April 1999

The second time in the United States. This time only Dimitri and I. It was something we'd promised eachother already in school: when we both would be working and earning money, we would book us a trip to the US and drive around there for a couple of weeks and see a lot of the nice things.
It was somewhere at the end of the first week, I don't remember exactly anymore, but I think we were on our way from Bryce Canyon to Zion National Park. It was really warm, between 25 and 30 degrees Celcius and it hadn't been raining for awhile already, because everything was so dry.
We drove around in a green Chevrolet and we were about to pull over to a gas station to fill it up. It was somewhere in the middle of nowhere, a really small place just aside the road with some old wooden "buildings' around it.
We gassed up and when we drove away we spotted on the side of the building this little tap with a hose attached to it. It was a thought out of the blue, but it was as if Dimitri and I had a simultaneous thought about it. We looked at eachother without saying a word, grinned and then I yanked the wheel and turned towards the tap. I parked next to the building and we got out. Dimitri took the hose and I turned on the tap.
For people passing by it would be as if we were cleaning the car, but we had a whole different idea (maybe a bit of a destructive thought, but well... we wouldn't break anything). Dimitri sprayed water all over the car, so that it was dripping everywhere and then we got back in the car.
We drove off and to the left at the crossing close to the gas station we had seen this empty sandy place. I drove up there with quite some speed and when I was in the middle, I stamped the brakes, quickly putting the transmission in reverse and stamped the gas pedal again, reversing with spinning tires. I did that a couple of times and in no time we were driving around in one big cloud of yellow dust and sand. Then in the middle of the cloud I braked again and we staid put for awhile, waiting til all the dust and sand had settled down again.
Then we got out of the car, checked the result and nodded approving.
Our green Chevrolet had turned into a nice light-yellow one.
(I'm not sure if the people where we rented the car were all that happy when they got the car back, but they didn't say a word about it. I do know that the guy who had to clean the car had a big job doing it :o)