Breakfast with Amber

November 2022: I Might Have Missed the Bus

We've finally made it to Thanksgiving, the first real break of the semester. Every year, I had gone back home to visit the 'rents (except for sophomore year, when I was already home living with the 'rents). On years when I was on campus, I'd always take the bus from San Antonio to Houston except it wasn't any ordinary bus. I'd take the Vonlane, an extra-fancy coach with big leather seats, footrests, snacks and drinks, and free, halfway decent wi-fi. It's like Greyhound but more bougee, and my parents were always willing to send the money to make sure I'd get home in comfort.

This year, we were getting the whole week off for Thanksgiving as opposed to last year when we only got three days. (Doesn't anyone else find it strange that no one can seem to agree on how many days Thanksgiving break should be or even stick to the same amount of days from year to year?) That meant I'd be riding into Houston on Saturday the 19th and returning to San Antonio on Sunday the 27th.

My bus to Houston was scheduled for 1 pm to 4 pm, with boarding beginning at 12:45. I arrived at the hotel at 12:30. The bus stopped at the Marriot Rivercenter downtown, so I took a Lyft to get there. I sat down in one of the leather chairs in the lobby facing the side where the bus stopped so that I could see the bus through the side door instead of getting up every three minutes to see if it had showed up. It would be here in 15 minutes, so it's not like I'd be sitting here for long.

12:45 passed, then 1:00, then 1:15, and I didn't see the bus. My parents would periodically check in on me to see what my progress was, and I'd have to keep telling them that the bus wasn't here yet, and I hadn't gotten any message about a delay, so I was incredibly confused. After an hour had passed, I got a call from my mom. She had called Vonlane to ask about the state of the bus, and she was told it had left on time.

And I just didn't notice. Did it park on a different side of the hotel? Was it not actually visible through that door like I had thought? Did it come and go in the brief moment I wasn't looking? Either way, I had missed the bus. We had two options: either they could schedule me for a bus on the morning of the 20th, or, if I really wanted to get out of there, Mom and Dad could drive all the way to San Antonio, pick me up, and drive me all the way back to Houston, but they warned me they wouldn't be there until 5 or 6, and it would be pretty darn late when I got home. I picked the option that got me out of town faster because honestly, I had just done laundry in anticipation of leaving on Saturday, and I felt bad leaving one outfit in the hamper for the week. Mom agreed to it, and I ordered another Lyft to drive me back to campus.

This meant that I had three hours to kill before Mom and Dad showed up. What was I to do? I was going to play Splatoon once I was back home, but that wouldn't be for a while now, so why not play now? I had just crossed the threshold to start playing Tower Control, and I was itching to get started. I had already done some research on Google for the best Tower Control weapons and found that the best weapons for the job were the Splattershot Jr., the Blaster, the Rapid Blaster, and the Sloshing Machine, so I picked the one that was already in my arsenal, the Splattershot Jr.

All three battles were on Inkblot Art Academy. The first battle went slightly better than I expected my first Tower Control battle to go. The enemy team had the upper hand for most of it, but we were able to get the tower down to 53 points when I thought we were going to get curb-stomped. (That's how my first Rainmaker battle went, but that's another story.) We lost after four seconds of overtime, and I got splatted 13 times.

I'm not sure if the second battle went better or worse. On one hand, my team got knocked out in about three minutes, but I also got Record Score Setter because near the beginning of the battle when the tower was on our side, the fighting suddenly moved to around the tower instead of on top of it, so I just decided to sneak on top, pop my Big Bubbler, and ride it all the way to the 75-point mark when people had noticed the tower was gone. Yes, 75 was as far as we got.