Timewarp/Spacewarp

When I was in my senior year of high school, I was working as the sound & light man for a friend's band. I had an old, beat up Ford Econoline van that we used to haul the equipment in. Once it was loaded, there was just enough room for three of us, with someone sitting on the engine housing.

It was about 2:45am by the time we finished tearing down. We hit the road and headed home. The rest of the band followed in a car. We were still jazzed and happy about the excellent response of the audience, so there was no way anybody was feeling sleepy... yet somehow, we misplaced about an hour and 15 minutes of time.

The gig was out past Allentown. We took some small roads till we hit Rt.309 and then we headed south. It was easily 3:15am by the time we got on 309. We were talking and reliving the evening, listening to the radio. Then the radio started phasing in and out so I put in a tape.

We just finished listening to the first song of the tape when we hit a bump that knocked my girlfriend off the engine housing. I took my eyes off the road long enough to see that she was OK. When I looked back at the road, I suddenly felt disoriented. Things looked... different somehow. I mean, everything was familiar, but it looked like it was in the wrong place in some way.

I kept my mouth shut for a few minutes, till I noticed that everyone else was quiet too. I glanced at my two passengers and realized that they were just as confused as I was. I looked behind us, but didn't see the car with the rest of the band members. So I pulled the van to the side of the road and said, "How the hell did we get here?"

"Here" was familiar territory. It was an area we were all familiar with, but it was south of where we all lived. It looked strange to us because our minds knew there was no way we should be there. Then it sunk in...

The tape player was just moving to the third song on the tape. Yet in the space of a 5 minute tune, we managed to drive right past our exit, and found ourselves down past Plymouth Meeting. That is a trip that would have taken more than an hour to drive from where we turned onto 309, and it would have taken several turns and stops to get where we were.

My watch said 3:30 by that time. I turned the van around and dropped my friends off. We discussed the weirdness all the way home. I was in bed by 4:00am, a full 45 minutes sooner than would be physically possible, even without having to backtrack like we did.

The next day we compared notes with the folks in the car. They were not much help. From their point of view, we were there one minute and then at some later point they noticed they didn't see our taillights anymore. They didn't give it much thought and continued home. They didn't get to bed till close to 5am.

So, does anyone have a similar experience? (And before you suggest it, no, we were not stoned. And it doesn't account for the time shift anyway.)