Decades ago my friends and I stole a car in Los Angeles and took a drive into the mountains just outside of LA. I was in high school and this was BEFORE all celular proliferation so we didn’t know where to go or what to do — we were shit thieves and one of us saw keys in a car and we jumped on it. Anyway — we ended up heading up a what I remember as a mountain road — and it couldn’t have been where Griffith park is or the Hollywood hills — likely, now that I think about it, we were so scared where headed east on the 210.
We figured we wouldn’t get caught if we just took the car into the mountains and drove home in the morning. Kidsarefuckingstupid
Anyway — the road we were on turned into a dirt road and we came around a bend and our headlight lit up two soldiers in full gear — helmets and automatic rifles so we stopped and they started screaming:
TURN AROUND AND LEAVE!! Leave now!!!
We left.
And got close enough to home to ditch the car and walk.
But this isn’t about our idiot joyride — this is about WTF soldiers.
Can anyone connect these dots? What were the soldiers doing?
(Also — I shared this because I MISS LA and I come to this community and find no post for a month! Shame on you! :-) but seriously — expates need your pics of parks etc.)
99% sure they were local National Guard doing a drill. They were doing war games and didn’t want you drving through the middle of it.
If they’d had an actual plan,they would have brought traffic cones, signs etc. and had a guy in civvies blocking the road.
This makes sense.
“Sure thing, Captain. I know a great place. Not too far from the city and nobody ever comes there. We’ll get our drills in and still be home before midnight. No, sir, I absolutely guarantee no one ever uses that road.”
It was scary AF — but other than us dumbos, I’m sure no one ever goes there.
Damn. I hope everything worked out okay for the person/people you stole the car from. Especially since it was before everybody had cellphones and ridesharing. That must have really sucked for them for a while.
Bet they never left the keys in the ignition again. I’m sure the car was returned and if it matters — none of us ever thought we would ever do anything like that.
Hope you were never young and dumb.
I have no idea what those soldiers were doing there, but that is one heck of a story. Hopefully your life of crime ended there.
It was scary AF — but other than us dumbos, I’m sure no one ever goes there.
