text: When I was 14 years old, my brother, two of our buddies, and I strapped four bicycles to a golf cart and drove it in the middle of the night about 10 miles to the nearest decent sized town. It took about 45 minutes with the pedal to the floor to get us to town. Once there, we ditched the golf cart on a plot of land that was being developed for new housing. We each grabbed a bike off the cart and took to the streets of town. We figured being on the bikes would be much easier to elude any trouble, mainly police, that we might encounter. We would've been doomed to encounter anything like that while riding the golf cart. It was around 2 AM at this point, and full of adrenaline, we became hungry. We stopped at McDonald's for a quick bite, before biking our way out of town. We were only 3 miles from where we ditched the golf cart, but it had felt much further. Plus, we had to take some of the busier city streets to get there, so we were just happy to have avoided any police or issues at that point. You may be wondering to yourself at this point, *what were y'all planning to do exactly* or maybe *where the hell were your parents?!* Good, valid questions. We were four teenaged boys (all between the ages 13 and 15). Our plan was to "run away". Although looking back, I think really we just wanted some sort of excitement in our lives. Both my and my buddies' parents were back at the house where my brother and I grew up - as my buddies and their family was staying with us for the weekend for a wedding reception. They were sound asleep. If we wanted to really run away, we would've had the riskiest part behind us. Made it out of the house without being caught, and then made it through town without being detained. May be important to note here that the golf cart wasn't owned by either of our families. We were just borrowing for the weekend from a family friend. This was easily the most delinquent thing I'd done in my life; I'm fairly certain it's the last illegal/delinquent thing I did too. We got to a point where we all stopped and wanted to discuss things. Were we really gonna run away, or were we going to head back? Our buddies had already destroyed their Sim cards so we couldn't be traced... We really thought we were smart. Mostly, we just didn't wanna face our parents and didn't want to get in trouble. If we headed back at this point, we still had a chance to get everything back in order before anyone woke up and noticed we were gone. We chose to turn back. To this day I still wonder how the story would've ended if we had kept going. Not well I'm certain. We managed to bike back to the golf cart without issue. Once we loaded the cart back up, we headed towards home. For the first time all night, we spotted a cop. I was the driver, mostly because I knew the roads the best. I took a quick right and pulled into a driveway. We sat in silence for a couple minutes just hoping the cop didn't roll up on us, and that the random house we were in front of hadn't heard or seen us in their driveway. Would be a strange sight and a quick 911 call if they had. The minutes felt like hours but we decided the coast was gonna be as clear as ever and we had to keep moving. A couple more turns and we were about to cross the last main road before getting back out of town. We made it. Another 5 or 10 minutes and we were back onto gravel roads. We used a flashlight for our headlights. It was around 4:30 or 5 AM by the time we pulled back into the driveway of my house. The lights inside all appeared to be off still. A good sign. We parked the cart where we had gotten it from, unloaded the bikes and put them away, and then we snuck back into the house. Undetected. We had done it. We unpacked our bags - which mostly just contained clothes, snacks, a couple knives, and random other little things we thought we'd need to survive if we were in the woods running away from home for days. We probably only got an hour of sleep, maybe less, before our parents woke us up. It was Sunday and we had to get ready for church. They knew nothing. Suspected nothing. A few years later, one of my buddies from that adventure actually did run away from home. We had grown apart and I hadn't heard from him in awhile. He and his family was from Oklahoma. Police found him in Florida. He was in his brother's truck. It had been about week since he had left home. I believe he was 17 at the time, maybe 16. U was the same age. Upon being returned to his parents custody, he told them about our first runaway "attempt". The golf cart and bike adventure across my home county. His parents passed along the information to my parents. My brother and I were in for a helluva talking to and grounding. It had been years and we thought they'd never know. But the jig was up. Now our parents and brother and I laugh about it. I'm sure they're just thankful we ended up being hard working and honest-contributing members in society and not criminals. It all worked out in the end I suppose. It makes for a decent story.