MTC Tour Day 14: An Awesome Bus Driver Who Drove us By the Cedar Stump
July 1st, Seattle, WA
Another travel day, with the added twist of crossing the border back into the good, ol’ U.S. of A. On CANADA DAY, no less!
It was supposed to be less than a three-hour bus ride. (A three-hour tour. A three-hour tour. The weather started getting rough… Actually, the weather was GREAT.) We got to the border station, and of course, we all had to get off the bus and go through customs and immigration. The customs and immigration portion was QUICK. No problems. The line for the bathroom after we got through ICE was… longer. And I DID notice that the ladies’ line moved much more quickly than the men’s. (They were timing themselves. No, literally. I’m not kidding.) But soon we were on our way.
Suddenly, however, traffic started to slow. (The tiny ship was tossed. If not for courage of the fearless crew…) Our AWESOME bus driver quickly figured out that we needed to take an alternate route. We found ourselves travelling down skinny back roads. (We passed a restaurant called “The Cedar Stump” which had a sign which read, “Rest your rump at the Cedar Stump!”) We traveled back roads for an hour, some of it in stop-and-go traffic.
The entire delay was caused by a fatal highway accident. At one point, I saw a car inverted on the interstate, and Cindy saw a car inverted on the grass median. We later learned that an “impaired” driver was driving north in the southbound lanes (our lanes).
The final result (which for us, thankfully, did not include a fatality) was that we got to our lovely hotel in downtown Seattle an hour late. HOWEVER, our bus started out third (3 out of 11 busses). We arrived FIRST. The other busses were delayed by up to three hours.
Bottom line? Our bus driver was AWESOME!!!!
Tomorrow, we have a few hours to sightsee, and then we have our final concert. Personally, I’m PRAYING for a SEAHAWK to be our guest conductor. Russell Wilson! Pete Carroll! Come on! It would be totally awesome! Besides, I want to make my son, Jacob (who doesn’t WANT to join the Choir), insanely jealous!!!
BTW, our welcome dinner (our last meal together on tour) was fantastic. It had pork with Walla-Walla Sweet Onions! (And yeah, the meal was delayed for a bit, so everyone could get there and eat it…)
My last tour is coming to an end. One more full day and one more concert. And then it’s home on Tuesday, and I no longer get Cindy all to myself… Talk about depressing…
