By Justin Hill

Anyone who knows me would know that I live to shop and that I am one of the most antisocial people on the planet.

Both of these collided one Thursday morning when I received an email informing me that Nordstrom was having their annual Anniversary sale. Since I do not have my driver’s license, I was perplexed on how I would get to the mall to fulfill my annual pilgrimage to the Mecca, Cherry Creek Mall. With it being a Thursday I realized all of my friends were at work and that my only option was something completely foreign to me: take the bus. To dramatize the situation even more, the sky was an ominous shade of grey, and it was raining so hard it could have been an ending scene in a romantic melodrama.

Once I reached the bus stop, I was surprised to see that the bus itself was only a few feet away. I had always heard such horror stories about waiting hours for buses to arrive, but little did I know that it would soon happen to me later that day. The bus itself was nothing that I thought it would be; I thought it would be a bunch of people standing all cramped against one another, and the air would be thick with the scent of pee and body odor. It was to my surprise to see that it wasn’t like that all, but instead it was ordinary people sitting on multi-colored, cushioned seats.

Ten minutes later I was ready for my first transfer. As I headed on to my second bus of the day I was confused. What do I do with this transfer? Do I hand it to the driver? In the midst of my confusion I asked the driver, who found me too incompetent to even respond to.

Before I knew it I had been riding the same bus for a half an hour. Not seeing anything familiar through the windows, I asked the bus driver how much longer until we reached the mall. It all went downhill from there. The bus driver informed me that not only had we passed the mall fifteen minutes ago, but that this bus does not even go to Cherry Creek Mall. It was then where he dropped me off in the middle of nowhere, in a field with nothing but tall yellow grass. It was there that I waited for forty-five minutes for what I thought was the correct bus to the mall.

When my bus finally came I rushed on with my expired transfer, which the driver didn’t even glance at. This time I made sure to pay close attention to each stop. Once I began to recognize where I was, I learned from my past mistakes and asked the bus driver where I should get off. Unfortunately, history was repeating itself the driver informed me that this bus would not take me to the mall.

The driver kindly dropped me off at the corner and told me what bus to get on. Unlike the last time I was not in a field of grass, but a field of homeless people, one of which had a two-legged dog.

On my third bus I was soaking wet and smelled like homeless dog when I befriended a kind Indian girl who gave me step-by-step instructions on how to get to the mall.

From there it was three buses and forty minutes later when I finally reached my destination. Not only was Nordstroms sold out of half the things I had intended to purchase but I had lost my hat two busses ago.

The public transportation system had taught me three things: believe in the kindness of strangers, that the rain is nothing to sing about, and that homeless people are really not something to be afraid of. It just goes to show that not only can a day take you on an unexpected adventure, but that adventure can only cost you a dollar and ten cents.