Day 1: Well, we saw a bit of the beach today and saw even more of the bus system...
(Amber) We started our day by doing a quick Google search for instructions on how to hop busses to get to the beach. Turns out, it's not that easy! We walked a half mile trying to find our bus stop, but couldn't, so ended up walking almost all the way back to the hotel. We finally got annoyed and ended up stopping at a bus stop that looked pretty legit and we were just going to jump on and see where it took us. As we walked over to look at the transit map, we realized that someone had pooped on the ground in the bus shelter. Yes, you heard me correctly, pooped. REAL HUMAN POOP. It was neat; so neat in fact that another lady at the bus stop texted her friend that she saw poop at the bus stop. Said friend then called her to find out if she meant poop, or meant something else. "Nope, poop," she replied, "if I had a picture phone I'd send you a picture." Kally thought about offering to take a picture to send to said friend, but changed her mind at the last second. That was the end of our poop adventure.
On our first long bus ride of the day we met a super nice bus driver who knew where Iowa was...he'd even been to the field of dreams! He helped us figure out the bus system & told us all about which bus we needed to get to the beach. He even walked us over to the newspaper shop so we could get our weekly bus pass; so sweet. What he failed to tell us was that we needed to pay attention to both our bus number
AND the importance of looking at which direction the bus was going... Apparently we were about a block from the beach and could have walked, however we got on a bus going the opposite direction and didn't figure it out until we were almost back at our hotel. Oops.
We got help from our next bus driver who explained to us how to tell which direction the bus was going (phew!) and we got back on a bus going to the beach. This actually worked out pretty well because we met my future husband. We bonded over a woman on the bus who didn't know that her dress was falling off. Kally & I couldn't stop giggling at her, and MFH (my future husband) thought we were giggling at him. He looked over and said, "What?" All I had to do was glance over at "indecent exposure" and he said "OH!" and started laughing too. Turns out that was enough to get a conversation started...he lives on the beach, has been to Iowa before, blah, blah, blah. I quit listening and just stared at him instead. :) We parted ways on the beach; if you've seen the movie Serendipity then you know that we'll end up together in the end, each holding one black glove, and meeting in the snowfall on an ice rink where people are roller blading. Trust me, it's epic.
The beach was amazing, by the way. We ended up at Indian Rocks Beach (where MFH lives) and stayed there for what remained of our day. We played in the water most of the time, until a storm rolled in and we had to take shelter in the nearest establishment that served bloody marys. It was a rough time of it!! No worries though, we filled up on our drink and headed back out to the beach to finish our day. We didn't get eaten by sharks or stung by jellyfish, so we considered the day a total win (minus the bus mix up).
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| Indian Rocks Beach |
(Kally) We made it back to the first bus stop just as the bus was rolling up. Perfect timing! We are kind of pros at the whole transit system now...well sort of. We should've known it was going downhill when a grown man hopped on the bus with a pocahontas bag. Yes, you heard me right...a pocahontas bag. Strangest thing we've ever seen, well at least during that hour. Anywho, we made it to our final stop and were waiting at the bus stop. We watched a few busses go by, and thought maybe we needed to find a stop on the other side of the road. Pretty soon the bus that we needed circled back around and we were ready to hop on! Well sort of, except for the fact that we remained seated and the bus didn't stop. We didn't realize that you have to be standing up looking like you're ready to get on the bus in order for them to stop. Oops! Oh well, we donated $4 to a guy that got left behind at a movie theater. No worries Mom's and roommates, he looked pretty legit. He is a student at the local college or something and works at the Olive Garden.
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| Someone is a big fan of Pocahantas!! ;) |
What happens next is pretty tragic...so we began our journey back to the hotel. Just as we walked out of the bus stop the tornado sirens went off and it began hailing. Actually not really, it did rain for a minute or two though. We made it about half way back to the hotel and my shoe broke. Neat. The last thing I wanted to do was walk barefoot. I new we were near the poopy bus stop from the morning so I just made us stop evertime it broke again (which usually happened in the middle of intersections). Oh well. Life is life! :)
(Amber) We ended up at the hotel where we jumped in the swimming pool (yep, we weren't sick of the water yet) until it started storming again and we had to go back inside. Stay tuned for our next adventure!!!
