This past Saturday, my adult league went to Augusta to play a local men\'s team. It was a fun day, we won 5 - 1 and had a great time, but disaster struck on our trip back...
Things started to go bad when the trailer that the bus was towing got stuck pulling out of Burger King and then got worse when I took a puck to the knee in warm ups (there was a gap in my leg pads and it managed to find it)... When we left it was 7PM and a long 4 and a half hour drive back to Columbus. We decided to stop for dinner at O Charlies which took 2 hours. During our dinner the manager somehow thought we played the Augusta Professional ECHL team and won 5 to 1 and proceeded to tell all of the other customers about it.
When we got back on the bus, we started the long journey home. My knee was starting to swell up really badly and to make matters worse my wife and I were sitting in the smallest seats on the bus. My knees were literally touching the seat in front of me. I tried to get some sleep, but it wasn\'t going to happen. We made a pit stop and right after we pulled back out on the highway, smoke started pouring out of the back of the bus and the sickly sweet smell of anti freeze engulfed the bus. We pulled over only to find out the timing belt came off and made a water hose burst. Luckily one of our other teammates was behind us when this happened and pulled over... THIS was a very lucky coincidence as he didn\'t eat at the same place as us and only noticed it was our bus after his wife pointed it out to him. Anyway, some guys jumped in his truck to head to Wal Mart to get a replacement. It was now a little after midnight and this particular Wal Mart closed at 12 AM. Luckily, we begged them to reopen so we could attempt to fix our bus and leave.
Meanwhile, the bus was getting colder as it was near freezing outside. When we got back, after an hour of tinkering with it, the bus came back to life. To sum it up, we made it back to Columbus at 4AM. It was a long night, but the trip was worth it. I had a great time and we won convincingly. Anyway here are some pictures of me in goal (My wife took the picture behind the glass, thus the crappy quality) and I have enclosed some pictures that I took of the bus on the side of the highway.
