Of Road trips and stuff

Hey y'all!!
So I JUST got back from Airlie Beach. I was there on a week long outreach. The outreach went great. But the getting to the outreach was a little more difficult. First of all, the entire trip to Airlie was estimated to take us 16 hours. 18 hours if we wanted to have lunch and be able to use the bathroom every two hours. So we all got up at 3 in the morning and ate a meager breakfast and headed out. Only to return ten minutes later because someone got left behind. So we ventured back to the base to pick up not one, but TWO unfortunate people who were unlucky enough to see only tailights when they went down to the parking lot. So we headed out.
Twelve hours later, we heard a noise. Does that sound ominous enough? I doubt it. Ok, we heard a very scary....uh, sound. Oh whatever, I give up on trying to make this point in the story sound mysterious. We heard a noise. And we got scared. Not really because our music was blasting so loud I think people in New Zealand were complaining about it. But we DID get scared when they stopped the bus on the side of a busy highway and told us that we were not going to blow up. Reassuring, no?
So we stopped there and there we sat for the next two hours waiting for a mechanic to come. When he finally did arrive, he looked at our engine for two seconds before telling us that "nothing was wrong". So yeah. Two hours down the drain.
We headed off.
An hour later, the trailer that we had been pulling that carried things fell off. On the road. We stopped and put it back on. Another 20 minutes wasted.
Then, the noised sounded again. The sound noised again. That annoying buzzer thingy started screaming again. And again we found ourselves at the side of the road. This time though, there was a gas station, I'm sorry, PETROL station in which we took shelter. Apperently "Nothing" was not wrong, and "something" was the matter but we just didn't know what. All of the mechanics were closed for the night and so we did not know what to do.  Darkness fell over the land and we huddled in the convenience store, relying on our own body heat to fend off the cold, night air...That came from the air conditioner in the corner. Seriously, that thing was chilly. Icicles were forming on the base of the box part and you could practically see your own breath when you were brave enough to exhale.
So there we sat for two and a half hours with nothing to do but buy food and stuff ourselves full of chips and candy. Smart people headed outside to brave the frogs and cockroaches that roamed the premises when they knew that they could no longer fend off the vengeful advances of hunger. I found myself sitting on a stool RIGHT NEXT to the air conditioner when the convenience store people told us that we needed to get out. NO, it wasn't because we were just buying and eating food in their store and they were sick of watching 20 christians transform into gluttons before their very eyes. They were scheduled to have a blackout and they needed to vacate the premises. SO we headed out into the night.
Now when we heard "blackout", we thought that the store lights would shut off for a few minutes and then everything would be swell. WRONG! Apperently YWAM should clear a week of the scheduled lectures to have a class on basic words and phrases that may be helpful to us later in life. A whole day of teaching should be devoted to the word, "Blackout:"
So the blackout came. And the lights left. The store lights. The gas station lights. The street lights. The lights in EVERY SINGLE HOUSE THAT SURROUNDED THE AREA. And there was no moon. It was like God took every last ounce of light from the world and we were left wandering aimlessly in darkness.
With only our cell phones for light, we navigated our way to the corner of the gas station and sat down with the roaches. It became a game really. Someone would hear a sound. Out would come a phone. A roach would be located. Then someone would be forced to go step/slap/squish the bug until he was dead. Then someone would kick away the remains.
The plan was that the bus driver on the other bus would continue on to Airlie, then drop everyone off, and then drive back to where we were and pick us up and take us to Airlie. At this point, he had just arrived in Airlie and was about four hours away. At 12:30, the lights in the world came back on and were were once-again welcomed back into the store. Where we sat. Drowsiness sent many a YWAMer trudging to the hot, sticky bus where they would attempt to find a unoccupied seat and distort their bodies into odd and uncomfertable positions in search of sleep.
I, being one of the few braves souls left, took refuge behind a trash can underneath a counter. I was told that I fell alseep for about ten minutes before one my other companions opened a fresh bag of chips and I was roused from my stupor.
At about 2 am, the new bus finally arrived. We packed our few belongings and bade farewell to the convenience store workers who, I am certain, were rather relieved to see us go.
The bus ride to the Airlie YWAM base was shortish and uneventful. Sleep avoided me and by the time we arrived at the house, I hurriedly settled into my tent and lay down for some rest. Before drifting off into slumber, I glanced at my watch. The glowing numbers showed that it was 4:05 am.
Best roadtrip ever, was my last thought before my eyes rolled back into my head and I fell unconciousness....