My Adventure of the Day
Traveling back to Greystones should have been a relaxing 3 hour bus ride. Phantom of the Opera was on the bus TV. The window curtains were closed to block the late afternoon sun. But at 5:30, it all went wrong. A back tire (spelled “tyre” here) blew. We pulled over, and Brian made a call.

We ended up pulling off the freeway to the country roads. Because there are double tires in the back, we could drive with the flat as long as we drove more slowly.

Around 7, we finally pulled off into a bus repair station to wait for a new bus. By now we were all starving. We poured out of the bus, and the remaining bags of crisps and packages of biscuits and fruit were pulled from the back. We attacked the food like famished wolves.

Brian told us where some a restroom was, so a few of us went to find it. We found it—a single bathroom. The repair shop was empty apart from us, so we leaned against the abandoned counter. The door to the bathroom did not latch unless you locked it. The first two girls didn’t try to use the key to lock the door to keep it shut, so one of us just held it closed. But I locked the door, not thinking anything of it. It locked very easily, and the girls applauded my success. I went to the bathroom and washed my hands. Then I tried to unlock the door. Nothing. I tried again.

“Hannah? Are you having some trouble in there?” I heard Emily say on the other side of the door.

“I’m just having some difficulty unlocking the door,” I replied. I was frustrated. The lock was a skeleton key. I think I missed the life lesson on how to properly use a skeleton key. I tried the lock again and again.

“Have you checked to see if anything is stuck in the lock?” Colin asked in a helpful voice from the other side.

“I just locked it. There can’t be anything stuck in it.” I checked anyway. “Which way are you supposed to turn it?”

“Try both ways,” Colin told me. “Take the key out between tries.”

“You can do it,” Emily cheered encouragingly.

I was on my knees now, trying to unlock the stupid door. I glanced around while I was doing this. There was no window. The bathroom was more like a closet than a bathroom. The crack under the door was practically nonexistent, so passing the key to the out to them was not an option. The ceiling tile above me was gone, so Plan B became going out through the ceiling.

“Try angling the key.” Colin’s voice reminded me to focus on the lock and forget about finding another way out. That door was the only way out.

It took another few times, but I finally got the door unlocked.

I started laughing. “I’m a biology major. I should be smart enough to unlock a door.”

“We’re bio majors not mechanical engineering,” Aric told me as he gave me a high five.

Emily, Caitlin, and Jordan were laughing with me.

“I don’t know why they were just telling you what to do,” Caitlin said. “I would have been there telling them to bust down the door! I was thinking to myself, ‘We could take the hinges off…darn it, they’re on the inside.’”

“Are you kidding?” Emily exclaimed. “I was about to bust that door down myself!”

“I wasn’t worried about getting out,” I told them. “I just was embarrassed that you guys knew I couldn’t get out.” I laughed. “I knew I’d figure it out eventually.”

Needless to say, no one tried to lock the door after that.

By the time we went back outside, the new bus had arrived. It was a big bus, so we ech got our own double seat. We were on the road again by 7:30.