Murphy's Law in Action - Hayride

Zahra and I were supposed to leave for the potluck just after the UP group did, at 6:00. Things didn't quite go according to plan. I had invited three residents from my hall - Allan, Haruka, and Reika. Since I am a P.A. and am not allowed to drive them anywhere, I asked them to go to UP, where the carpooling was to be arranged.

Zahra and I went to Walgreens to get our flu shots first. The process took longer than anticipated because there were essentially four stages - declaring our intent, turning in paperwork, paying, and actually recieving the shot. There were 5-10 minutes between each of these sections, including the ten minutes we had to wait at the end to make sure we didn't have bad reactions.

Anyway, this whole time I was on the phone with everyone. Allan called to say that he hadn't met with Haruka and Reika, and he was lost. I directed him to UP and gave him a phone number to call if my instructions were crap. I tried to call Reika to see if they were okay. No response. Meanwhile I needed the address to the potluck myself, so I called my friend Sam, who was an organizer. He gave me another number, Callie's, which I called, and Callie told me that she'd call me back when she knew. She called and gave me the address and directions, which I wrote down on a piece of paper. Sam called to ask how things were going, and I said fine, but had he recieved a call from Allan? He hadn't, and I was worried, wondering whether any of the three I had invited would make it to the Potluck. Reika still wasn't answering. Soon afterwards Prite called. I hadn't expected to have to worry about him at all, but he appartently got to UP too late, and didn't know how to get to the potluck. He suggested that he just come with us instead of my trying to give him directions. We agreed, but said we would be there in several minutes, as we were finishing up at Walgreens but had to get warmer clothes from home before we left. Prite told us that by the time he had arrived, there was no one at UP. He didn't say "No one except for a strange Scottish guy", so I thought that perhaps Allan had found his way there on time.

On the way home Zahra and I thought we'd be clever and take a Rollins road, assuming it would get us to campus. It didn't and this detour delayed us by five minutes and formed our second major delay after the flu shots. From here we went to my dorm and I quickly ran in and grabbed my warmest shirt, a turtleneck. Finally Reika called and said that she, Haruka, and Allan were all fine and on their way to the potluck. :D :D Then we thought we better get Prite, since he would be expecting us. So we went to UP and picked Prite up, and then went to Zahra's so that she could put on real shoes (she had flip flops on). We waited a long time for Zahra and I tried to call her to see what was up. There was no response and Prite and I were like... ??? After several minutes she called and said that the answer to both riddles was that she had left her cell phone upstairs and had to go back for it. She really needed the phone because we were relying on it's GPS to tell us how to get to the potluck. This was our third major delay.

When we finally got going it was 6:40. The GPS told us to go a slightly different way than we remembered from the written instructions, but we started following it. Zahra kept talking about how far it was, and finally I asked if it had an estimate for how long it would take to get there. Suddenly Zahra said, "Stop, stop! The instructions are wrong! It's taking us five hours to get there!" (This was our fourth major delay) I laughed, stopped, we decided to follow the written instructions. But it turned out that Zahra had left them at home. I remembered two things - to get on highway 70 and to take exit 117... no, later emended to 121. Prite called Sam to confirm this, and Sam told him to call back when we had taken the exit.

I missed the exit. (Fifth major delay). We decided to go ahead and take 117, because that was the next exit and I couldn't turn around before then anyway. So we called for alternative directions. We had to look for Rocheport Gravel Road. We got off on J at 117 and drove for a little while, about four miles. We had to cross a busy road at one point without a light, which was fine but it took a while as we waited. I kept feeling that we should keep going, because it should be far if we hadn't taken the recommended exit, and I remembered something of the written instructions that said to keep going and going. But Prite and Zahra said that a long time ago we had passed a road called Rocheport, so finally I turned back.

We drove J all the way back to the highway's exit. The very first left after the highway was indeed called Rocheport... Old Rocheport, to be precise, and it was a gravel road. We started down it and Prite called to see if it was the right road. It wasn't - they were confused about where it was. When I explained, they said that we had to go much further, about four miles down J. We turned around and started back down J. We ended up having to cross the one road, with the delay, three times. This confusion definitely made our Sixth Major Delay.

Rocheport Gravel Road ended up being the very next left from where I had finally turned around. If we had driven even 100 meters further, we would have seen it. This irony was just too much. I had to laugh a bit hysterically. Sam stayed on the phone from this point on as we made our way through the 'neighborhood', past a fork in the road and down a long, narrow, tree encircled road. Finally we saw Sam in the very last of the light of the setting sun. We had arrived.

The food was all gone, so Zahra ate the remainders of what few vegetarian dishes there had been to begin with, and Prite and I ate the omelette Prite had made, and all three of us ate more than the Food Pyramid's recommended amount of my Cream Cheese Swirl Brownies. But it didn't really matter - we had arrived in time for the real fun.

Zahra had her first campfire and s'mores. She really charmed the owner of the farm, and the nice lady took us on a tour of the barn (including a baby calf! :D) and her home. Zahra really enjoyed it and kept saying how much the whole place seemed like out of a movie.

Soon was the hayride itself. Allan, Zahra, Reika, Haruka and I all rode together. (Prite was on the other side of the wagon, so we didn't see much of him) It was so dusty and I was a bit jaded from having been mostly on Haunted Hayrides, but I still enjoyed it, especially because Zahra, Reika, and Haruka enjoyed it so much.

Allan said that when we had been so late he thought to himself that it had been a trap, that I had never planned on coming but had instead lured him there with false promises. I told him that it was true, the whole thing was a sex slave operation that I got a 10% cut of for my role in luring unsuspecting exchange students there. He said then that he wanted that job, and I said that he might be convinced to join the operation, since he would probably be rejected as a sex slave. He's never going to let anyone forget that I have essentially called him an Ugly Sex Slave.

After the potluck we went back to the barn and the man of the farm told me that I could go into the baby cows pen and play with it. I did and it sort of liked me. It was very friendly and approached slowly and licked my hand. However, there were a lot of people who had followed me and were just outside the pen, so it was a bit nervous. When Prite came in that was too much, and he retreated. I blamed Prite. Afterwards Haruka came in and the calf absolutely adored her. It wouldn't stop licking her everywhere. She was thrilled and wouldn't stop giggling. I tried to take pictures but it wasn't so easy in the small dust filled pen. :P

We also swung about on rope swings in the barn - well, mostly Prite and I. Prite and I often speak Japanese to each other, since we are about equally bad at it and it is fun for us. So I was saying most of the things we normally say to each other, like, "You are a monkey" and he was saying similar things, like, "You are too." and Reika and Haruka thought it was very funny, so pretty soon my entire rope swinging performances included short announcements in Japanese directed at the three of them.

The rope swing was the only thing Zahra didn't try. She said that she was too cold. :P It is her first winter, after all.

Despite all the difficulties I think it ended up being a really fun evening for everyone involved. :D