Travel days from hell

So I need to write about the worst travel day ever so far. This barely beats the time when Braden and Chris watched 'The Mummy' at Grandma's house before traveling back up to Boise. I'll have to post that story some other time. This is a long story, but it needs to be told. For those of you who don't want to read, there's some random pics at the bottom :)

This story starts out innocent enough. We were traveling back to the USA from Korea one particular day - which is typically a good day. We got down to the Lobby in the Hotel and I realized that I had left my rented cell phone back up in the room. No problem, I just grabbed a key from the front desk and ran up and got it. Well, everything escalated from there.

So typically we fly back on a Friday, so you check out of the hotel and then go into work for a few hours. You have to leave work in time to catch a bus which takes two hours to get to the airport, and you want to be to the airport a couple of hours before the plane leaves. No problem.

So after I got my cell phone we got in the taxi to head to work. The taxi was in severe need of some break and suspension work. It didn't slow the driver down any, and if you know anything about driving in Asia you know that traffic signals are suggestions to the general population and mere nuisances to taxi drivers. So we're dodging traffic and running intersections in a car we are sure is going to drop an axle. To our amazement we made it to work.

After our work was done, we made it to he bus station on time and began our journey to the Airport. Driving through town you could tell something wasn't quite right, but you couldn't really pinpoint what it was. Plus you're no bus mechanic so it's not like you should trust your gut right? It just seemed like the road was really bumpy. It was believable because there was a lot of road construction - so no worries. Well, bump the speed up above 20mph and you now have a serious problem.

As we were going down the road, any little surface change would cause the front end of the bus to bounce up and down violently. We were all looking at each other in the back of the bus wondering if the driver notices anything strange. No radio calls back to the station, no looking around nervously like there was a problem, nothing. He just kept driving - after all, who was he to test fate?

So we made it to the freeway, which was awesome 'cause we slowed down to what had to be 35mph after the second or third passenger was bounced from their seat to the floor. Still no radio message back to the station on our status. We were just creeping along half in the far right lane and half on the shoulder. The driver was obviously determined to get us to our destination. He had sworn an oath in blood that may the weight of a thousand Buddha's be placed on his chest should he not complete his mission. We couldn't argue with that, so we braced ourselves and calculated how late we were going to be for the airplane.

Then it happened. A huge metallic CLANK at the bottom of one of our oscillations. The front of the bus stopped bouncing. We were now driving in what appeared to be a bus with hydraulic low rider suspension installed. The front of the bus was riding on the axle while the rear of the bus was up in the air - which apparently was good news to the driver because he didn't have to worry about all that annoying bouncing, so he picked up the pace. Not for long though as the grinding sound of metal on metal caused him to think that maybe the wellbeing of 40 souls might be more important than him being subjected to the agreed upon punishment. So we pulled of the freeway into a little strip mall.

After about 15 minutes, we noticed a similar bus pulled in. It was empty and parked on the other side of the parking lot. We all loaded back onto our bus so we didn't have to carry all our luggage to the new bus. We started driving again and as we approached the new bus it was difficult not to notice that we weren't slowing down. We all looked longingly at the nice, new, empty, mechanically sound bus as we passed it by in the parking lot as we entered back onto the freeway. One can only wonder, did they pull the driver into a dark room and present him with his only two options? Two sets of keys on a rickety wooden table. One belonging to the old bus and the other to the new bus. The difference being the set of keys for the new bus was tethered to a metallic suitcase containing 1/10th of the Buddha's he would have to endure. What would you a done?

So we pulled back onto the freeway resuming the half on half off configuration for another 10 mins. Then we pulled over. There was a guard rail preventing us from getting completely off the freeway, so the left 2 feet of the side of the bus remained in the far right lane. Down off the shoulder of the freeway we saw a guy walking toward the bus. He was carrying a large crescent wrench and a grease gun and possibly a little blow torch. "Finally" we thought. "Someone who knows what they are doing." So the 'mechanic' and the driver went around back to the engine compartment to fix the problem. Really?? You sure that's where you want to start diagnosing the problem?

Anyway, after kicking around the bus for a while they finally called in a new bus. The new bus arrived and we piled in and off we went. I looked back long enough to see three guys holding our old driver down on the ground while another started piling the Buddha's on his chest. A half-smile smirk came over my face as I thought "He deserves it."

So we made it to the airport in time to find out that our flight was delayed 4 hours which meant that we would miss our connecting flight in San Fransisco, so the next 24 hours were spent either on the plane or in lines to sort out the rest of the mess.