at least half of his body in the car. Dan laughs but then a moment later starts digging in his pockets and seat. In a panicked voice, he says, “Guys, I think I lost my wallet.” Taylor mentions turning back to look for it but we remind him that we’re on the interstate, and it’s dark, and we’d probably all die. Luckily, after another tense minute of scrambling around, Dan finds his wallet between the seat and the door. We’ve had an early scare...but at least everyone’s staying awake!

At 11:34 we pass the national Corvette museum in Bowling Green but sadly it’s not much to see in the dark. At 11:38 we break out the first round of pop since leaving Dan’s. Sadly, the buzz from dinner has pretty well worn off now. Taylor drives another half hour before stopping to fill up on gas and let Ryan take over. It’s time for a complete changing of the guard, so I move to the illustrious and influential position of copilot.

Before we’ve even left the gas station it’s clear that Taylor is exhausted... Dan is slipping away, too. Looks like I’m solely responsible for seeing that Ryan doesn’t fall asleep and careen off an embankment. As I snap open two more cans of pop, fizz gets on the windshield… for a second I think, “Oh no, it’s starting to rain!” Immediately I realize my mistake, but I know my brain has begun to slow down. The rock CDs we’re listening to are losing their effect and the caffeine doesn’t seem to be doing its job.

In Tennessee the highway speed limit jumps around between 55 and 65 but we stay between 75 and 70. I don’t know when I drifted off, but I’m abruptly pulled back into consciousness by the sight of headlights drifting towards us from the left. My heart skips a beat before I realize it’s a patrolman pulling into the median. Ryan taps the brakes and I decide I should distract myself with the signs listing distances to upcoming cities. Birmingham: 127 miles.

We follow the road to the right around a gentle downhill-sloping curve. Even at this hour there is an endless chain of paired white dots coming from the opposite direction. It feels like we are in hot pursuit of the taillights suddenly disappearing over the next little hill. I’m so bored and so tired. I wish I had a pen and paper so I could get all this mental drifting down. I wish I could write like Hemingway, somehow making every bland sentence sound poetic. No, even with a pen and paper it would be too dark to write. Plus, every dumb idea sounds like gold when you’re half asleep. Birmingham: 98. Going, going...

I can’t make this drive feel like an adventure. Because I know I’ll forget everything, thinking of creative ways I could word each thought soon loses its distracting value. Sunlight –my eyes snap open. “This is nice and bright,” I mumble stupidly as I sit up and stretch. “Yeah,” Ryan chuckles. A short leg of the highway is lined with tall lampposts that feel blinding to my tired eyes. I’d fallen asleep. It might have been for only a second, or half an hour.

Which track of the CD was playing last time I looked? Ok...it’s still on 12. I need another pop. Birmingham: -- I didn’t look up soon enough. We are practically alone on the interstate now, but our driver’s side tires are starting to knick the reflectors on the pavement with discomforting frequency. I remind Ryan that I’m ready to drive whenever he wants to stop. Dan and Taylor have been out for two hours. It’s a little after 2:00 AM.

We stop for gas but Ryan insists on being fair and finishing his four-hour shift. At 3:45 I switch into the driver’s seat in a restaurant parking lot south of Montgomery, Alabama. Ryan is pretty well finished now, so Dan rotates to the front and promises to stay awake. I say a quick prayer as I put the car in gear and make sure to remind Dan how bad I am with directions.

He has the instruction sheet and we’re an unstoppable team. Ryan’s a goner already and Taylor – who earlier mentioned getting only eight hours of sleep the last two nights combined – is practically snoring. I figure two hours, and we’ll be there. Grab something to eat, get into the condo, and sleep the morning away.

...two hours have come and gone and here we are, still plugging along. Dan’s fading in and out at copilot but I’m feeling alright. The interstate isn’t exactly crowded at 5:00 in the morning, and we’re making excellent time even if the trip is taking longer than we’d expected. We crossed into central time someplace back in Alabama, so it’s not quite 6:00 when at last we reach Florida. The sun coming up has an uncanny appearance since I feel like a robot and have been awake since before the sun went down.

In Florida the traffic picks up and the speed limit goes back and forth from 70 to 65. The other drivers appear to be racing. I try to keep it between 80 and 85 but find myself following groups going 90, as fast as 95 for maybe thirty seconds until I decide that’s a bad idea. Dan wakes in time to give me directions and help watch for signs.

Finally, finally, finally, at 6:30 central time we arrive in Panama City Beach. Dan and I happily toot on party horns (brought along for just this occasion) as we cross into our destination city, forcing Ryan and Taylor awake. Which is good because at the very first stoplight, Taylor’s car dies.

“WHAT?!” I burst. I was so close to completing my driving without a hitch, and now this. “Yeah it does that sometimes,” Taylor says, leaning forward from the back, “just put it in park and restart the engine.” I guess Taylor’s car doesn’t like being driven at 85 for several hours straight and then suddenly stopping at a light. But I am one step ahead of him, since the car I drive at home is old and dog-like. The engine is running and we are moving again as the light changes. We stall only once more before, at 6:50 AM, we see our resort at long last.

The main parking lot is gated off and we remember that check-in doesn’t start until noon, (ouch!) so I turn in to the front lot adjacent the main office. It’s a good thing my driving shift is over, and it’s a good thing nobody else is in the parking lot, because I have all the room in the world but somehow fail to park straight. Immediately following our exit, as we are stretching our legs and squinting in the sun, the guard at the gate tells us, “You can’t leave your car there; you’ll have to go across the street.”

I, being meek, suggest that we listen and move the car but Taylor has a better idea. We mosey into the office to explain our situation, despite the guard’s obvious disapproval. The secretary at the front desk is very friendly. He gives us a temporary parking pass & our bracelets for re-entry to the resort from the beach. We crawl back into the car and Taylor holds up our pass while grinning at the guard, who shakes his head and raises the gate.

Currently I am much too tired and hungry to enjoy the fact that I’m standing at the opening to a full week of freedom from class and schoolwork. At this point I’ve been awake for twenty of the last twenty-four hours, not to mention the most recent four of those were spent driving too fast at night. My nerves are worn out and I’m getting a headache. For all intensive purposes, I am currently a waste of space.

Taylor parks the car near one of the three ten-story towers of our resort, and we stumble across the Panama City Beach strip. As we are learning to walk again, we decide to go down the street to a waffle place. Breakfast – which seems more expensive when you are several hundred miles from home – takes care of our near-starvation. The waffles are decent and we joke around a little when we’re done eating. Still, I’m so tired it’s a good thing there is little traffic. I feel like I might collapse into the road as we are walking back to the condo.

At the car, Taylor pops the trunk and we dig into our luggage. We may not be able to get in our room, but at least we can be first on the beach! The car serves as a changing room. Once we’re in our swim trunks we gather up Becca’s kite (yes, a large neon pink dragon kite…she didn’t have space for it on the bus) and our towels and make a beeline for the Gulf. There is hardly a cloud in the sky.

Although the morning sun is bright to the point of being blinding, the air is cool and there is a stiff breeze. However, keep in mind that we are college guys. We pull our shirts off anyway, and this is where I make my biggest mistake of the trip: in my sleepy near-stupor, I haven’t bothered to put on sunscreen. I’m on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico on a cloudless day without a shirt and without sunscreen. That’s right folks, a University honors student at his finest.

The four of us run straight for the water, turning and sprinting back twice as quickly once its chill reaches our knees. For a few minutes we cut wandering foot-trails in the cool sand, trying to appreciate our surroundings as we get used to the sun’s unrestricted barrage on our poor eyes. It’s been years since I’ve been to the ocean and looking out over the water still creeps me out.

I can’t handle the idea of ocean stretching farther than I can see, and I’m happy to be safe on the shore. Don’t get me wrong, the Gulf is fantastic and beautiful but I’m more comfortable around cornfields and forests and normal bodies of water, like a stream for example. The ocean is a strange thing – it’s so peaceful and so frightening at the same time; a natural reflection of God’s power that is topped only by the stars.

Meanwhile, Dan and Taylor are excited to get the kite in the air. They slap it together after briefly struggling to make the supports fit – it looks just as pink put together as it did in the bag. There are other colors on there, but they are hardly noticeable against all the neon pink. Ryan and I laugh at Taylor and Dan while they wrestle its four-foot wingspan into the air and run to catch the wind. At least an hour is spent in this manner, with condo residents peeking out here and there, laughing along with us from the balconies of their tower suites.

Soon we tire of running around in circles and fighting the kite, so we wrap up the strings and flop down on our towels. Despite the bright sun the air remains chilly, which is especially noticeable since we insist on being half naked. After maybe an hour of fitful sleep and shivering, we make the thirty yard hike to our condo’s pool. Its water is only slightly less cold than the Gulf, so our “swim” is more of a “jump in fast, jump back out” trial. The hot tub looks more inviting.

While we are dozing in the hot tub, pressed against the outer edges to leave space for a funny little kid who ignores his grandma and keeps swimming miniature laps, our friend Claire spots us and comes over to say hello. She flew in yesterday and is the first person we have seen from school. Claire leaves to read in a chair by the pool and the longer we are in the hot tub, the more lukewarm it feels. Even colder now that we are wet, the four of us shuffle back to the beach for another attempt at sleep.

I have to curl up in a fetal position to keep my teeth from chattering. The passage of time is a concept lost on me by this point; I only wish it were noon so I could go inside and sleep on a bed and wake up feeling…awake. Shortly after 10:00 AM the vans and buses arrive, and I explore the beach while talking with some friends. Other college kids have started venturing out from our condo and nearby condos and hotels. Already things are beginning to get a little rowdy. Welcome to spring break.

The rest of the morning cannot go by fast enough…by the time I think to put on sunscreen, Dan and Taylor have wandered off with Taylor’s keys. Ryan and I sleep on our towels in the grass directly in front of the car, waiting for the key-bearers to return. An hour later when they show up I’m starting to feel the sunburn on my back, face, and shoulders. This is bad. We drive across the street (which, in case I haven’t mentioned, also happens to be the Panama City Beach strip) to the convention center to sign in for the conference and pick up our condo keycards.

There are hundreds of students from schools across the country lined up ahead of us, so after finally pouring on some sunscreen I find myself a place in the shade. None of the sleep I’ve gotten today has been worthwhile, and I’m as exhausted as when we arrived – but that seems like little reason for stumbling around all day making myself feel worse. Dave, one of my roommates for the week, is already here by the convention center parking lot, so I roll my towel into a pillow and collapse in the grass nearby.

Shortly after noon Dave wakes me up. The registration line has gone down. We meet Dan, Taylor, and Ryan inside and slowly move along as the last of the stragglers file in behind us. After a very long twenty minutes, the five of us find our names on the list, hand over final payments for the condo, and take our keycards back across the strip.

At last, we can go inside and rest up before our busy week. Nobody seems to know where Brad (roommate #6) is at, but we’ll be around the rest of the afternoon to let him in. We will be staying in the middle tower, and although it seems huge we quickly find our condo on the fifth floor.

The place is shockingly nice! We barely keep our jaws off the floor as we explore two fancy bedrooms with full baths attached to each, a well equipped and organized living room, and a kitchen including an oven, sink, microwave, and full-size refrigerator. Not to mention we have a balcony with a beautiful view of the beach and the Gulf!

Dan and Taylor offer to sleep on the convertible couch in the living room. That sounds good to Ryan and Dave; not only Ryan but also Dave and Brad are brothers in the fraternity Dan and Taylor are rushing. We decide that Ryan will share a room with Brad and I will be with Dave. Almost before my shoes have left my feet, I’m in bed and out like a light.

Around 4:30 in the afternoon a couple of the guys wake me up. Brad showed up sometime while I was sleeping. We’re all pretty groggy and tired but I feel somewhat rested now. The six of us squeeze into Taylor’s car and we make the five minute trip to the nearest grocery. Our shopping list is indefinite but simple: if you find something good and cheap, run it past the group. If at least two guys approve, toss it in the cart.

We get only several different things but we buy them in no-nonsense amounts. A huge box of generic corn flakes, two boxes of oatmeal packets, a dozen servings of ramen noodles, family size peanut butter, two loaves of bread, etc. The finest cheap food a gang of college males could hope to get their hands on.

That evening at the conference center the University group meets to discuss our schedule for the rest of the week. For the time being, my excitement about the days to follow remains outweighed by my exhaustion and the realization that my skin is thoroughly lobster-ized. The rest of the night is an uncomfortable blur; all I remember is explaining my sunburn to numerous concerned friends and going to bed early under a layer of aloe.

Sunday morning at 10:15 I wake to the sound of Dave in the adjacent bathroom’s shower. I get out of bed soon after, shower, and apply the second in a long, mostly ineffective series of aloe treatments while microwaving a bowl of oatmeal. Dan and Taylor are still asleep but Dave, Brad, Ryan and I are in and out of the bathrooms and kitchen, enjoying the space and especially the fantastic view from our balcony. The comfortable, relaxed spring break atmosphere is settling here in Suite 507.

My oatmeal-and-banana breakfast is just what I need to start the day, and I go downstairs only a few minutes late to our worship service on west tower’s patio. Taylor and Dan just woke up as I was eating but the other guys are already down here somewhere. The weather is gorgeous again and the sun is bright but I have my sunglasses on and am better prepared for the cool breeze. After a few good songs, I go back to the condo.

Dan and Taylor are going outside when they finish eating so I change into my swim trunks while waiting on a bowl of ramen noodles in the microwave. I eat my noodles plus a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, put on sunscreen with the guys (any decent sunscreen application requires a combined effort), and we head for the elevator.

The afternoon is long, sunny, and a lot of fun. I play some ultimate Frisbee with a big group of friends, laugh at Taylor and Dan when they let a couple girls bury them in the sand, and brave the Gulf again. Today we run in up to our chests…by the end of the week, we hope to actually swim in it.

Awhile past five o’clock we return from the hot tub to our room, saying goodbye to the girls as they continue upstairs to the seventh floor. I watch some of the basketball tournament with my roommates and call home when several of them leave for the funniest-named and therefore most wonderful grocery in the contiguous US (whose name I will not mention for scary copyright reasons, but maybe you can guess). I manage to sneak in a quick nap, then around 6:30 go back to the living room/dining room/kitchen for supper with Dan and Taylor.

At 7:00 we take the footbridge over the strip to the conference center for the first session of Big Break 2002. The praise and message are both good. This is the first time all the school groups attending the conference have been in the same place at once, and the turnout is impressive.

On our way out the MC tells us to each pick up a couple free books and a case of light-up rubber balls. Back at the condo, Dan, Taylor and I build a tower with our 91 bouncy balls. When the rest of the guys get home, we knock the ball-tower down and throw them at each other for a while.

That gets old after awhile (when we almost break a lamp), and one of Brad’s friends comes over to see if we’d like to go for a swim. Those of us not still wearing them change back into swim trunks and go next door to the east tower’s pool. The water is a lot warmer than what’s in our pool, but still cool since it has been dark for several hours. After twenty minutes or so, swimming becomes too much work.

We hop in the hot tub to warm up before heading back upstairs. Several of the girls from the seventh floor come over shortly after we get back, and after we visit with them for a while all but Becca and her friend Lindsay leave. Dan and Taylor go for a walk on the beach with the two of them; I stay in to write.

On Tuesday, Brad gets the idea that we should make dinner for a group of girls whose room is below ours. He calls to extend our invitation and they agree…so it’s off to the grocery once again. We buy chicken, pasta, salad, and fancy bread. Brad told the girls to be in our room at 7:00 for dinner – so we put a very large pot of water on the oven at 6:30. Only too late we realize it will take that much water a looong time to boil. At 6:37…

Me: So how long will the chicken take?

Ryan: Um – the chicken shouldn’t take too long.

Brad: (laughs) We’re all trying to pretend we know what we’re talking about and none of us has a clue.

Dave: (also laughing) We’re gonna call the girls at 7:00 and be like “could you come in ten minutes?” and then at 7:10 we’ll tell them to come at 7:30—

Brad: Then at 7:30 we’ll call and say, “We have a small contained fire. No, don’t worry, currently it’s only reached the kitchen and…half the living room.”

Dave: Yeah, and at 7:40 we’ll ask the girls, “Could you stop and pick up some burgers on your way? We’ll pay you back. Next week.”

We all laugh a lot. If only this made the water boil faster…someone mentions the theory that “a watched pot never boils,” so we look away from the oven for a couple minutes. This also fails to produce results. At quarter till seven Dave actually does call the girls…

Dave: Hey…this is Dave, you guys can take your time coming up here. Seven o’clock is so…soon and our pasta is so…hard. (laughs) Ok see you then. (to us) They’ll be up shortly.

Brad: (standing at oven with clenched fists and wooden spoon in hand, threatening the water) Boil! Boil! Boil!

By 7:30 we are all set for our 7:00 dinner. The girls arrive, and we have a good meal of pasta, chicken, bread and salad. Far better than the food itself is the company – these girls are almost as much fun as my roommates! During our meal we play a party game from ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’ where each of us has some bizarre quirk that everyone will have to guess at the end.

I, for instance, am reliving spring break 1986. At a random point while we are eating I stand, walk to the balcony, slide the door open, step outside and shout “SPRING BREAK ’86, WOOOO!” at the top of my lungs. Dan is a fire safety inspector, continually voicing concern about all the hazards around the condo. Sarah speaks only in questions. Allison is a meteorologist (I do not catch on when she keeps talking about the weather). Dave is a secret agent. Dinner is a blast.

After dinner we talk and then play another funny game. A variation on charades, three people each round must leave the room while the rest of us plan a crazy scene. Someone is chosen to silently act out our scene for the first of the three ‘outsiders’ to watch. Outsider 1, in turn, acts the scene out for clueless Outsider 2. Finally, Outsider 3 is brought in and this poor individual must try to explain the scene after Outsider 2 (who saw only what was acted by Outsider 1…who in turn acted based only on what they saw from the original actor) imitates as closely as possible what they saw.

When you start with scenes that involve dwarves jumping into volcanoes and shipwrecked sailors turning into monkeys, you can imagine how the acting and interpretations are awfully humorous. This may be the most I’ve ever laughed in one evening.

Our entire spring break trip was sweet but Tuesday night was the highlight. The other days sort of ran together – meeting new people, visiting with friends, enjoying free time on the beach and in the condo. I used gallons of aloe, got several bushels of sand in my swim trunks, played hours of volleyball and even swam in the Gulf of Mexico for awhile on our last day in Florida.

The view from our room was unbelievable and the atmosphere was fun, but unquestionably it was the people around who made the trip great. Without classes or homework to run off to, I was able to relax and enjoy getting to know my roommates. I had a perfect chance to spend time with friends I’d met at school. And – even when Dan tried to climb the building and almost got us kicked out – I loved it.

The Panama City Beach trip went above and beyond expectations. There’s no denying the greatness of a week away from school, a break from the stressful schedule, and a trip focused on fellowship and God. On top of all that, spring break does wonders for chopping up second semester. When we got home, I had only six weeks left in my first year of school!