51 dollar ticket. It's worth the read. Trust me. This has been Jon

Some of you have been asking about my bus trip and the craziness thereof.

Well, it all started with a long week of work. Got home at 3:30 on thursday, packed up and left Amazing Grace by 4. We had to find where the bus was picking us up. Eventually found it and were picked up at 5:30. Got to Kansas City by about 6:20. We had about a two hour wait for the bus to Minneapolis. I was traveling with Sunil Mohinani. I think that's how you spell his name. He's indian. Which made for a good trip.

Now, if you're a normal person . . . like I am. You look at the ticket that the unnamed travel company has given you. You see the cities listed on your ticked, and you think, "Self, that must be the cities that I'm going to go to on my bus to Minneapolis. Thusly, these are the cities I'll listen for when they are announcing the buses."

So, there Sunil and I are, sitting in the bus station, waiting for our bus, watching a small, eastern-asian man talk on his phone while crouching on a half wall looking like he was going to jump off and pounce on something and karate chop the ramen noodles out of it. You know. Normal stuff like that.

Now, I should also mention that this was both Sunil's and my first time riding a bus. You would think that because . . . never mind.

So, about 7:40 or so, some gentleman that probably mumbles if he didn't talk over a staticy loud speaker. So, he starts rattling off these cities for about three different buses. Sunil and I heard St.Paul and Winnepeg (which, for those of you geographically challenged people, is in the Yucatan peninsula or something; Antarctica maybe; i.e. not where we were going). So, me and Sunil both look at each other and give the nod of disapproval that this is not the bus we should get on. So, the whole blessed bus station empties out at about 8. So, Sunil and I go to the door we're supposed to go to and wait for them to call the Minneapolis bus. Well, 8:13 comes around, and a bus pulls out of the station and leaves. I look at Sunil and say, "Sunil, I'm not going to lie. That worries me alittle bit." He says, "Yeah. I'll go ask somebody about it."

I watched him walk to the ticketing table. Let's just say the lady that was working behind the counter acted like she had a porcupine wedged in amongst her armpits. Not a pleasant person. I could tell by Sunil's reaction to porcupine woman that the information he was getting was not positive.

Yeah, that was our bus. The winnepeg bus was our bus. There was no final call if you're going north! If you're going any where in between here and the northpole, you should be on this bus. No, there was none of that.

So, we had our choice of seats now in bus station. We went and found some and started trying to call people to see if they wanted to drive us to Minnesota, or Des Moines or somewhere on our ticket so we could catch up with our bus and hop on. I grew up in KC, but I just couldn't think of anybody that I was close enough to to ask them to drive us North. It was kind of a bummer.

So, we had to wait until 1:30 am for the next bus to Minneapolis. We were in the middle of calling our families and telling them of the conspiracy against us when a young lady got our attention. She asked if we were waiting for the 8:10 bus to Minneapolis also. We had the unfortunate duty of informing (we'll call her Bertha for sake of anonymity) Bertha the she too had missed the bus. She naturally was not pleased with that news. We told her we were trying to find somebody that could drive us north to try to beat the bus to one of the stops so we could hopefully get on. We were told this would be up to the driver's discretion if he would let us on. Bertha got on her phone and began calling someone. She said she might know somebody that would do it.

Well, it turned out that they couldn't do it, but they offered to bring us food and keep us company for a while. I think they actually were just bringing Bertha food and coming to keep her company, but we were there sitting right beside her, so they had no choice. So, Bertha, Sunil, and I watched a movie for a while until she got up and found her friends and brought them over. We ate their pizza, talked about college, talked about theology for a little bit. Most of them knew each other from the Catholic college they went to. Bertha ended up deciding that she was going to drive home and use her ticket some other time.

So, Sunil and I were left alone to our movie. Sunil was bummed that he didn't get her number. She probably wasn't.

To rap this baby up, 1:30 rolled around. Large amounts of cranky smelly people had crowded into the station. We of course were among the first in line at the door we figured out we were supposed to be at. Listened to a dumb, blonde lady insult a uniformed soldier. She had a death wish. 1:50, we finally were let out the door to get on our bus. Dumb blonde lady was shoving people out of her way to get the back seat. Sunil and I settled in for a long ride, relieved to be on the bus. 2:15, the bus still wasn't moving. Sounded like it was trying to, but it wouldn't. They unloaded us all and all of our stuff and got another bus. Dumb blonde lady ran to another bus that had pulled up. She quickly realized that it wasn't the bus she was getting on since it was FULL!!! She came running back over to where the rest of us were, but she wasn't the first in line this time. :) New bus came. I was on 8th or 9th. Got to the back row before she did. She was not pleased that I was going to take the back row. She didn't react in a Christ like manner. I didn't really care about the seat. I just wanted to make her mad. So, my purpose fulfilled, I gave her the back row, and found a row with much more leg room than any other bus row I'd ever sat in. Which, at this point, has been several. 2:40, we finally pull out of Kansas City. Random kid behind me grabs the back of my seat and begins shaking violently yelling, "TURBULENCE!!!!" I turn around and said, "Hi, I'm Jon. What's your name." He paused as if he wasn't sure of the answer. Finally said Justin. I said, "Justin, nice to meet you. If we have any more turbulence, you and I are going to have some issues. I probably won't do anything about it, but I just want to be honest with you. Alright?" "Ok." "Sweet."

Didn't have anymore turbulence. Made it to Minneapolis at noon. That's what you get for a 51 dollar ticket.

Thanks for reading my epistle.

Jon