The Ice Chest That Burped

As all of you know, all four of you reading this, my brother and I went on a road trip over the winter. We started the road trip on December 16, 2010 and we ended it January 7, 2011.

(This is the path we took, like a Jesus fish going through evolution)

One of the things we decided is that we were going to bring an ice chest and eat out of the ice chest for our lunches. We figured buying some lunch meat, bread, and cheese was a good way to save money. I was more concerned with getting a few twelve packs of Coke Zero so I didn’t have to spend a couple dollars a day getting my coke fix.

So, we’re in Seattle and we decide it’s time to go grocery shopping for the road trip. Now, let me start with this: I’m a cheap asshole. I think Kevin may want to define himself as “fiscally responsible” while he would me define me as “downright cheap, like that Dickens character, who is the one? The one that’s cheap and hates Christmas? but Amy doesn’t hate Christmas, she’s just really really cheap.” So, what this boiled down to was a lot of budget purchases at the grocery store. It’s like “do we want name Hormel Turkey or this stuff called ‘Good Brand’ Turkey Meat that is fifty cents cheaper?” I will say this though, while I wanted to get the cheapest of the cheap when it came to our food, I would never try and cut my budget at Coca-Cola. We ended up in the yogurt section. Looking around, we saw this really good deal: Ten yogurts for ten dollars. It was too good a deal to pass up, so we found ourselves filling our grocery cart with off brand yogurt. We discovered as we were checking out that neither of us really like yogurt all that much, but we couldn’t pass up the deal.

So we loaded down the Ice chest with all the food: the yogurt, a handle of whiskey, two fifths of vodka and a 12 pack of coke zero. The essentials, if you will. On the way to Boise, we stopped and ate our first turkey sandwiches. It was in a little town in Eastern Washington that smelled vaguely of cow shit and was the home of Bonnie Dunlap, the astronaut. Imagine Kansas, but in Washington state. We arrived in Boise, visited with Pat and then took off for Utah. We stopped and ate again, and this was the point where we noticed that the ice chest was taking on a bit of a “funky” smell. The conversation went something like this

(This place smelled like poo, it didn't bother Baby Guidry.)

Kevin: The Ice chest smells kinda bad.

Amy: Do you think it’s the Turkey, like maybe it leaked or something?

Kevin: I don’t know…

Amy: Oh no, can’t be that. It’s in a zip lock bag *holds up zip lock bag*

Kevin: Hmmm.

Amy: Let’s just clean it out at the hotel tonight, I bet it just needs a little scrub down then everything will be fine.

So, we arrived in Utah at this crappy motel and we did the Utah thing. Which was, like, looking at a garish Mormon temple. I took the ice chest into the hotel room and emptied the contents onto a towel on the floor in the corner. Then, I took the ice chest and put it into the bathtub. I proceed to run really hot water into it and dump an entire thing of hotel shampoo into the ice chest. I gave it a little scrub with a washcloth. It smelled, you know, not bad anymore. I dare say it smelled good. I sent Kevin to get some ice and we re-filled it with all our stuff, including the 9 yogurts (because I ate one for lunch that day) and the rest of the food and drinks.

(Proof that I ate the GD yogurt)

As the days went by, the smell began to return. Three or so days later we were passing through Kansas City, Missouri. We decided to stop at one of those old school BBQ places. This was one of those places that you see on Food Network where they just do very insane things that don’t make much sense, but the food is so good that no one cares and they manage to stay in business in spite of themselves. For this place their thing was to take one tiny poor little piece of white bread and then load it down with meat, and then put another little piece of white bread on top. Their next step was to throw some pickles on the side and then wrap it in a large piece of paper. They called this “their BBQ Sandwich.” This was a “sandwich” in the loosest sense of the word, I would define it more as “a symphony of meat with some soggy white bread thrown in for shits-n-giggles.” So, Kevin and I walked in and ordered our respective meals. Kevin decided he wanted a side of pickles. He also got an extra side of meat to “eat for later.” So, all our stuff was wrapped in separate paper bundles: the “sandwiches,” the meat, and wet pickles. Kevin then put the pickles in the ice chest along with his side of meat. He ate his portion then I pulled off so we could switch driving, so I could eat my meal.

(Poor Bread)

I should say that during our “switch over” I parked on the side of a hotel. This is how this conversation went, and for those of you that don’t know, Kevin calls me “Doo”:

Kevin: Doo, why did you park here?

Amy: I don’t know

Kevin: Alright, I need to go find a garbage can, I’ll be right back. *walks through a grassy knoll to a gas station to throw stuff away.*

I decided to make my plate. I couldn’t deal with the “sandwich” so I just fixed myself a plate with the sides and I ate around the bread portion of the “sandwich.” Then Kevin got back in the car and it smelled very strongly of dog poo. This was how this conversation went:

Kevin: It smells like dog shit, I wonder if it’s me.

*gets out car, looks at bottom of shoe and sees dog poo*

Kevin: *calling back to me in the car* YEAH! IT’S ME! IT’S ON MY SHOES!

Amy: *Uncontrollable laughter*

Fast forward to the next day, the ice-chest ice is pretty much to that point where It’s like water with ice cubes floating in it, and on the top is a soggy bundle of pickles wrapped in paper as well as the bundle of meat. Now, because we were still a long way away from wherever it was that we were staying, we just had to deal with the “nasty pickle juice water” in the ice chest, that I swear to this day, was greenish.

(Wrapping up a bunch of wet pickles in this kinds of paper makes a lot of sense, and by "makes a lot of sense" of course I mean "none at all.")

We had a conversation that went something like this:

Amy: Why did you get that side of pickles, just to have it turn the ice chest into rank nasty pickle juice sludge water?

Kevin: I thought it was homemade pickles, I didn’t realize it was just jarred pickles wrapped in paper.

Then we sort of came up with this brilliant plan, because at this point, even though we cleared out the “nasty pickle juice water” the ice chest just smelled BAD. So, any time the ice would start to melt, we would fish out a coke or an energy drink, and the few drops of water that resided on top was then dubbed “(the) rank nasty ice chest water” or “the nasty pickle juice water.” (because even though the pickle tainted water left the ice chest, the gross that was the ice chest after the “pickle incident” lived on in our hearts and minds for the remainder of the trip.) I mean, it’s like you couldn’t ACTIVELY smell how bad the ice chest smelled on your drink, because we usually wiped it off before we started drinking it, but deep down you just knew: it was floating around in some of that freak nasty. The brilliant plan was to clean out the ice chest when we got into Louisiana. I think I decided that Bryan (our step dad) could help us with this. Like, he would somehow have the solution. The man owns a pressure washer; I was thinking we would just pressure wash the ice-chest in straight bleach.

(You can see the smelly ice chest in this picture. Instead of cleaning it out when we were in Louisiana, we opted to drink and hang out with friends and family.)

Did we do this? No. Why? Because we didn’t remember the entire time we were there. We where in Louisiana for, like, five days, which was the longest we stayed anywhere. (But, in our defense, remembering the ice chest smelled bad is kind of like remembering that you need to change your windshield wiper blades. You only remember when it’s raining and they are doing a crap job at clearing your windshield of rain. In our case, we only remembered the ice chest smelled bad in the middle of those long stretches of driving, which never happened the entire time we where in Louisiana.)

Once we got out of Louisiana and Texas, we were back to those long stretches of driving and then suddenly the ice chest became an issue. (And of course by “suddenly” I just mean “obviously, once again.”) Then, we stopped at a little Chinese food place somewhere between Santa Fe and The Grand Canyon. Here is a tip: never eat at a Chinese food anywhere between Santa Fe and the Grand Canyon.

I was still thinking that all Chinese food places are as good as Panda Express, so I got the brilliant idea to order an extra meal, and eat it later. So, I got the buffet and then ordered some Mongolian beef. They put it in that typical Styrofoam container, with the big compartment and the two smaller ones, and then put it in a grocery bag. I put it in the ice chest, which was once again getting to that point where it was a mix of water and ice.

A couple hours later we had a conversation that went something like this, while I was driving.

Amy: Can you beer me a coke?

Kevin: Sure. *turns around from the passenger seat, reaches into the back and open the ice chest, gags and almost pukes in mouth.* OH MY GOD!

Amy: What?!?

And then I smelled it. The Mongolian beef mixed with the already gross ice chest nasty smell. The smell had been taken to the next level; usually it was only the person that opened the ice chest that got hit with the smell, but this time it left the back seat and wafted throughout the entire car. I was like “get the coke and CLOSE THAT SHIT” so he did. We just kind of looked at each other in abject horror.

A couple more hours passed and at this point, I was in the passenger seat. I threw away the Mongolian beef when we stopped without even bother to try and eat it, and I’m pretty sure when I did this I was holding my nose and breath. We switched seats, and as I was in the passenger seat when I decided I wanted a coke. The conversation went something like this:

Amy: I’m going in!

Kevin: You sure you want the ice chest to burp at you?