96 a lu mn i_ v o ic e@ a a. nc tu .e du .t w 交大友聲 期393
What A Long Trip To Go Home!
l 控工 58 級 施森源
I was in Newark, NJ when the World Trade Centers got hit by the terrorists. After the tragedy, the Newark Airport was closed for three days. And my return flight was put on hold indefinitely. I was stranded in Newark for three days. Finally, we (two of my colleagues with me) decided to take Greyhound Bus back to San Diego on Sep-tember 14 because the rental car compa-nies in New York and New Jersey areas wanted to charge $300 a day to rent a car. The bus left Newark about 4 PM and arrived in Cleveland around 3 AM mid-night to change to another bus to Chicago. The bus station was like a zoo, jammed with people. I estimated about 4 to 5 hun-dred people at the station. And we were like number 150th in the waiting line to Chicago. Each bus can only load 47 people, and the schedule to Chicago is every 8 hours. We had to wait another 16 hours before we can get on the bus. We decided to rent a car from Cleveland Airport. There were three of us, and we found a couple and a woman who were in the same bus and going to Los Angeles.
So there were six of us on a mini-van. We left Cleveland around 4 AM, and passed through Chicago around 10 AM. We called United Airlines to fly back from Chicago to San Diego. But United had no flights available going to the West Coast. So we drove across Iowa, Nebraska, and then to Denver. We passed through Den-ver around midnight the next day. And we called airlines again, still there were no flights available. Then we continued driv-ing through Vail, Colorado. Vail is a very beautiful ski resort, like a small Switzer-land village. We finally were able to book the flights back to Los Angeles and San Diego from Las Vegas, and returned the car to Las Vegas Airport. The woman stayed in Las Vegas because her husband was going to meet her at MGM in Las Vegas.
We drove across the country in 36 hours. Wow!
