Today was the All-State Speech Contest at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Kennedy had a choral reading, musical theater, and two improv groups that made it to All-State. We met this morning at 5:30 ready to leave and arrive at Iowa State by 7:45 for opening ceremonies. The first group that was performing was the musical theater at 9:00 followed by choral reading at 9:40 and so on. Because it was 5:30AM, everyone on the bus had fallen asleep by the time we left the parking lot and didn’t wake up until daylight came around 7:00AM. We realized later that it probably wasn’t the best idea in the world.
When we woke up everyone was a little drowsy from their nap and we began to slowly take in our surroundings. We realized that we were heading west on Interstate 80 on our way to Des Moines. Obviously this wasn’t the most direct route the bus driver could take but it would still work. We figured out that if we turned north on interstate 35 we still might be able to make it but we would be late for opening ceremonies; so we got to the turn off for interstate 35 and the bus driver kept on driving west on interstate 80. By this time everyone on the bus had taken out their phones and was tracking the bus route on the GPS. So, in short, everyone but the bus driver knew where we were going. Everyone was telling the bus driver to turn around including our coach/teacher who was almost screaming at her but she still wouldn’t turn around because she was following the instructions her supervisor had given to her. Only the directions they had given to her were wrong. They gave her directions to Ames from Davenport, Omaha, and Kansas City. The only one they left out was where she was actually coming from! When we got a little bit past Van Meter we finally convinced her to turn the bus around. Sadly, we didn’t get fifteen minutes before the radiator broke and the bus had to pull over. By this time it was 8:20AM and we had at least made it to a gas station. Our other coach that was already in Ames was on the phone and was freaking out because we were fifty minutes away and the first performance was at 9:00. They decided that they might as well start sending vans to pick the kids up and got a shuttle from Iowa State to go and get them. Thankfully the contest coordinators were hospitable and changed the schedules around a bit. We ended up actually getting there around ten-ish and preforming around 10:20.
Needless to say it was an extremely stressful morning for a good amount of people. So much had happened by 9:00 and may I say that it made it worse that everyone involved was up around four with probably five or so hours of sleep. (498)
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