A Little More Wolf Awareness

In my last update post, I just gave you a taste of the adventure I had in Salt Lake on Saturday, and will now share more of the hilarity and frustrations from the days events.

So, we caught the 12:05 bus at University Ave. and University Pkwy. Saturday to head to to the zoo. I packed a couple school books in one of my big purses (which happened to coordinate nicely with my wolf shirt) with the intention of studying on the ride. Hello, Emily! You get severely carsick in any moving vehicle even when you aren't reading! I don't know why I forgot this oh, so painful fact, seeing as my family and I have had many an unpleasant car ride due to my extreme proneness to motion sickness. I guess I thought maybe a bus would be different. Nope. Within 5 minutes of reading in my ELang book about syntax, I was making plans for what I what bag I could grab if need be. I won't elaborate further, but needless to say, I spent the first leg of our journey with my head on my knees resisting the nausea I was feeling. Gross.

It was also on this first stretch that I was informed that our travels would take an approximate 2 and a half hours each way! I found myself thinking, "What the heck am I doing here?! I have homework and laundry and ironing!" Sadly, I was trapped on the UTA.

After about 45 minutes or so, we transferred to TRAX, the Utah lightrail, and the fresh air definitetly helped me feel better. We saw some interesting characters, though, and missed our stop. Blast. We got off at the next stop, waited about 10 minutes on the platform, and caught the train going back to our intended stop. That took us to some random shopping complex in Salt Lake, next to the Rock Church, where we caught another bus that took us further into the city.

Okay, so by the time we got off at our final stop, it was almost 3:00, and we still had no idea where the zoo was. We ended up at some park, where our group parted ways. Half went to find the zoo, while Jessica, Nick, Billy, and I stayed behind because we didn't want to pay $8 to go to the zoo for only an hour before we caught our bus home at 5:00. Those of us who stayed behind took naps in the park because it really was a beautiful day, and walked over to A&W for some draft root beer and french fries.

This lunch stop provided the highlight of our trip. This is the wonderfully quotable conversation that went down between me and the cashier:

Cashier: I love your shirts!
Me: Thanks! It's Wolf Awareness Day at the zoo, and we're just supporting the wolves.
Cashier: I. Love. Wolves. You should see my checkbook. Nothing but wolves.

Hahahahahaha. This makes me laugh every time I think about it. She was dead serious, and seriously hilarious. We think there was something genuinely wrong with her though, because later, we heard her pressuring an innocent customer into adding a dessert to his order. She kept saying "But don't you want a root beer float with that?" Jessica was scared to go up to get change for her return bus fare, afraid that the wolf lady would try to get her to buy some ice cream too.

Our return trip was more of the same of train rides and bus exchanges. This time, however, I had resigned myself to the fact that I would get absolutely nothing done that day, so it wasn't as stressful. We had a 45 minute wait in between the train and second bus, and had fun playing games at the bus stop. A couple of our friends taped their homemade wolf awareness signs to the glass bus stop wall thing, and we were baffled when a guy drinking something out of a Big Gulp cup (it looked like Coke, but based on his behavior, it could have been something much stronger) came over, removed the signs, and walked away carrying them down the lightrail tracks. Hmm. Maybe he's just trying to spread Wolf Awareness too.

We made it back into Provo at 7:30, tired and sad about never seeing the zoo or the wolves. It was good to see more of Utah. You don't realize how much of a bubble Provo is until you go somewhere outside of the town where you can smell cigarette smoke and see people in tank tops and U of U paraphenalia.