Day 8 & 9: The Bus

We spent the entire day on the bus.

I have no pictures.

This is okay, as I have not been able to upload any pictures to Blogger for several days now.

However, I thought this would be a good opportunity to explain who is on this bus.

First, there is Ginger, the owner of the tour company, and our tour guide. She has been doing adult and teenage tours through the church history sites for 20+ years with her husband Larry, who drove the bus. A few months ago, Larry died, and this is the first year she has done the tours without him.

Traveling with her is her cousin, her son and his wife, and her brother, Randy, who drives the bus now, along with his wife Kandy, and their son, whose mission call was mailed to his house this week. His uncle is sending it on so that he will be able to open it on this trip.

The rest of the people on our tour bus are mostly older, retired couples. There are some older ladies who are traveling with their sisters, and a few women with their sons. And we just picked up another mother/daughter team on Friday.

The PA system in the bus went out on Day 8, as did the TVs, right in the middle of the movie Fireproof.

We have passed the time in other ways.

To begin with, everyone on the bus had to introduce him/herself. This included a brief life history (some people gave a briefer history than others), a list of everyone's family lines (to see if any of us were related) and a recounting of our most embarrassing moments. Here was my mom's:

Many years ago, my mother began carrying pepper spray around with her on her keychain. I’m not sure why. I don’t think she was ever worried about being attacked. One day, while she was having her hair done, the spray went off in her pocket. She excused herself to go to the ladies’ room and clean it up. When she went back into the salon, people were coughing, eyes were watering, and the salon was being evacuated. Someone shouted, “It’s pepper spray!” and our hairdresser’s husband used it as an amusing anecdote for several weeks afterward.

Because the PA system had gone out, I didn't tell the one I had in mind:

About a year ago, Stephanie and I went to get pedicures. It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing, so I wasn’t wearing open-toed shoes. They gave me some disposable flip-flops to wear when the pedicure was done. I had to take my computer into the repair shop afterward. En route, one of the flip flops broke. My nails were still slightly wet, so I looked in my backseat and unearthed one regular flip flop. Unfortunately, it was for the wrong foot. Also, it had a huge thick sole. So I limped into Best Buy wearing one thick-soled flip flop on my right foot and a right footed disposable flip flop on my left foot. The guy at the service desk was laughing before I even reached him. Before he would help me, he said, “Do you want to tell me why you are wearing two different shoes?”

Instead, I told this one:

When I was a flag girl, I knocked a guy’s tooth out during an out-of-state competition. It ended my short career in the colorguard, and I became a therapist instead.

It was quicker.

It’s interesting to be on the bus and meet people who are storytellers. My favorite story thus far was told by a man who claimed he was “kicked out of kindergarten twice.” Both incidents involved his cousin, who was also in his class. As he explained it, they were conducting “scientific experiments.” His cousin had tried to convince him that girls have bigger bums than boys, so they sat in the back of the classroom and lifted up girls skirts with a ruler to investigate. After about five or six girls, he began to believe his cousin was right. Subsequently, they were moved to different classrooms.

We also spent some time recalling trivia from old movies/TV shows. The entire bus also sang theme songs from The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, and Green Acres. I have also discovered that, as much as she likes to downplay her abilities, my mom has a pretty good memory for trivia.

Hopefully, I will be able to upload pictures soon. I have a feeling the next posts will not be as good without pictures.