My Twelve Hours of Independence :: Personal Narrative

My Twelve Hours of Independence As the expansive tour bus inscribed with Arrow Stage Lines on both sides, pulled up to the station, I felt my heart leap with excitement. This was really happening to me. All this time of planning and anticipating, and now my dream was coming true! I could hardly wait to be on my own and to be away from my family for a whole week! Looking around, I could see only five other people that I knew. Four of these people were my family members and the other was a friend of mine who was going with me. The driver of the huge bus climbed down from his perch behind the wheel and introduced himself as Juan Alvarez. I loaded my luggage into the compartment below the bus, told my family goodbye, and walked up the steps of the bus. I soon met the three other people who were riding with John and me and then settled into my seat for the long bus ride to Liberty, Missouri where we would be attending the Farmland Youth Leadership Conference. The five of us were basically on our own. It was just us and the bus driver, who couldn't speak very much English. We had a lot of stops along the way to pick up other students attending the conference so we plugged in a movie and turned on the zone mode that would get us through the twelve-hour drive. After only one minor delay of our bus breaking down just outside of Denver, we had successfully picked up all of the attendees from Colorado. There were about twenty-five of us altogether. We changed drivers in Denver, then drove on towards Hays, Kansas, where we would pick up some more students. By this time, it was about 6:30 in the morning, and the bus was nearing the small town of Ellis, which is about twenty minutes outside of Hays. The movie Pure Country was playing, but I had fallen asleep long before it had started. It was just finishing when it happened. One minute I was comfortably curled up, lying across two seats and the next I was bounced into the aisle of the bus. Thankfully, John was sitting in the seat directly across from mine, so he helped me up out of the aisle and had me sit down next to him. I watched in horror as the bus sped through the grassy median and then bounced back on to the Interstate. The entire bus was in a state of confusion, as almost everybody had been asleep when the bus went off the road.