We used to travel in a 1977 International Harvester.

In it, we did some dumb things.

This might have been the dumbest.

The Harvester itself was a mix of tans and beiges. Its front passenger seat swiveled, so you could spin around and make a living room of it. It was big enough to sleep two, on tour, on a chilly night, say.

The Harvester was manufactured by a farm equipment company - and felt like it.

It was big. A boat. It lumbered, powered by a 304 V-8 which took us zero to sixty in fifteen seconds. With momentum, it could theoretically hit 100 mph, which we managed a few times.

This was Adam’s car, who bought it off a guy who used it for hunting.

The Harvester had a lotta mojo.

After RFK Stadium, late one soggy night, we’re navigating still full of static from the show - like two radio stations caught between channels. I'm in the passenger seat and, well, I'm cradling a two-foot Graphix bong between my knees and nestling a round vintage metal beer tray on my lap, piled high with about an ounce of weed. Why so much weed? No idea.

Yes, we were driving.

And yes, bongs were being smoked.

Oh you need more proof of our lack of automobile judgement?

How about my Nissan Maxima, a forest-green shtick of a thing which ferried us from show to show in upper-middle-class style. One late morning, on one never-ending highway, Adam and I began arguing about who lost the toll booth ticket. Two hundred yards from the booth we pull over, decamp, and start chucking everything onto the road.

It's a f√cking barnyard of distress.

Then a cop rolls up behind us, lights flashing silently. He studies my license plate which reads awkwardly, SLPNOT.

He pulls up slowly, his passenger-side window cracking open a few inches. Inside: shadows, shades low.

"You boys need help?"

"Yeah we lost our ticket." A pause. "For the toll booth."

As if it wasn't obvious.

He peers at us cockeyed, dumbfounded, inspecting our teva-tanned feet and stretched-in-the-wrong places tee-shirts.

"This is where you GET the ticket," he says, pointing to the booth.

We practically Japanese bow to him while stuffing all of our goods back into the car, blaming each other for miles down the road.

Anyway, back to Jersey. Adam and I are hooping and howling in the Harvester, grateful for the music, the community, the brotherhood. We crest a hill and the valley spreads below us, awash in flashing reds and blues. A highway sign looms:

Drug Check Point. Be Prepared to Pull Over.

Like the finger of God.

There are twenty, maybe thirty pits, set up like the runway lights for an incoming disaster. We go quiet. Stoned. Breathing slow and shallow as the Harvester coasts.

You might recognize this as a pickle we could have easily avoided - and you wouldn't be wrong.

But there were times we intentionally put ourselves into even more challenging spots.

Like April of 1993. Four of us, loaded into my tiny grey BMW 325. The Tour Beamer was everything you’d imagine: Bose sound system, leather seats, and a license plate which read - with a snarl - HARPUA

At the discotheque-turned-concert venue, Le Spectrum, we became fully dosed to the gills on LSD and...well, we had to get home. We hadn’t been drinking, so why not drive?

That's right, through customs, zinging like four ping pong balls, transfixed by day-bright spotlights, playing it cool at 2:30 AM.

Anyway, in the Harvester we glide.

The first checkpoint is full, a pair of waylaid hippies in smocks and dreadlocks, and cops with flashlights in their trunks.

The second: K9s snarling at the heels of a pair of portly unshowered types in bright tie-dyes.

The third, fourth, fifth… tenth, eleventh. It's a slow motion sprawl of bad decisions.

Of hackey sacks and devil sticks, equipment and food stores for burrito rigs, tipped over coolers, ice and cheap beers spilling onto the asphalt; a young mother crying, holding the hand of her mulleted and rat-tailed eight-year-old; indescribable dogs on makeshift leashes, someone cuffed on a hood, a paddywagon loading up, each stop worse than the last.

The Harvester is as conspicuous as it gets; it might as well have been a spaceship, floating among VW buses with stealies and 'searching for the sound' stickers.

We crawl forward. 25 mph. Staring straight ahead. Three hard minutes of dread. Every station full - until the twentieth, where they release the car ahead of us - and step into the road to flag down the one right behind us.

This is where you might offer some platitude like, 'lucky has nothing on dumb.' And maybe, just maybe, we should have been pulled over. Maybe we needed it. A correction. A lesson. A hard line between youth and consequence.

But that wasn't to be.

We slipped through and pulled over at the next rest stop, shaking, taking deep breaths, considering what could have been.

An hour later we cracked the doors and stepped out. We stood beside the Harvester, practically hugging it. And we thanked our lucky stars it was there to take care of us - even when we were too dumb to take care of ourselves.