A friend of mine who is a Senior at UNH suggested that we go on the NY trip. I never got to go as a student, and I told her that it sounded like fun. Unfortunately, the tickets to both buses sold out in less than an hour, so we thought that we were not going to be able to go. Somehow, though, they managed to get a third bus, so we were going to NY after all. This is great, we thought, a whole day in NY to do Christmas shopping and maybe go to an attraction or two.

Getting up at 3:30 in the morning is different, and the short drive to Durham was sort of surreal. There wasn’t another car on the road until I got onto the campus. I picked my friend up outside her dorm at 4:40am , and after we ditched my car in another lot, we found our fellow travelers in the right spot. We all complained how cold it was standing there, but we anticipated being on the bus soon, so it wasn't so bad.

The buses were supposed to leave around five, and while my friend thinks they were a half hour late, I think we got going before 5:15. Whichever. The buses pulled up and my friend suggested we get on the third bus. Sure whatever, I'm tired. Everyone gets on the buses without a hitch, and we're off. But it's still so cold on the bus. A few people ask the driver to turn up the heat. He says it's up all the way. That's weird. I tell my friend the bus needs antifreeze, my car does and it's not warm either. Everyone tries to ignore the cold and get some sleep. It’s still so dark outside it makes us sleepy.

An hour and a half later we are rousted from our frigid dozing when the buses pull off to the side of the road. The driver gets out, leaving the door open. We begin to really wish he'd shut the damn door, it's getting a lot colder. Several of us write messages in the frost on the windows insisting that we're freezing to death. After what seems like forever, but really was about 20 minutes, the driver gets back on and tells us that the antifreeze line has burst. I am not pleased that I was correct, because he tells us that we're going to crowd onto one of the other two buses and go to the rest stop two miles away. They're already sent for a replacement bus, and we might get to stay in NY a little later to make up for the delay. We’re going to get to NY an hour and a half late, but it’s ok. We’ll leave there at 8pm instead of 6:30.

Two miles doesn't take a bus moving 60 miles an hour twenty minutes to drive, so we wonder if we're being left off at the right rest area. The other two buses leave us and continue on to NY. We settle in a Starbucks (only because it had the most seating) and wait hopefully for our replacement bus. And wait, and wait, and...

After three hours we start to wonder if anyone is ever going to come back for us. We calculate that a replacement bus could have come here and back by this time. Unfortunately, both of the cell phones that we have emergency numbers to are conveniently off. I take a couple of pictures of people sitting in Starbucks, and others decide to do so too. My friend whines almost continuously, about maybe calling her parents in Connecticut to rescue us and how if she was at home she could study for her final, but I'm too tired to hit her. I suggest we play an alphabet game instead, “ I was abandoned for hours at a Starbucks and I brought...”

Five and a half hours after we were left in that Godforsaken place, our bus driver returns, and tells us the bus is "fixed." I sort of feel bad for the guy, he’s been sitting in the frozen bus all this time. The other two buses were probably in NY by this time... We took three votes and ultimately decided that since some people were worried about how the little kid on the trip would react to being out until 2 am instead of midnight(not me. I was on trips like this at that age, I slept. so would this kid) to return home, and try to get our money back. There's no way to get the wasted hours of our live back, unfortunately. My friend says maybe we can try again next semester, since they scheduled two NY trips for then. She's out of her fucking mind if she thinks I'll do this again.