the lush bus

...Lost in time? More like lacking in sanity. Sunday Morgan and I embarked on an adventure of a lifetime. Not just because this was going to be my first NFL game, but rather because of our travels along the way. I am, for the sake of the people and their families, going to leave out names and associations, lest it be detrimental to them, but...you know who you are (and I shouldn't be so nice!).

Morgan and I caught a ride to the Denver Broncos game with a group belonging to a certain club on Hilton Head. They had chartered a bus to take them down to the game and through acquaintances we were able to secure two seats. This saved us money and the hassle of having to drive ourselves to Jacksonville. Looking back on it I'm positive we would have dared to give it a go ourselves.

We were warned that this particular group tended to be a "bit rowdy, raucous, and drunk" but I gave them the benefit of the doubt because after all, we were leaving at 7:30 in the morning. It couldn't be THAT bad...or could it? We arrived to the scene of a woman filling up her 16 oz. water bottles with vodka. She had, as she described, her bus bottle and her game bottle. The bus pulled out at eight and around two minutes after eight the first rounds of beer and bloody marys were being served. This combined with a man next to us chanting "Sponge Bob Square Pants...clap, clap...clap, clap, clap" over and over and whining because no-one brought a cartoon movie to watch on the way down. I honestly thought that he was mentally challenged for about an hour before I realized that he had just shown up drunk.

At ten we stopped for a smoke break because I guess these people can go all night while they sleep without a cigarette but not three hours for a bus trip. This was followed by an enthralling tale about a woman planning a bachelorette party for a friend and she had bought a cake pan in the shape of a penis and everything else imaginable. And I quote..."Let's just say that by the end of the day my stereo remote no longer had batteries in it". You get the picture. By the time we arrived it was 11:15 and the fourth round of drinks had come and gone. Time for us to jump ship. And we did just that.

The game was awesome...of course that's because we won, but it was a fantastic experience to be in that environment. Although next time I think it would be more fun to be in the stadium of the team you are rooting for (obviously). I think my favorite quote, and one that I had never heard of before was from a Jacksonville fan complaining of the referee's call..."Get off your knees ref., you're blowing all of the calls!"

Alas, as the game was winding down we knew the inevitable was coming. We would have to get back on the bus, for another three hours. We trodded back to the bus with the hope that most of the people would just pass out on the bus and leave us to ride in quiet. Boy were we wrong. It managed to just get louder.

We left at 5 p.m. to the chantings of Sponge Bob and the woman behind us crying over who knows what. I guess she's a mean drunk and a crier...so we were told. She kept screaming at a guy named Henry (I know I said no names but this is vital to the story). She would lean in between our seats and scream "Oh Henry, My candy bar!". Not only was this the most shrill voice but it came with the smell of alcohol emanating into our very small comfort zone...or shall I say uncomfortable zone.

Most of the people were more rowdy and I had never seen people knock back so many beers in such little time. At one time there was a chugging contest. While we were on our way out of town we were following the buses of the Denver Broncos who had a police escort, although most of the people on the bus thought that we were being pulled over. About an hour and a half into the trip home we had the "navigator and ringleader" try to get the bus to sing "row, row, row your boat" in rounds. Well, you can imagine how far that got...

Eventually it was time for the announcements and thanks to those who put the trip together. This started by the man who we shall call "Fishin' mission". This was the name of his boat (and the name embroidered on his shirt. He got everyone's attention first by almost falling down the stairs of the bus and then by calling, "Everyone on the boat...listen up". When he was corrected and told that we were not in fact on a boat but on a bus he replied "well, my boat is named Fishin' mission..." Was that supposed to make sense? I hope not.

So, at this point we had the bus singing Sponge Bob, Row, row, row your boat, the Eagles fight song all at one time and some deranged old man who thought we were on a boat and a crier screaming about her candy bar. At one point two men, Henry and Fishin' mission, came up to us and started yelling and being belligerent to Morgan and myself claiming that they shouldn't have let Morgan on the f*&(^% bus with a Bronco jersey on. They were basically sitting on my lap leaning over to him at which point Morgan grabbed Henry's hand and screamed "FIRST OF ALL, WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING?! I'M SITTING RIGHT HERE!!!" The man had no response to this and walked away.

We had another smoke break and really wished that the bus driver would just take off without them, I mean, would they even know the difference? We miraculously made it back to the island and to our cars. Morgan and I had smoke on our heels as we sprinted to our car to make sure we were long gone before any of them got into their cars. What I don't understand (among everything else) is that this group is a highly professional and respected group of people in the community (or so I've been told). I didn't quite see that. It was the most unprofessional group of people I've ever been around. It really felt as though were we babysitting children.

You know that trick that when parents don't want a child to do something like smoke for example, they make them smoke a whole pack of cigarettes so they get so sick and never do it again? Well, if anyone out there has a problem with alcohol...call us, boy do we have a contact number for you!

Craziest quote of the trip: "Well she didn't get all that cocaine in her nose by herself, I'll tell you that..."