Tell me about your four-wheeling experience.

This was back in northern California. We were on a trail that was designated impassable and wet, and it had just rained. Being who we were back in high school, we were like, “”We’re fine…”” (Laughs.)

What year was this?

This was 2003, my senior year. So we basically slide off what looked like a relatively flat trail, but it was winding around a mountainside, and got seriously stuck and almost ended up tumbling down the hill, rolling sideways. So we hike down and we find these drunks sitting in their Jeeps around a campfire. And we’re like, “”Can you help us, tow us out?”” So they’re like “”OK.”” They ended up using both the Jeeps, winching from the front and the back at the same time to pull my Jeep up onto the trail. And then they wanted money.

Wait, so they’re drunk and they want money for helping you out?

Yeah! We thought it was a good faith thing. “”All right, so we’ll buy you some food”” or something. So we get down ino town. And he wants liquor. I’m like 17. I don’t know how this worked, but we go into the liquor store. And it’s this 50- or 60-year-old grizzly, overweight drunk that sits around campfires in his Jeep. He asks me to buy him two cases of Smirnoff Ice.

Uh, OK. I guess that’s the off-roading choice of liquor.

I don’t know. We were expecting like Bud or, you know, a regular beer or maybe some hard liquor.

Or Pabst Blue Ribbon or something.

Yeah, but no, he wants Smirnoff Ice — the girliest drink ever. (Laughs.) And somehow the person at the liquor store sold it to me, because it was for me for him.

So they’re like, “”Yeah, it’s OK. You’re related?””

Yeah, it was like, it’s for him but I’m paying for it? I don’t think it was legal, and I don’t think the town cares.

That’s probably not legal and they probably see that more than you think.

And then after that — it gets better — my friends and I are all pissed off because we were stuck for hours. We’re at the McDonald’s — I normally don’t eat fast food, but it was the only thing open — and this Britney Spears video had just come out and it was on the screen in the McDonald’s. The obese alcoholic man is right behind us, like, uncomfortably close in our bubble. And he’s like (in a deep voice), “”So you guys like that new Britney Spears video?”” We were just thoroughly creeped out.

Was he breathing heavily on your necks when he said this?

Yeah, exactly. Like straight out of a movie. Get away from me, dude!

Did you hear banjos twanging in the background?

Yeah, “”Deliverance””-style. (Laughs.)

Did it end there?

Yeah. We got our food to go.

—Steven Kwan