in eternal pursuit of hamsters
ok, so how can i possibly describe to you the nightmarish quality of yesterdays seemingly innocent journey to petco? Part of me balks at the very idea of trying to put this kind of thing into words, but all of you MUST hear about this, as it turned into the most epic and disasterous journey of my life. I know it's long, but please try to read it when you have the chance.
Here goes nothing.
It all began on monday when me and my roomates decided we wanted a hamster.... this in itself was pretty tragic because we aren't allowed to have pets in the dorm. not at all. Just fish. And all my fish in the past have either shriveled away to nothing or died horrible unnatural deaths. So i was like, NO, we are NOT getting a fish.
Anyways, after angsting over this for a good thirty minutes we decided to ignore all possible consequences and get ourselves a fuzzy little friend. We had it all planned out. Leanne and I would leave for psychology class early so we could get five-hour bus passes. Then after psychology ended (5:20) we would walk a good mile into freedmont and take a nine minute bus ride on bus 26 to our destination: Petco. Got that? ... Freedmont. Bus 26. Nine minutes. Petco. Doesn't sound incredibly difficult does it?
Well, that was our plan... here's what really happened.
We actually left psychology 40 minutes early (around 4:30) and headed up to Freedmont. As we were approaching the bus stop we saw a bus 26 leave the stop and head up the hill. I was like, "aw crap. now we have to wait forever for the next bus." Leanne told me not to worry because she thought that bus was going in the wrong direction anyway and we needed to take the 26 bus going down the hill. I was like, "are you sure?" and she's like, "it doesn't matter what direction we take, the 26 bus goes in a big circle anyway." I was really suspicious of this theory (called "Leanne's theory of bussology") because i'm pretty sure that buses in Hawaii change numbers at the end of their rout, right? (Lara's theory of bussology)... but i decided she probably knew better than i did.
So we finally get on bus 26 and we're just dandy until we realize that we don't know when to get off. At one point i gathered up the courage to ask the bus driver if he knew where petco was. He gave me some wierd obscure answer and said he knew there was one in Bellview. This was our first sign that something was wrong. We called Elyse who was still in our room and asked her to look at the instructions Leanne had printed and left on her desk. The stop we were supposed to get off at was 45th and Freedmont. We were pretty sure we hadn't seen it, and meanwhile the bus was taking us deeper and deeper into seattle and further and further away from Freedmont. So we're riding the bus rather uncomfortably now, realizing that this bus was, indeed, going the wrong way... but we still had faith in Leanne's theory of bussology so we stayed on and waited for it to turn around and head the right way again. It didn't. It took so many turns and side streets that both of us were completely scrambled, and at one point we could have sworn we had turned back towards Freedmont.
We rode the bus like this for a good hour or more, too afraid to get off and hoping beyond hope that the bus would make a loop back to freedmont. We began to realize that the racial type of people on the bus was slowly starting to change. People were speaking different languages and wearing very cultural clothing. Several girls were wearing islamic head covers and there were no white people on the bus with us any more.>.< The buildings around us got increasingly shabbier and more crumbled looking. And after a while we realized we weren't in seattle anymore. We were out in the boonies. In nomans land. Heck knows where we were, but it was starting to get real shady. The buildings had long since disappeared and there were old corroded shops and signs in arabic. Our bus was no longer the 26, but had long since turned into a 42 or something like that (thus proving Lara's theory of bussology).
It was six thrity when we finally decided it was time to get off the bus, and it was getting dark. The bus driver had told us that it would be another two hours before he turned around for Freedmont and we had decided we would rather try and catch another bus back than sit on the same one for two hours. So we exited the bus on Martin Luther King street. Leanne was freaking out because she kept thinking we were gonna get raped, and it didn't help that her period had started on the long bus ride and we didn't have any pads.-_-;
SO. We decide our first priortity is to find someplace that sells pads. We walk down to this old safeway. The brand selection was very limited, but we weren't about to be picky. i asked one of the ladies who worked there if there was a pet shop nearby (yes, i STILL had my mind set on getting a hamster) but couldn't get a definate answer. I kinda doubt there was one around there anyway... unless
This is the point in our journey when i try to call max and he doesn't answer. It's already pretty dark and there's shadowy people walking around outside. Leanne calls her boyfriend Tom. When we tell him we're on MLK street he freaks out and is says, "Omg, you're all the way by the airport" (which, by the way, is very far from where we wanted to be)
So our next course of action is to find a bathroom. After stopping at a gas station with bars across the doors and windows with no result, we make it to a Mc Donalds and i wait for Leanne. Then we cross the street and wait at the bus stop for the 42, which will supposedly take us back to Freedmont. We had walked a good deal by this time. When the 42 bus finally came the doors open and... low and behold... it's the same bus driver we had before. He looks at us and goes, "Have you guys been stuck here the WHOLE time?" And we're like, "um..."
and so the journey continues.
Leanne, at this point, probably would have been quite content to just ride back to freedmont and go back to our dorm, but i still had my mind set on the hamster. I called Petco and found that they were open until 9 that night. We still had a chance!! So we decide to ride back to Freedmont and start over again from where we started.
This concludes the first part of our epic adventure, but is only the beginning of the second half. When the bus got back into familiar territory we kinda relaxed and realized that we were really really hungry. But we ignored the pangs of our stomach and decided to go straight for petco. Food could come later. This is the point where time becomes really really crucial to the story. keep in mind that the pet shop closes at 9:00!
We got into Freedmont around 7:45 and begin looking for our stop at 45th street. After twenty minutes we ask the bus driver if he'll let us know when we come to 45th street. He tells us that we had already passed it a while back. (by the way, this bus driver probably thinks we're complete nincompoops>.<) So we're like, "oh crap" and jump off the bus at the next stop. We decide to walk back down the way we came and find the stop we were supposed to get off at, but we don't trust our directions anymore. So we stop at this skate shop to ask for directions. it was all empty except for this guy and girl who worked there and we explained our predicament to them. The girl says that there is a bus down the street that comes at 8:10 that will take us up university avenue to the pet shop... and, in fact, that she's taking that bus herself as soon as they close up shop. So feeling a little better, we walk down the hill to the bus stop and wait. We meet the skate shop girl there and we board the bus together.
As you can well imagine, we were pretty delirious at this point in our loooonnng journey. I was laughing histarically at every single thing, even if it wasn't funny at all (and this was a laughter that very closely borderlines crying). I think we both believed we were chasing some sort of phantom, and now we were running solely on addrenaline and our sense of justification. we couldn't go back and face our dorm empty handed after all the pain we had endured. On this bus ride we even wrote our epitaphs on our arms just in case we died or something before we reached petco. Leanne's was "in eternal pursuit of hamsters" and mine was "i died in search of Huey."
It was already around 8:40 by the time we got off the bus on University Avenue, which left us 20 minutes to find Petco and pick out a hamster. The skate shop girl pointed us in the right direction and we walked/ran 8 blocks. When we finally saw the petco sign we totally started shouting and running the last block to arrive at petco ten minutes before closing time. Huzzah! You can all feel happy for us.
But the story doesn't end there, folks. The guy who helped us at the store ended up being Leanne's old friend from sixth grade. It was really bizzare. He helped us pick out a carmel colored hamster and even gave us a twenty percent discount on the cage and everything. It was amazing. We left just as they were closing the doors. We litterally had to push the automatic doors open.
So now we had our hamster, but we still needed to find our way back. Leanne was carrying the hamster and i was carrying the huge box with the cage and everything in it, which must have looked really strange to people passing by. And at this time really strange people wander the streets of freedmont. We made our way back to the bus stop, pretty exhausted and stopped at a place for bubble tea. I wanted a lychee flavored smoothie one, but the lady was evil and gave me lychee flavored tea instead, which was really strong and really bitter. I ended up dumping more than half of it.
We finally got to a bus stop to catch a bus back to freedmont. The hamster was going crazy and scratching at the walls of his box. He actually began chewing big holes in the box. We remedied this problem by using some of the pads Leanne had bought earlier to stick over the holes he chewed. So we now had a box with a hamster in it covered in feminine pads.
At the bus stop, this smoker guy totally stopped and asked us what we were carrying and we felt really awkward and hoped he didn't mention aything about the pads strapped around the hamster box. But he was really nice, though he was obviously hitting on us. Eventually he asked for a dollar to go buy a shot (at least he was honest) and we complied (it was only a dollar) and after hanging around for a little while longer, he left.
Then there was this man who was hopelessly drunk who stumbled into the bus stop booth and collapsed. He could barely talk or move and he kept trying to stand up... when i asked him if he needed any help he asked us for 45 cents for the bus. We DID give him the money, even though we knew it wasn't for bus fare like he said. I assume he was after a cigarett. He stumbled away, and the last thing i remember seeing is him throwing up in a trash can or digging for food. I don't know which.
Anyway, once back in freedmont we had to walk the mile back to campus, all the while the hamster was making more holes and we added another pad to the box. We went up to our dorm from a back road and snuck in through a side door. Leanne stayed outside and passed the actual hamster in through the window. Then there was a rush to put the cage together (this was rather hard since our brains were completely fried) because we heard there was going to be a raid (when our brother floor invades our floor and takes us out to do something fun) at 11:00 and it was already 10:40 or something by the time we got back. We barely made it before the guys came and dragged us off to do ice braker games in the lobby.
SO i guess in the end everything worked out. PRAISE GOD. Because god was most definentally involved.
We now have our hamster happily situated in one of our closet areas. I don't know how long we'll be able to keep him a secret, but i hope it'll be all year. So i guess our epic story has a happy ending after all. Thanks for baring with me through this whole long post. As a reward i shall post hamster pictures.XD
HAPPY ENDING!!!!!XDXD
Here goes nothing.
It all began on monday when me and my roomates decided we wanted a hamster.... this in itself was pretty tragic because we aren't allowed to have pets in the dorm. not at all. Just fish. And all my fish in the past have either shriveled away to nothing or died horrible unnatural deaths. So i was like, NO, we are NOT getting a fish.
Anyways, after angsting over this for a good thirty minutes we decided to ignore all possible consequences and get ourselves a fuzzy little friend. We had it all planned out. Leanne and I would leave for psychology class early so we could get five-hour bus passes. Then after psychology ended (5:20) we would walk a good mile into freedmont and take a nine minute bus ride on bus 26 to our destination: Petco. Got that? ... Freedmont. Bus 26. Nine minutes. Petco. Doesn't sound incredibly difficult does it?
Well, that was our plan... here's what really happened.
We actually left psychology 40 minutes early (around 4:30) and headed up to Freedmont. As we were approaching the bus stop we saw a bus 26 leave the stop and head up the hill. I was like, "aw crap. now we have to wait forever for the next bus." Leanne told me not to worry because she thought that bus was going in the wrong direction anyway and we needed to take the 26 bus going down the hill. I was like, "are you sure?" and she's like, "it doesn't matter what direction we take, the 26 bus goes in a big circle anyway." I was really suspicious of this theory (called "Leanne's theory of bussology") because i'm pretty sure that buses in Hawaii change numbers at the end of their rout, right? (Lara's theory of bussology)... but i decided she probably knew better than i did.
So we finally get on bus 26 and we're just dandy until we realize that we don't know when to get off. At one point i gathered up the courage to ask the bus driver if he knew where petco was. He gave me some wierd obscure answer and said he knew there was one in Bellview. This was our first sign that something was wrong. We called Elyse who was still in our room and asked her to look at the instructions Leanne had printed and left on her desk. The stop we were supposed to get off at was 45th and Freedmont. We were pretty sure we hadn't seen it, and meanwhile the bus was taking us deeper and deeper into seattle and further and further away from Freedmont. So we're riding the bus rather uncomfortably now, realizing that this bus was, indeed, going the wrong way... but we still had faith in Leanne's theory of bussology so we stayed on and waited for it to turn around and head the right way again. It didn't. It took so many turns and side streets that both of us were completely scrambled, and at one point we could have sworn we had turned back towards Freedmont.
We rode the bus like this for a good hour or more, too afraid to get off and hoping beyond hope that the bus would make a loop back to freedmont. We began to realize that the racial type of people on the bus was slowly starting to change. People were speaking different languages and wearing very cultural clothing. Several girls were wearing islamic head covers and there were no white people on the bus with us any more.>.< The buildings around us got increasingly shabbier and more crumbled looking. And after a while we realized we weren't in seattle anymore. We were out in the boonies. In nomans land. Heck knows where we were, but it was starting to get real shady. The buildings had long since disappeared and there were old corroded shops and signs in arabic. Our bus was no longer the 26, but had long since turned into a 42 or something like that (thus proving Lara's theory of bussology).
It was six thrity when we finally decided it was time to get off the bus, and it was getting dark. The bus driver had told us that it would be another two hours before he turned around for Freedmont and we had decided we would rather try and catch another bus back than sit on the same one for two hours. So we exited the bus on Martin Luther King street. Leanne was freaking out because she kept thinking we were gonna get raped, and it didn't help that her period had started on the long bus ride and we didn't have any pads.-_-;
SO. We decide our first priortity is to find someplace that sells pads. We walk down to this old safeway. The brand selection was very limited, but we weren't about to be picky. i asked one of the ladies who worked there if there was a pet shop nearby (yes, i STILL had my mind set on getting a hamster) but couldn't get a definate answer. I kinda doubt there was one around there anyway... unless
This is the point in our journey when i try to call max and he doesn't answer. It's already pretty dark and there's shadowy people walking around outside. Leanne calls her boyfriend Tom. When we tell him we're on MLK street he freaks out and is says, "Omg, you're all the way by the airport" (which, by the way, is very far from where we wanted to be)
So our next course of action is to find a bathroom. After stopping at a gas station with bars across the doors and windows with no result, we make it to a Mc Donalds and i wait for Leanne. Then we cross the street and wait at the bus stop for the 42, which will supposedly take us back to Freedmont. We had walked a good deal by this time. When the 42 bus finally came the doors open and... low and behold... it's the same bus driver we had before. He looks at us and goes, "Have you guys been stuck here the WHOLE time?" And we're like, "um..."
and so the journey continues.
Leanne, at this point, probably would have been quite content to just ride back to freedmont and go back to our dorm, but i still had my mind set on the hamster. I called Petco and found that they were open until 9 that night. We still had a chance!! So we decide to ride back to Freedmont and start over again from where we started.
This concludes the first part of our epic adventure, but is only the beginning of the second half. When the bus got back into familiar territory we kinda relaxed and realized that we were really really hungry. But we ignored the pangs of our stomach and decided to go straight for petco. Food could come later. This is the point where time becomes really really crucial to the story. keep in mind that the pet shop closes at 9:00!
We got into Freedmont around 7:45 and begin looking for our stop at 45th street. After twenty minutes we ask the bus driver if he'll let us know when we come to 45th street. He tells us that we had already passed it a while back. (by the way, this bus driver probably thinks we're complete nincompoops>.<) So we're like, "oh crap" and jump off the bus at the next stop. We decide to walk back down the way we came and find the stop we were supposed to get off at, but we don't trust our directions anymore. So we stop at this skate shop to ask for directions. it was all empty except for this guy and girl who worked there and we explained our predicament to them. The girl says that there is a bus down the street that comes at 8:10 that will take us up university avenue to the pet shop... and, in fact, that she's taking that bus herself as soon as they close up shop. So feeling a little better, we walk down the hill to the bus stop and wait. We meet the skate shop girl there and we board the bus together.
As you can well imagine, we were pretty delirious at this point in our loooonnng journey. I was laughing histarically at every single thing, even if it wasn't funny at all (and this was a laughter that very closely borderlines crying). I think we both believed we were chasing some sort of phantom, and now we were running solely on addrenaline and our sense of justification. we couldn't go back and face our dorm empty handed after all the pain we had endured. On this bus ride we even wrote our epitaphs on our arms just in case we died or something before we reached petco. Leanne's was "in eternal pursuit of hamsters" and mine was "i died in search of Huey."
It was already around 8:40 by the time we got off the bus on University Avenue, which left us 20 minutes to find Petco and pick out a hamster. The skate shop girl pointed us in the right direction and we walked/ran 8 blocks. When we finally saw the petco sign we totally started shouting and running the last block to arrive at petco ten minutes before closing time. Huzzah! You can all feel happy for us.
But the story doesn't end there, folks. The guy who helped us at the store ended up being Leanne's old friend from sixth grade. It was really bizzare. He helped us pick out a carmel colored hamster and even gave us a twenty percent discount on the cage and everything. It was amazing. We left just as they were closing the doors. We litterally had to push the automatic doors open.
So now we had our hamster, but we still needed to find our way back. Leanne was carrying the hamster and i was carrying the huge box with the cage and everything in it, which must have looked really strange to people passing by. And at this time really strange people wander the streets of freedmont. We made our way back to the bus stop, pretty exhausted and stopped at a place for bubble tea. I wanted a lychee flavored smoothie one, but the lady was evil and gave me lychee flavored tea instead, which was really strong and really bitter. I ended up dumping more than half of it.
We finally got to a bus stop to catch a bus back to freedmont. The hamster was going crazy and scratching at the walls of his box. He actually began chewing big holes in the box. We remedied this problem by using some of the pads Leanne had bought earlier to stick over the holes he chewed. So we now had a box with a hamster in it covered in feminine pads.
At the bus stop, this smoker guy totally stopped and asked us what we were carrying and we felt really awkward and hoped he didn't mention aything about the pads strapped around the hamster box. But he was really nice, though he was obviously hitting on us. Eventually he asked for a dollar to go buy a shot (at least he was honest) and we complied (it was only a dollar) and after hanging around for a little while longer, he left.
Then there was this man who was hopelessly drunk who stumbled into the bus stop booth and collapsed. He could barely talk or move and he kept trying to stand up... when i asked him if he needed any help he asked us for 45 cents for the bus. We DID give him the money, even though we knew it wasn't for bus fare like he said. I assume he was after a cigarett. He stumbled away, and the last thing i remember seeing is him throwing up in a trash can or digging for food. I don't know which.
Anyway, once back in freedmont we had to walk the mile back to campus, all the while the hamster was making more holes and we added another pad to the box. We went up to our dorm from a back road and snuck in through a side door. Leanne stayed outside and passed the actual hamster in through the window. Then there was a rush to put the cage together (this was rather hard since our brains were completely fried) because we heard there was going to be a raid (when our brother floor invades our floor and takes us out to do something fun) at 11:00 and it was already 10:40 or something by the time we got back. We barely made it before the guys came and dragged us off to do ice braker games in the lobby.
SO i guess in the end everything worked out. PRAISE GOD. Because god was most definentally involved.
We now have our hamster happily situated in one of our closet areas. I don't know how long we'll be able to keep him a secret, but i hope it'll be all year. So i guess our epic story has a happy ending after all. Thanks for baring with me through this whole long post. As a reward i shall post hamster pictures.XD
HAPPY ENDING!!!!!XDXD