Purdue Hackers take on a 7 hour adventure

It was the beginning of March when I had seen a post about a hackathon at a university in Atlanta. The post said that if 30+ people from a certain school applied to the hackathon, the organizers would send a bus to the school so that the students may attend the event. I was like, “Awesome, let’s get a bunch of Purdue students to apply so we can get a bus!” After making a couple posts promoting this hackathon, I had succesfully gotten over 30 students from Purdue to apply and received an email for the organizers saying that they’ll be sending a bus. Yay!

Over 2 weeks go by, and I don’t receive any information on the bus. I also realize that the hackathon is in 4 days, and so I decide to email the organizers telling them I’ll be the bus coordinator for Purdue and asked them for the bus details. They ended up emailing me the final details the next day. I get the email and it says that there is a bus…but it also says that it’s coming to Indianapolis at 5 AM Friday morning…All I can think of at that moment is that first of all, even though over 30 students applied for this event, not a lot of them have time this weekend to attend it, and the ones that do want to attend it most likely will not go out of their way to travel to Indianapolis at 4 AM to catch the bus. Secondly, why would they book the bus and the bus location without asking if it’s fine with the Purdue students? I was very upset about this lack of communication. After seeking help from my fellow Purdue Hackers Organizers, I contacted one of the hackathon’s organizers via Facebook and told him that literally no one will show up to Indy at 5 AM and that they NEED to get a bus coming to Purdue, like we expected. After he discussed with the rest of his team, the organizer said that they can send a shuttle at 10 PM Thursday night that will take us from Purdue to Indy so that we may catch the newly scheduled 12:30 AM bus to Atlanta. I thought that was a good solution so decided to go with it. Awesome.

About 2–3 days before the hackathon, I tried my best to hype up students and try to get them to attend. Basically everyone I talked to said that the trip is too long for them or they were busy over the weekend. Others who were interested had mandatory classes on Friday, and so could not come. At that moment, I had a feeling that I might be the only one on the bus to Atlanta, and I wasn’t too keen on going either since I had a CS lab to work on as well a CS midterm to study for.

On Thursday, about 7 hours or so before the shuttle to Indy had arrived, I made a final attempt to recruit people to join this event as I individually Facebook messaged almost every student that had applied to or had shown interest in attending. Out of the 30 something people that I had messaged, only one student said he’ll be attending. Great. I also tried posting on Yik-Yak about this trip and just told people that there’s a bus with a shit-ton of room and anyone that just wants a free trip to and from Atlanta should join. A couple people on Yik-Yak were interested but one of them had classes on Friday, and the other one never got back to me to confirm whether he/she was coming or not.

It was 9:40 PM at this point. I grabbed my bag, laptop, and neck-pillow, and started walking towards the Lawson Computer Science Building in the light rain. As I reached Lawson, I noticed the shuttle was waiting outside the building and no one was in it except the driver. I went into Lawson and found 2 brothers, Nathanael and Michael Monaghan, waiting. I asked them if they were there for the trip to the hackathon, and they said yes. I was happy at this moment because it meant that I was not going to be the only one on the bus 😀. I told them that I’m the bus coordinator for this trip, and that we can wait about 15 more minutes just in case anyone else shows up. Around 10:08, we decided that since no one else would be joining us, we should get on the bus and be on our way.

About an hour later, we reach Indianapolis. The shuttle driver drops us off at an Amtrak/Greyhound station where we were expecting a Greyhound bus at 12:30 AM to take us to Atlanta. We walk into the station, and it was definitely not the most welcoming place I’ve been to. As Nathanael described it, “It looks like a run down aiport.”

We sat there for an hour until it was 12:00. There were less people in the station by now. The lady using the PA system would say something that was inaudible every few minutes. I thought that it’d be a good idea to have the bus driver’s phone number so that I can contact him when he arrives (since the PA was useless). I messaged the hackathon orgranizer asking if he had given my phone number (which I had given him) to the bus driver, and if he can get me the driver’s number. I waited 10 minutes to see if he’d reply back, but no answer. We then decided just to wait until it was around 12:30 and maybe someone will tell us that there’s a bus to Atlanta here.

It was 12:25, and the PA system went off a couple times, and I still could not understand what it was saying. After another failed attempt to decipher the PA’s sounds, I decided to go to the information desk and inquire about the bus myself. When I got to the information desk, the workers were engaged in a conversation and continued it even though I was blatantly in sight and the only person in line.

After their conversation had ended, one of the ladies at the desk finally asked me what I needed. I asked her if the 12:30 bus to Atlanta had arrived and she says “Yes, and it’s about to leave.” WAIT. WHAAAAAAT…. I was really shocked to hear that the bus, with no one on it, was about to leave just a minute past 12:30. I tell her that the bus was reserved for us, and another lady says she’ll go and stop the driver.

The lady whom I was speaking to asks me for the confirmation number that is needed for us to board this bus. So, I look through my emails sent to me by one of the hackathon’s organizers as I search for the confirmation number. I open the most recent email containing the details for the rescheduled 12:30 AM bus, and I find NO confirmation number… Okay, not good… I try giving the confirmation number that was in the email with the previous bus details (the 5 AM bus), and the lady tells me that the confirmation number was cancelled because the bus for it was cancelled…This is when I sort of started panicking on the inside 😨. She then tells me that the number I gave her is for the 5 AM bus and since the organizers had rescheduled the bus for us, this number was not valid 😶. I try to keep calm and go through my emails looking for a recent confirmation number, and I find nothing in the last email that the organziers had sent or any of the other emails. So, there and then, we did not have the ONE piece of information that allows us to board the bus. Great.

I try to message the organizer who hasn’t responded for over 30 minutes now, and still nothing. The lady who went to stop the bus driver comes in with the driver who yells “IF THEY DON’T HAVE TICKETS, I DON’T HAVE TO WAIT!” and he just leaves. Zero chill🙅🏻. To make things worse, the lady encouragingly says “Yeah, it’s just 3 of them, you don’t have to wait.” lol wtf. And that is when our bus driver took off to Atlanta with a completely empty paid-for (over $4000 worth) bus.

I go back to the guys and tell them “Yeah, our driver just left…🙄” They were astonished as much as I was. Next thing, I immediately start messaging and calling the organizer but still no response. I start messaging the Purdue Hackers team telling them our current situtation. We all agreed that the main objective now was to find a way to get back to Purdue. Only problem was that there weren’t many immediate options to get back besides a 5:30 AM Greyhound bus that would cost $77 per ticket or an Amtrack around the same time. We did not want to sit at the bus station for 5 more hours, and so we looked for other options.

It was 1:20 AM when Shriyash (fellow Purdue Hacker organizer and da Real MVP) suggested that I contact someone from Major League Hacking (the organization that sanctions several of the hackathons), and he got a group chat started with me and some guys from MLH as well as providing me with phone numbers of MLH representatives. No one responded in the group chat at that time, so I decided to call someone from the list of numbers Shriyash (thanks so much 4ever) had sent. I randomly chose to call the number that belonged to Nick Quinlan (also da Real MVP), who happens to be the MLH commisioner. Nick quickly answered the phone, and I introduced myself and immediately described the situation that we were in. Nick, who was driving when he answered my call, understood the magnitude of our situation, and said that he’s pulling over, and that he’ll call back as soon as he does. Right after that, I informed the Purdue Hackers team that we had gotten in contact with Nick, and he will be calling back!

In a minute or so, I got a call from Nick. He apologized that we were in this position (even though it wasn’t his fault to start with), and he asked us whether we would like to go back to Purdue or continue going to Atlanta. I asked Nathanael and Michael what they’d prefer, and we all agreed that we wanted to go back to Purdue. To our surprise, Nick ordered us all an Uber for our trip back to Purdue! I thought what he did was amazing, and I thanked him, and he told us that the Uber would be at our location in about 8 minutes.

And that was when my phone died…I tried charging it through my laptop for a few minutes which didn’t help much at all. I decided that we should go outside start looking for the car. All I knew from what Nick had told me was that it was a Honda something (I forgot the model he had said), and he had given me its license plate number. We start searching the area around the bus station for the a Honda with the license plate number I was given. I then realized that all my phone calls and texts were probably synced to my laptop, and so Nick’s number would be on there. I retrieved Nick’s number from my laptop, and then called him using Michael’s phone. Thankfully, Nick answered and after I told him that it was me, he put the Uber driver on the line so I could describe my location to him. A few minutes later, the driver had arrived, and we were about to begin our journey back to Purdue🎉!

Our ride back was pretty interesting, and so was our driver. We got in the Uber and the first thing our driver asks us is “Do you guys mind if I pee behind a tree?” I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not, so I just told him “Sure.” Turns out, he was serious, and at one point he stopped somewhere in the middle of the highway and was about to pee in an open field. That scenario was avoided when Michael, who also had to use the restroom, said he’d prefer a gas station instead. This Uber driver was definitely different from the rest that I’ve rode with. One time, he started telling us about how he grows food at home because he doesn’t trust the government or something like that. He was a conversationalist, which was cool, but sometimes when he’d talk, he’d using a lot of hand movements, and so he would let go of the steering wheel with both hands randomly while on the curved highway roads. Thankfully, there was no one else on the roads for most of the way. He also randomly asked us if we’ve been to a Dairy Queen in some small town in Indiana (whose name I don’t remember) because he said he was just trying to make small talk. Our ride was going pretty well until suddenly, he hit a bunny on the road 😢🐰. As soon as I saw the bunny on the road, our car hit it the next millsecond and had me yelling out “Holy shiiiiiiit!!!” I had never seen an animal die in person, and I felt sick 😷 and was traumatized for the rest of the ride.

After over an hour, we finally made it back to Lafayette. Not much happened after that except for the driver making a left turn on a red light. It was past 3 AM by the time I was dropped off at my dorm, and that concluded this crazy night. It had been an interesting 7 hours, and I’d be completely fine with never having to go through it again. I went to sleep around 4, and ended up missing my 9:30 AM class the next day 🙃.

TL;DR: Shit happens.