On March 25th I contacted my friend and asked about her plans for the weekend. When she told me that she was free, I suggested that we go for a walk on Saturday morning…a walk to New York City. She said, “what?!? WALK to New York??” I nonchalantly replied, “sure! We’ll leave tomorrow at 7:11am. Dress warm!”
I knew that she didn’t believe me because: 1) It was about 38 degrees outside, and 2) I am notorious for avoiding long walks. Within minutes of her agreeing to the hangout I hatched a plan that was supposed to throw her for a tremendous curveball. I planned to take a bus from New York to Baltimore, MD and use a ZipCar to explore the city for a few hours before returning home.
When Saturday came, she had no idea what we were doing or where we were going, but yet she blindly followed me without asking aquestions. Luckily I’m not a kidnapper because if I was, this would’ve been my easiest kidnapping ever! We left New Jersey at 7:11am, took a NJ Transit bus to New York City and then took a BoltBus to Baltimore. Two hours into the bus ride, I asked, “do you want to know where we’re going?” She replied, “nope, I trust you!” My inner mischievous child was just dying to test the extent of this trust, so I did.
When we got to Baltimore, I decided to make us walk for two miles instead of taking public transportation. To make things worse, I took the weirdest, shadiest streets to see if she asked any questions. 12:36pm – Still no questions, even though we were in the middle of nowhere!
We finally arrived at the ZipCar pickup location, but instead of telling her that I reserved it for the day, I sprinted to the car, opened the door like a car thief and yelled, “LET’S TAKE THIS CAR!!” She stared at me with a surprised expression as I started the engine and started to drive way. I asked, “are you coming with me??” Then she reluctantly entered the car. 1:02pm – Still no questions, even though it appeared that I just stole a car.
Eventually I revealed to her that the car was a rental, which calmed her nerves a bit. Then we grabbed food and explored the city for a few hours. When the time came to catch our returning bus, we returned the ZipCar to its parking space and searched for a local bus to take us to the BoltBus. Unfortunately my lack of patience caused me to make us board the incorrect local bus, which took us through the roughest parts of Baltimore. To make the situation worse, the passenger next to me stared at the side of my head with a look of hate in his eyes for about five nonstop minutes. When he finally took his attention off my head, he began to psychotically whisper sweet nothings into the ear of the lady seated in front of us. The more that she tried to move away from him was the louder that he spoke. Eventually he was yelling nasty nothings at her and I knew that I needed to get away from him before he started to psychotically whisper at me.
We returned to the BoltBus in the nick of time and finally returned to New York for the last leg of the journey back home. Just when I thought that we were home free, we missed the last express bus to NJ. The only remaining alternative for the night was to wait 1.5 hours for the last slow local bus, which traveled at walking speeds to take us home via the longest possible route.
The day concluded at 1am with me being utterly tired from our little escapade. When I asked my friend why she wasn’t nervous throughout the trip, she said that she knew that I planned everything and wouldn’t let allow anything bad to happen. Little did she know, we almost got attacked by a drunk pervert on a bus, almost got stranded in Maryland and almost spent the night in a New York City bus station. We’ll just keep those parts of “the adventure” a secret…at least, until she reads this journal entry.