the saga continues...and finally ends.

For those of you who don't like to read all the way through, I have my computer!

So Jimmy came and met me around 5:30 on Thursday night. I had called the NJ Transit people earlier in the day to find out how, exactly, to get there. So Jimmy and I went to Penn Station and got on the train. The train took us to Penn Station Newark (sound familiar?) where we were told we should catch the 25 bus. We got on the 25 bus and rode, and rode, and rode. Finally, the bus was almost empty and we still hadn't entered the industrial area I had expected. Jimmy went and asked the bus driver about it. Any guesses on what the bus driver said? Oh yeah, we were going the wrong way.

So we get off the bus and decide to try and take a cab. We go into a gas station so Jimmy can get cash from an ATM and we ask the attendant if we'd be able to get a cab on this road (which was a pretty main road). She looked at us like we were aliens. You'd think that we'd got from Manhattan to Mars and cabs didn't exist. So we decide that all we can do is catch the bus back the other way. We wait for a while out in the freezing cold (where it had snowed a bit already), and finally a bus comes by. It was the same bus we'd been on before. The driver tells us that his bus wasn't going all the way where we needed to go, but Jimmy had already dropped the fare into the little slot thing, so the driver gives him a ticket that says that we got on the wrong bus. We were supposed to give it to the driver of the other bus so we wouldn't have to pay again.

We wait for a long time. At some point we go into the entrance to a diner right by the bus stop to try and stay warm. Finally a bus comes. It was already almost 8 p.m. when it got there, and that was when Lost and Found closed at the other place, so we just decide to head back to Manhattan. The driver didn't accept Jimmy's ticket and we had to pay again. Of course... I decided that the longer my stuff sat in Lost and Found, the more time there was for something else to go wrong. I decided to get up at 6 the next morning, be there when it opened at 8, and get back in time for my 10:30 class.

I got up at 6. I walked outside. It was snowing. It was snowing like crazy. It was the kind with those huge wet snowflakes that stick to everything. By the time I'd walked the couple of blocks to Penn Station, I was covered. I got on my train. I got on the bus. The one going the right way. The bus driver was not a nice lady.

This is the part of my trip where you have to wonder if I truly cursed: we're coming down off of this bridge when the car in front of us stops suddenly. The driver hits the breaks, but because of the snow the bus slides and fishtails across the road. Let me just say that my seat was right where the oncoming traffic was headed.

This is where life starts to look better: I'm watching this big old truck trying to stop before it smashes into my seat, and it just barely manages to slide to a halt before effectively ruining my day.

The Ironbound Garage, where I was told my backpack was really was located in an industrial zone. It was also right near the Essex County Penitentiary. I'm pretty sure several of the other passengers were going to visit inmates there. Fun, right? I got to the garage at 7:30.

To make an already very long story a little shorter, I waited, got lost in the building, got my bag, caught the bus back, caught the train back, and made it to my 10:30 class. Everything was in my bag except for the carabiner that Donovan gave me way back when that was attached to the outside. That was sad, but praise the Lord I got the rest back!

I would like to mention that by the time I got back and headed to school, there was no trace of the snow that attacked me in the early hours. After a trip like this, and the fact that I hate snow, that snow plagued me in Colorado, after it snows within a week of my return, and the only way I even knew about it is that it happened the one day I had to be out at 6 in the morning, you really have to wonder... What the heck?

And to those of you who have used the word "plutoed" in comments and on blogs, you have not gone unnoticed.