When I was unwinding my Plymouth Duster a couple years ago in Sacramento, I got a little fancy with it one time. I didn't think I would ever share these secrets. lol
Ok, I'll try. Now I remember that I went there to cruise around Sacramento and surrounding cities, but I went on a bit of a shopping spree also for some reason. I was piling quite a bit of junk everywhere in my pretty yellow car. Most of it was CDs I got on sale at Tower Records there. Tower had (went out of business last year) and Rasputin's often has sales on used CDs for real cheap. I got over a hundred good CDs at Rasputin's for 50 cents each recently. Anyway I bought maybe 150 that time, and I wasn't very organized on this trip, and I was starting to worry about stuff sliding around, when I drive. It took me a long time to organize it in a Target parking lot, and I went for a long walk in between.
Before that I had bought a negligee for my wife in a nice store somewhere. I can't explain why really, but I had taken the nighty with me on the walk, and stopped at a laundromat and put it in a machine to wash. 
I left it there washing and went back to my car. 
I did the rest of my tidy-up, and took off on a real wide four-lane boulevard and went a short distance to get the nighty. This was getting late in the evening, and there were no cars at all.
When I got to just before the laundromat, I did a sliding 360 just as I passed the driveway, and just before finished the loop near the middle of the road, I straightened out and drove right into the parking lot. 
It was a lot of fun or else I wouldn't have remembered anything much from such a stupid night, except maybe the gleam of my car:
http://www.thoughts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7838
Let's just make this into one big crazy-but-true story. 
Before, after, or during my walk to the laundromat, I had run across the street to a liquor store and bought a six-pack of beer.
And even before that in the Target parking lot, I had pretty much finished organizing all the junk I bought. But there were several CDs that I bought, which went a little too far, if you know what I mean. I bought some real bizarre recordings or at least I felt that way at the time. I only remember one of them, which was a group called something like The Mafia Club. Can't remember that exactly either. Anyway, I wanted to get rid of them and the others.
Really, I decided to leave the negligee in the washer and not go in to get it. Also, I'd rather not say exactly how much beer I bought. Also BTW, I had kept a magnetic card from the laundromat, which just had the name of the place. But by looking at a map, I was able to figure out what the street was, which Target and the laundromat was on, because I couldn't find the number of it without the street. Then I called to ask if someone had turned in the nighty to lost in found but they said no.
So when I got to the laundromat, I chugged the beers really quickly and got on the freeway. I noticed I was half way to a blackout, when I first looked in my rear-view mirror on the freeway. Anyway, I called upon all of my strength and knowledge of how to get home to the Bay Area, before I was too far gone. Fortunately right away, I kind of drew a map in my head of what my route would be. I don't know any other way to say it.
I only spent about fifteen minutes on the freeway in Sacramento, and it was probably the most amazing route I ever took, and I took some doozies in my early twenties. (I'm sorry I was not able to retain the memory of it to marvel at it, and I tried, but was only able to remember a few of the prominent details.) After that fifteen minutes, I'm pretty sure I didn't go on the freeway again. On one stretch of my route, probably some frontage road somewhere, I tossed out onto the road the about twelve to sixteen CDs. I figure I got about half way home, before I was able to determine somehow that I would pass out soon. I guess now that I would have, if I had kept going. So right then, I stopped in some medium-sized town and quickly found a small parking lot with several cars in it. And I went to sleep.
- I'd like to interrupt the story again to say that I must have a knack for this because my first DUI arrest has an incredible "blackout" story associated with it. I had given a couple of friends a ride to the beach near Pescadero, CA. I had drank my usual 12-pack of beer. I may have held one or two out, because I decided to started to do shots of whiskey at my best friend's house that night. That's my best guess, and I'll give as an accurate a story as possible, since this was 25 years ago. I was driving my '67 Volvo then, of course, and I got in it with my two other friends who were at the party. They weren't great friends, and I definitely can't go into that part of the story. I had driven on Highway 84, the road we took, many times, so I knew it really well, and (when not drunk) I would always take it at top speed. I got drunk and drove here and there every Friday night after work for three years, but I would always drive very conservatively and never fast. But, I guess, because they weren't great friends and to impress them, I suppose, I decided to take 84 again through the mountains, that night, with them, at top speed. I dropped them off at the beach and drove along Highway 1 to Santa Cruz and drove along Highway 17 through the mountains. Highway 17 is a two-lane divided freeway. When I got almost to the bottom of the hill in Los Gatos, I spun-out just before the last big curve. I can remember it well and almost still feel it, because it was pretty cool. The back of my Volvo hit the center divider, and I spun to a stop, facing forward, just a little crooked in the slow lane and partially in the emergency lane. I quickly realized that nothing really bad had happened and took off fast. I took CA-280, then CA-85, which is a two-lane freeway through that section of Mountain View, CA. It was a really neat freeway, and I don't know if how much it has stayed the same, because they've done a lot of construction on it just recently. It was neat because it's on a narrow grade, elevated above the city and the right side of it going West, the opposite direction is like CA-92 that cuts through San Mateo, CA. And the center median is really large in several spots on both sides of the freeway, and there are lots of bushes. Anyway, I was going East on 92, and I must have blacked out, because, at the time. I didn't remember stopping at all. I stopped in one of those large dirt areas in the center median. I was arrested by the Highway Patrol. They said that my car was still running and the music was on when they found me passed out. I was taken to the county jail, one-quarter mile from my home with my mom in Palo Alto. I can't remember, who came to bail me out, but I was bailed out early the next morning. I have still two more "blackout" stories. But each one of them is even, maybe, a hundred times more wild than my arrest one, so I"ll need to work on 'em a bit.
I woke up, and it was probably around 7AM. I was still woozy as I drove out of the lot, and I cringed as I saw a cop sitting on the street in plain view ahead of me as I drove onto the street. I was terribly relieved that he didn't come after me and starting to wonder why he didn't arrest me the night before.
I found then that I had gone the correct way, although I could probably never find that route again. I was pretty much right on course and again headed "straight" and directly back home. I was tired and/or hungover, but I was able to drive home on the freeway all the way back to the Bay Area, without too much trouble.
The first blackout I had was in 1981, when I was 20, and it also happened on a day that I had been driving in the Santa Cruz Mountains on Highway 17. At the time, I had a very clear memory of just before and just after it because the locations were very distinctive. In my 20s, I use to tell short versions of some of these stories fairly often, and then through the years, I've remembered the details and relied on my original observations. I knew for sure, because they were sights I couldn't possibly have confused. I was driving towards San Jose, CA, on 17 and the last thing I remembered was just starting to go from the regular freeway to up the steep and narrow sections of it and there's a very big change there. Then immediately it appeared to me, I had gone over the mountain and was in San Jose. I was able to place the timing so well, because, yes, I immediately saw a few skyscrapers.
I want people to understand the scope of this a little, before I try to create a purpose for these stories.
I was not drinking during this uncertain drive over 17, but I had been driving during most of the night much of it in the mountains further north on Highway 84 or along the coast, before I got to Santa Cruz at dawn and took a short walk.
I was getting onto 17, when I saw a hitchhiker. In those days, there were lots more of them, and there are still fairly often or once in awhile even now girls trying to bum a ride on Highway 9 in the mountains there.
So I see the guy on the side of the two-lane on ramp, and I decide to pick him up, and I steer deliberately from the left lane of the on ramp over towards the side of the road. Before I knew it, I got walloped from behind, because I had been a little bit fatigued and driving very slowly trying to pump myself up for the freeway. The rear of my Volvo got really smushed by one of the biggest Cadillacs they ever made, and I skidded to a stop in the iceplants.
I jumped out and checked my car, but also as I quickly looked around, I didn't see the hitchhiker anymore. I just kind of stood around for, I think, a little while, trying to figure out what to do. Then a different guy came along and offered to help push my car back onto the freeway, while asking for a ride. We got it onto the road, and we drove off.
It takes about fifteen minutes on the freeway to get to the mountainous part, and in that time, we had already talked and he already offered to smoke a bowl with me. I only had enough time to take a couple of hits, as we got to the spot where I blacked out while driving.
The next thing I remember, I saw the two lone-standing tall buildings near the edge of San Jose. I quickly looked at my new friend, and this memory has always fascinated me. He was lurching in his seat, like he was amazed at something.
I just couldn't figure out how we had gotten over the mountain, because that part of Highway 17 is one of the most challenging roads I've ever driven on. And I felt light, like the car was lifting up for a second. I went to a restaurant with this guy, and we talked about it.
For quite awhile after that day, I pondered and considered if, maybe, we had been abducted by a UFO that just lifted my car right off the road. I gave up on that notion a long time ago though.
Therefore, it can be very easy to see how complicated, perplexing, and dangerous young adulthood can be.
My only other blackout was in 1998, when I had gone for one of my long bicycle rides on one of my favorite routes in the Palo Alto Baylands. There is a very wide levy out there that stretches for almost a mile along the edge of the bay with plenty of wetlands on the other side of it. I had once had to work by myself for half a day out in these wetlands a little further north in East Palo Alto, when my company was working with Pacific Bell to install cable TV in 1986 in several cities in this area. I was strand mapping at that point of the project, plotting transmission lines.
I rode my mountain bike back and forth along the levy three times as usual. I really like the return trip of the second direction I go on that levy, because it is almost always very windy out there and coming back I can get up to near 30MPH or more and sustain it for almost 1,000 yards by just peddling. 
When I leave the Baylands, I go by the sewer treatment plant, the dump, and then along Embarcadero Rd. past the Palo Alto Airport with a golf course and driving range next to that. I noticed I was more tired than usual.
I go quickly up the overpass of Highway 101 and down the other side. Then a few streets past that I go left down a residential street for about four blocks until I get to Oregon Expressway. I can still remember very clearly going through my neighborhood of Palo Alto on this leg of the route, because of the amazing nature of my blackout. I got to Oregon and as usual crossed half of it and got in the left turn lane and turned left across the other half. This is a maneuver that is unmistakable. I continued bicycling as normal. The next thing I know I come along the residential street to the stop sign at the busy four-lane Embarcadero Rd. again. What the hell happened? I knew then, and I've known all along, since that, that I could not possibly have crossed the busy and dangerous-to-pedestrians Oregon Expressway again without having realized I crossed it. It was so mysterious to me that I thought I had done a disappearing act performed by God to amuse me (I still was suffering from severe depression at that time after getting totally screwed by a cult. That story:
http://www.thoughts.com/QuickHitGondolin/blog/most-cunning-o f-all-cults-church-universal-215674
There was just no way I could've crossed that expressway again without knowing it!
For many years, I kind of thought I had disappeared, but then I concluded that it was just a blackout and had crossed Oregon in a total blackout. 
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