My trip to bama

[southpaw]

This story is about 3 of my friends and me, who decided to drive to the NC game in Alabama. We are all students, 3 of us had finals today, so we all had to be back last night so we could study. We left Grand Forks friday morning at 10 a.m. There were 2 guys and 2 girls on the trip. One of the girls wasn't that excited, so we ended up dropping her off at a friends house in the Cities.

The 3 of us then drove on through Madison and then south through Illinois. May I suggest that nobody ever drive through Illinois. It is by far the worst state ever and completely worthless. We arrived in St. Louis Saturday morning at 2 a.m. and were too tired to keep driving, so we stopped a little crap hotel just south of StL.

The guy at the front desk gave us the remote for our TV in our room and they had a sign specifically posted on the wall that said No More Than 2 People Per Bed. Since there were 3 of us, we asked for a room with 2 beds. The man obliged and we went to find our room. Once there, we noticed there was only 1 bed, a king sized. Rather than going through the hassle of changing it, we just all slept in the king sized bed, which was about as hard as the concrete outside.

We got to sleep at about 2:30 and after checking our map, knew we had to be on the road at 6. We had no clock, so we had to use our cell phones as alarms. Fortunately, we received 4 phone calls that night. One every hour from 2 until 6, which we all woke up for. Lets just say we didn't get much sleep.

We eventually got on the road at about 6:15. It snowed during the night, a little over an inch. We get out on the road and there are cars in ditches everywhere. You would think there was 20 inches on the ground with the amount of people who got in accidents. Everyone else drives 40 on the interstate, while we're just crusing along at 70, having no problems on the "snow." After about half an hour of driving, my car starts to make some noise. There's a little ticking coming from the engine. So we take the first exit we can find, which was about 10 miles down the road. We pull over in Bloomsdale, Missouri and go to the local body shop. (There is a reason you have never heard of Bloomsdale. It is one of the smallest towns ever).

In Bloomsdale, Gary the mechanic takes a look at the car, throws some oil in it and we start the car. The ticking continued and Gary says the car cannot be driven any further or else it will cease up. So now we have 3 college students with $200 total and we are stuck in Bloomsdale, MO, 51 miles south of St. Louis.

We walked to a gas station to see if we could use their phone book to make some calls. They oblige, however the phone book has no listings for St. Louis. So we spend the next 4 hours in a gas station calling 411 and as many rental car places as possible. All the time, we are in roaming with our phones, racking up a huge bill.

Eventually, we resort to just asking random people who come into the gas station if they can give us a ride to St. Louis. This extremely nice couple (John and Pam) say they can give us a ride. We get all of our stuff out of my car and load it into their SUV. They drive us to St. Louis and take us to a rental car company. They tell us we need to be 25 to rent a car. We're all 21, so that doesn't happen. Then John and Pam offer to rent the car for us with their credit card, so we can get to the Cities. After declining their generosity, we finally had to accept it, since it was the only way we were getting home.

They rented the car for us and we unfortunately parted ways. It was about 2:00 when we left St. Louis and we were going to miss the game obviously, so we start to head home. We drove from 2:00 until about 11:00 pm where we stopped in Minneapolis at a friend's house. We picked up the girl who we had dropped off on the way down to the cities.

The next morning (Sunday) we had to return the rental car and figure out a way to get from Minneapolis to Grand Forks. One of the girls' brothers lived in the cities and was able to drive us to Fergus Falls, MN (1 hour east of Fargo, it is where I am from). Then my mom gave us a ride to Fargo, where we were able to borrow a car and drive to Grand Forks.

We spent 16 hours driving Friday, a total of 11 hours on Saturday and then 6 hours on Sunday and we never got to see the game, or even listen to it on the radio. My car is sitll in Bloomsdale, Missouri and we are going to be driving down to tow it back up to Fergus Falls sometime this week.

Throughout the whole thing, we were able to keep happy and if it were not for John and Pam and their amazing generosity, none of us would be back in GF today.

[Schmitzzz]

Great story.

You can always depend on the kindness of strangers...

[bisonguy]

I would look into selling the movie rights.

[Smoggy]

Better save that one for the grandkids.

[Wantagh]

I'm with the Save that one for the Grandkids story. That sounds like one hell of an experience. At least you ran into some nice people.

[CoteauRinkRat]

wow, that almost sounds unbelieveable. Glad to see you are all right.