Crazy Field Trip
Friday, Feb. 9, 2007 - Departing Las Vegas 5:30am
I woke up excited to be going to San Diego with my ITS troupe. We boarded the bus at 5:15am PST. We departed at 5:20am, drove about three blocks and had to return and wait for another member that decided at the last minute she wanted to attend. We finally officially departed at 6:00am PST.
I noticed around Baker, CA that our driver was having problems staying in a straight line. I mentioned to my friends that he was driving awkwardly and could potentially be unsafe. No one believed me.
We arrived at the San Diego Zoo around 11:30am PST. We wandered around, found random posters. (One that talked about sex in nature O_o ) I purchased a fox plushie while roaming about the zoo. We had dinner at a little cafe, but had to get moving quickly to go on a backstage tour of "Ace" before the performance that night. We were taken everywhere throughout the theater except the one place I wanted to go: the control room. I was a bit disappointed, but was more anxious to see the show.The show was phenomenal. I laughed and even cried. No amount of words can describe that phenomenal show. I was terribly proud of Gabrielle, a freshman at my school who was co-starring in the production.
We boarded the bus again at approximately 11:30pm PST, but did not depart until midnight. We had been traveling for about two hours when we had a sudden change of events. Our movie had just finished (the one I slept through) and I had woken up to check my phone about 20 minutes before our incident and we were just outside of Barstow. I fell back asleep and the next thing I knew was there was an extremely loud bang and i though a car or semi had T-boned the back of our bus. I was the first one awake and my first words were, "What the heck?" I rubbed my neck because I basically had whiplash from the impact. I then said while rubbing my neck, "Wow, that felt good. Mr. Ball, what did we hit? Or did someone hit us?" My teacher had already made it back to my end of the bus after asking if everyone was ok. He stopped next to me and said he didn't know what happened yet. He asked our driver to pull off on an exit and stop. The driver did as he was told and Mr. Ball was on a mission to find out what happened. Turns out, while the entire lot of us were sleeping on the bus, our driver too fell asleep. He drifted from the far right lane all the way to the left lane and hit the median. He over-corrected and nearly overturned the bus. Mr. Ball called the company and asked if they could send him both a new driver and a new bus. They gave us a 5-9 hour ETA. Mr. Ball asked the driver to take us up to a main exit in Barstow. A group of us were shaken up and asked if we could go the the Circle K across the street. That's when I remembered a bus that my mother's company once towed. The same thing happened to that bus that had happened to us, except the driver did over-correct and did end up overturning his bus. That vivid memory of that particular bus shot to my head while I was waiting to use the rest-room. That's when it hit me. If our bus had overturned, the majority of us would either be dead, or seriously injured. I knew that because of the condition of the other bus I had seen. There would have been a slim chance of us making it out alive.
While waiting around in front of the gas station, I was talking to Mr. Ball and a few of the chaperones. I had asked if anyone had seen our driver's log recently. Why?
Legally, a person making long trips like ours, or any long trip having to use a commercial vehicle requires the driver to keep a log of their downtime. Nevada/California law requires that a driver has a minimum of 8 consecutive hours of downtime before driving, and a driver is required to not be on the road for more than 11 hours in one day. So basically, our driver was no legal. He could have gotten huge citations and/or arrested for what he had done. Thing is, he wasn't even sorry. He was concerned if everyone was ok. Once he found out everyone was, he didn't show one sign of remorse.
We then asked him to drive us up the road to a Denny's. Some of our group went inside with Mr. Ball to drink liters of coffee, while the rest of us tried to get a little sleep. I am not sure what time the group came back on the bus, but it was about 3:30am when we pulled up. We sat in downtime in the Denny's parking lot until 6:30am waiting for our new bus and driver. Once he arrived, we all boarded the new bus, got comfortable, and watched as our other driver and bus left the parking lot. In the back of my mind I knew something else was going to go wrong. We had those 4 hours of downtime and Mr. Ball said the man didn't sleep at all. So if he was awake all night and was still going to drive that bus, I'm glad I was no longer on it.
Funny thing is, our first driver didn't talk to anyone at all. Our second driver would NOT SHUT UP. We were all tired and stressed and our new driver, trying to calm us down and be friendly was just talking and talking. It did get annoying, but I drowned it out with my iPod.
We arrived at our school on Saturday, Feb 10 at 8:56am. We were all thankful to be home, but better yet; alive.
This is one field trip I'll never forget.
Especially because I knew what our wreck would have looked like if we were to have overturned the bus.
Praise be to God that I am alive.
bmml003 Community Member 
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