Power Shift
Day 1: Friday
PiC and I pulled out of SU around 1:30, sun shining (very brightly in our eyes), music playing (Mr. Bojangles is a song??), and grimaces of trepidation. After we finally found parking in the freaking F lot at the airport, we got lost trying to find the shuttle...which happened to be 2 rows over from where we were. Great start, we figured. We eventually did maneuver our way to our terminal and had to go through security 3 times due to laptop issues, but got there nonetheless. This was when the first miracle from our guardian angel occurred.
As we were boarding the plane, I got a phone call from a girl saying that she could house us that night. You cannot even imagine the relief I felt at this bit of news.
We got onto our plane without further incident, except for not getting to sit anywhere near each other. Due to the brilliant masterminds behind Southwest Airlines (we were desperate), seating is a free-for-all, and if you are in boarding group C you do not get to sit with your party because all of the people-phobic travelers of the world will always take the aisle and the window, leaving only middle seats open, straight down the plane. I proceeded to make some passive aggressive comments about how the phenomenon (hard word to spell). The plane decided not to take off for about 5 years but eventually got us to Baltimore. At that point we had to figure out how to somehow get across the state.
With a lot of wandering and asking only nice-looking women (who invariably always wore fleece jackets), we finalllllly found the bus stop for the B30 line. We scrambled to find $3, literally utilizing dimes and nickels, to get us somewhere. The first leg of the trip took us to the Greenbelt station.
Let me tell you about this station. I had to get the permission of an armed guard to use the bathroom. A bathroom behind 2 sets of locked doors. On the plus side, I did see a guy who looked remarkably like Kanye West, who insisted on wearing sunglasses at night (which did indeed inspire a round of singing "Sunglasses at Night").
We sat there for a long time and finally got on another bus, which had a really interesting cross section of culture. We actually overheard a man (of North/East African descent, I figured) ask the bus driver if he thought "the global warming" was natural or manmade. We couldn't scramble for our cameras fast enough to record the conversation, but it was pretty crazy. With the help of about half the bus, we eventually figured out where to stop on the U of Maryland campus (Library Lane!).
And what do you know but miracle #2 happens.
Just as we were beginning to panic about finding the dorm we were staying in, we ran smack into Nathan, a very dear friend, immediately upon disembarking. After a round of huge bear hugs, he was so incredibly kind as to adventure with us. We eventually got to our room, where we were delighted to find that we were staying with a bunch of freshman girls who were super super nice. The next dilemma was figuring out how to get to the SSC party, which was 1.5 miles away. The plan was to take a campus bus to one stop and walk a short distance from there. Turns out the cranky bus driver dropped us off in the totally wrong place and we had to walk 2 miles at 11:00 pm with no sidewalks. Thank God for Nathan. We finally finally found the party after an hour of traveling. I've never been so glad to see the SSC in my life.
The party was basically, in a word, superawesome. We ordered a pita/hummus/veggie plate (which turned out to be the last normal thing we ate all weekend) and devoured it, as we hadn't eaten all day.
Then we met lots of people, did some wild dancing (a table broke?), and generally partook in revelrie in the cold cold outdoors. I was so very glad to see some Shindiggers again, whom I hadn't seen for 2 years. Too bad they're all about 4 years older than me...
After a very long walk back, we snuck back into our room and PiC and I got ready for bed, attempting not to wake up the other girls. (PiC was a bit loud for undisclosed reasons.) We ended up having to share a single bed, and I had a bedskirt for a sheet. There were also 2 girls on the top bunk and another girl in another bunk. 3:00 am!
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