Twenty one years old, no driver’s license, ponytail. Seemed like a good time to leave Vermont and move to Florida. Drive over 1800 miles through a bunch of red states illegally? Yeah. What the hell? Through the haze of time I can conjure up some of the reasons why I did it. One, I hated winter. Two, I had just broken up with my first girlfriend ever which is always a fantastic recipe for doing something stupid. Three, Florida was cheap as hell. I had lived with my mother for a couple of months which wasn’t all that bad, but still not great in terms of meeting members of the opposite sex.

Two friends from high school, Sweetie and Jimmy Tigger, had a room open in their place in Tallahassee. $250 a month. A large house with a back and front yard on a block full of other students in the same situation. I had a whole $1200 saved, packed up my trusty 1987 VW Golf and began my journey just after the new year.

The chef I worked for at the time, Kevin, was distraught at the news. “Why the fuck would you want to live in Florida?” he said after I told him. “I don’t know,” I said. “Just something new, no winters.” “Yeah, I get that,” he said. “Well listen, I know I guy down there if you need a job. Chef Wilson at the University Club at the stadium. When you get down there, tell him I sent you.”

I left early in the morning. The back area of the Golf packed with all my belongings. Not much. A wooden chest, a drawing board, boxes with clothing and a stereo with large speakers.

I had a few people to visit on the way down. Colleen, in Vermont, about fifty miles in toward the middle of the state, my ex’s place in Southboro, MA, my good buddy’s apartment in Carlisle, PA, and my two buddies who lived in Frederick, MD. A roundabout sort of route I had written down on a piece of paper taking me from the top of Vermont, to the eastern corner of Massachusetts, then across the Bay State and the bottom of New York to cross about halfway through to the bottom half of Pennsylvania and finally to Frederick before making the long journey all the way to Tallahassee.

About an hour in, the blizzard started. Just like that, visibility became zero and my top speed became about five miles per hour. No snow tires, just all seasons. My little front wheel drive jalopy chugging through the piles of snow. I should have turned off and gone back, waited it out. As I continued, SUVs blew past me, and later down the highway I saw the same vehicles on the side of the road as I putted by.

I had no way to call Colleen to tell her I would be late. She had quit Sweet Tomatoes a few months previous to go and work at her parent’s bed and breakfast in Woodstock, right off the old I-89 a highway that went diagonally across Vermont and ended in Concord, NH. My plan was to spend the night with her and then continue the next day to Southboro. She had been inviting me down there ever since she left and had gone so far as to invite me to live with her and her family.

For the last six months that we worked together, Colleen had continually asked me over to her apartment or out for drinks. At the time, I had been so destroyed by my first real break up I had no desire to cash in on her advances. I was also incredibly intimidated by her. Taller and a few years older than I, an absolutely gorgeous redhead, a type A personality who worked out everyday and was an encyclopedia of culinary knowledge. In other words, a total badass. I was just this skinny dumbass with a ponytail. I had no idea why she pined after me so much. I often tossed all of that back and forth in my head when she looked at me and smiled as we worked side by side at night.

I was her grill guy. She the best saute cook we had. It was my job to make sure to transfer pans to her empty burners when she finished plating pasta dishes. With my spare grill space, I heated the pans for her, and while I stayed busy cooking chicken, beef, lamb, etc I also had to monitor everything she did on her station. Provide hot pans, pull down warm bowls and plates according to what was about to be served, and then do all the garnishes for her as well as putting the finished dishes up in the service window for the waiters.

Terrified. That’s the perfect word. I was terrified of Colleen. No maestro of the opposite sex. She was a woman, not a girl. She was the opposite of my ex girlfriend who had treated me like absolute shit by always telling me she wanted me to be different and constantly complained about my job as a cook at night and how I never made enough money to take her out.

As I pondered all of this, my car started to shudder and I managed to pull off the road before it slowly crawled to a stop and the engine died. It took several hours for me to trudge through the snow to the nearest exit, find a gas station with a garage and hop in the cab with the driver to go and uncover my car which had been buried during the time spent away.

We arrived at the garage after dark, the snow continued down. They said they’d take a look at the car in the morning. There was a shitty motel I had to stay at for the night. $50. I looked up Colleen’s number from a folded piece of paper I kept in my back pocket and gave her a call.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.”

“I’m not going to be there tonight.”

“Why not?”

“My car broke down.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Just outside of Barre. I’m at this horrible motel.”

She laughed. Oh what a laugh.

“You’ve barely made it 50 miles.”

“I know.”

“Will I see you tomorrow then?”

“I think I’m going to just continue on after I see what’s wrong with the car.”

“Oh…Ok.”

“Uh, I’ll see you later I guess?”

“Yeah.”

We both hung up. I didn’t see or hear from her again for over five years.