Adventures Pt. 2

Since we were back in North Dakota with no means of personal transportation back home, the next obvious step was to secure transportation back to Indiana. Keep in mind this is the 29th. We narrowed down our choices to either taking Amtrak back or a series of buses.

Attempt 1: With our luck, there was an Amtrak leaving the next morning at 1AM with a stop in Chicago. We ordered ordered our tickets and were set to pick them up when we arrived at the station. This is where the blizzard decided to roll in. The train wasn't canceled that morning. So my traveling companion, the army lad we met, and myself decided to brave the storm. Well that's all fine and well... if we could get out of the drive way. What ended up happening is that we got to the end of the drive way, and with the sheer amount of snow we got stuck. Not just typical stuck, but more of we were sitting on the snow and the tires weren't even touching the ground stuck. So we shoveled the truck back to ground level and drove it back up the drive way. First attempt failed. We rescheduled our tickets for the following day.

Attempt 2: Having tickets ready for the following morning was more of an... inconvenience than anything. On the morning of the 30th, Amtrak calls us. The train for the morning of the 31st is canceled because of the blizzard. After a little bit of research, the trains wouldn't be back up until Saturday. When we go to reschedule for Saturday, it is full. The next available? Wednesday. The 5th. By this point I've also already missed a few days of work as well. Ultimately a fail. We gave up on the tram.

Attempt 3: The bus. Considering the interstate and local roads were closed except for emergency vehicles, we weren't getting out until Saturday at the earliest. Which ended up not happening. We left Sunday afternoon en route to Minneapolis. In a few words, this was the worst bus ride I have ever been on. Not because the cabin wasn't nice, it was. And not because some kid screaming, it was silence. But rather because of the fact that the driver thought it was a good idea to accelerate and decelerate, accelerate and decelerate the entire 4 hours. Now I typically wouldn't have minded except for the fact of the preceding events. We arrived in Minneapolis four miserable hours later. What did we learn here? There was a crack house about a block away, the police that were stationed there were douches, the "help desk" people were of no help, and the whole environment was just all together sketchy. After an hour layover in Minneapolis, we were on our way once more. Only this time, our destination was Chicago. The remainder of our trip was not bad at all. We arrived at Chicago at about nine in the morning, and in back home at about 1 in the evening. Only to have work the same day. Yaaaaay...

And now for the car...