The reward for the winning class is a trip to Worlds of Fun at the end of the school year. This year due to budget cuts and our school already being short on money, students were required to pay $20 to go on the trip. The fee was not a problem for our class apparently as over 2/3 the students ended up going.
The trip was set to leave the school at 7 a.m. which is really early for someone who doesn't get the bed til midnight at the earliest and isn't anywhere close to being a morning person. But I didn't care how tired I was or how early it was, I was going to the closest thing to fun in Kansas, Worlds of Fun-which is technically in Missouri but it counts. The bus's were split up with guys in one bus and girls in the other, one downfall of the trip. So we stuffed 50 some 18 year old guys into a bus with limited leg room for 3 hours and we were off.
The trip up went smoothly and as planned something that didn't happen later but that's for later. We stopped in Otttawa to get some food before we hit the park and would be forced to pay $4 for a drink if your thirsty which in my opinion should be illegal. So I ate a pretty large breakfast at Burger King as I was blessed with a little bit of my father's tightass gene. So we loaded back up and before we drove each other insane, the Mamba was in sight. For those who don't know of the Mamba's badassness, its a roller coaster that takes you almost straight up 200 feet in the air and sends you back down at 75 MPH.
As our teachers gave us the "Don't embarrass Mulvane speech", we were more worried about the first ride we were going to ride. For me, it was the detonator, which was fun and all but I had to have the Mamba next. One thing I learned from this trip is that you learn a lot about your classmates. You find out the people who you thought were the toughest people ever were scared to death of roller coasters or the most timid people or what we like to call "Ride Warriors"
The day went fast and 5 o'clock came faster then we could have imagined. As the group I was in tried to squeeze in the last couple rides of the day, we witnessed a middle schooler vomit all over the waiting deck for the Mamba and after that it all went downhill.
The storms that the weathermen had been predicting had arrived in full force. We saw a few cloud to ground strikes of lightning and casually started to make our way to entrance to leave. That casual stroll turned to a full out sprint after a bolt of lightning struck a roller coaster inside the park about 100 yards away from me and set a building on fire. We ran through the rain which felt like rain on steroids. We got on the bus safe and sound and ended up having to wait on students who were closer to the lightning strike as the park was keeping them in a storm shelter. We got our missing students after about 30 minutes and at that point everyone was on edge. The storm was massive and was going straight up our route home, the turnpike. We tried to go around it and took about an hour detour around Kansas City to avoid the heavy rain which was a failure at best. Our driver couldn't see anything which forced us to go 40 MPH the whole way home. After seeing 2 semis tipped over on the side of the road, students were seriously worrying whether we would make it home alive. We got to a break in the storm and stopped at a rest stop, one of many stops, and got some food and filled up with gas.
Well the satellites for the credit card machines were down at this rest stop so we had to wait an hour for them to get back up before we could fill up the busses-made me wonder what the world would really be like if electronics failed. Our bus driver had a terrible and stinky accident. As she was filling up the bus with gas, somehow the gas shot back out of the tank and all over here-remember that busses take diesel. So she changed into new clothes but that didn't eliminate the stench. Not to mention that there are 50 guys on a bus with all the windows up that just ate a week's worth of junk food and McDonalds, so things got gassy.
Our next dilemma was the other busses windshield wipers broke down (which doesn't bode well in a storm) and their bus driver couldn't figure out how to fix it. So their idea of fixing it was the other bus would just follow our bus closely so we would block the rain. So if you weren't freaking out by this point you were about to be. We had just received a phone call and were told the turnpike at El Dorado was closed because multiple semis were tipped over and that the storm we were about to hit had already produced a tornado. The bus was hot and tensions were high, there was almost three fights and the students were about to take over the bus themselves.
Well as you can tell we made it home safe and sound, I didn't write this on the bus before I died but after a 7 HOUR trip from Kansas City to Mulvane, I was surprised I didn't. All in all, the trip was worth the hassle, it was a great way to spend with the people I have grown up with forever and many whom I will not see after we go to college. If nothing else, it will be a great story to tell and grow as its told for years to come.
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