Michaela CHambers On July 29,2006, the Blues Track Team and I left St. Louis to go to Virginia for Nationals. We were riding on an old, rickety, traveling bus. The bus would start to shake every twenty minutes, and the televisions would turn off if the wind blew to hard. Every ones luggage could barely fit at the bottom of the bus, and the bus could only fit forty-nine people and there was fifty-five of us going. I could tell this was going to be a long seventeen-hour trip. As we rode on the highway, a rank, nauseating, odor started to drift around the bus. Everyone began to cough and people eyes started to water. It was the bathroom at the back of the bus. Someone had opened the door to use the restroom, but couldn’t due to the smell. Everyone was screaming, “Who used the bathroom? Who used the bathroom?” No one had used the bathroom on the bus the whole trip, so it was no way it was any of us. The reason why the bathroom smelled so badly was the bus driver didn’t clean out the bathroom before we left because he thought it was all ready clean. Everyone couldn’t wait to get to Virginia so we could get off the bus. It didn’t seem like we was getting there any time soon because the bus driver stopped every hour to get something to eat. We had already stopped at a deli, two gas stations, and three rest stops, and were only in Kentucky. At about 3:20 A.M. everyone woke up. The bus was freezing cold, everyone was shivering and trying to keep warm under blankets, but it didn’t help. So, one of the parents asked the bus driver if he could turn the air down a little. The bus driver replied in a annoyed way, “Naw, I can’t turn the air down, plus it ain’t gonna go down any lower.” About thirty minutes later he turned the air off completely. The bus started to heat up, and everyone started to sweat. As it turned out the bus driver turned the heat on. When we finally made to Virginia everyone was cheering and yelling, ”Yeah, were finally here, we can finally get off the stank bus.” We made one last stop at this breakfast buffet. When everyone hopped got the bus every one was jumping up and down yelling, “Fresh air at last!” Everyone ate and went outside and played around in the parking lot. We were there for about two hours because the bus driver and the coaches were eating and talking. When we got back on the bus everyone fell back to sleep until we got to the hotel. It was a long, annoying drive, but it was worth it. We had a week stay at a great hotel right next to a mall. “Everything should be calm,” I thought,”until the ride home.”