On Dec. 4, I went to Brookings-Harbor with my Knowledge Bowl team, with our advisor doing the driving of the little bus. I was just expecting this trip to be like no other Knowledge Bowl trip, but I was wrong.
(Knowledge Bowl is a game that is like Jeopardy, only you don't answer in question form. You just ring in and answer questions with answers.)
I had no idea that I would learn more than usual on my trip, and not to mention how lucky we were to survive.
So, on our way over, we pulled over for a bathroom break in Grants Pass (The round trip from Oakland, which is where I live, to Brookings-Harbor is four hours.)
at a Arco gas station convenience store, which is named am/pm (I pronounce the store am-pam because if am/pm were said like words, that's what it would probably sound like).
I got out because my legs were starting to cramp.
When I went into the store, I was curious, so I went into the back part and came upon a soda fountain, and as I was looking on the choices of soda, I came across one I had never seen before...one called horchata, and according to the label, this horchata was made with rice, milk and cinnamon.
Now I had read about horchata before, so it wasn't like I didn't know what I was buying, but since I didn't have a lot of breakfast, I bought some horchata, and discovered it was really good. (I didn't know that you could buy horchata like a soft drink!) At least now I know how it tastes.
(I just read that horchata has many variations-you can also make horchata with barley or almonds or even tigernuts instead of rice.)
So after a bathroom break, and a while later, we went to a Shop Smart Food Warehouse in Cave Junction for snacks.
I went in, and discovered breakfast burritos that were made of eggs, cheese, bacon, ham, and sausage plus gravy. Well, since I hadn't had much breakfast, and I bought the horchata to tide me over, I bought a burrito too, and it was really good.
So, with snacks in hand, we were on our way through the winding roads, and amazingly, I didn't get sick because I had food in my gut. (I got nausea another time because I just had coffee on an empty stomach.)
We got to Brookings, and won two our of three matches, then headed to a pizza place for lunch, then we stopped a couple more places,then we were heading home when the cars started flashing their lights at us.
We were wondering why, so we pulled over and asked why, and the answer was that a huge landslide covered a part of the road, and no one could get through.
So realizing that we couldn't go ahead to home on the normal route and get home by 6-6:30 like planned, we went on the alternative route, which was Highway 42.
However, we also were thinking and realizing one other thing: Had we not went to that Taco Bell bathroom break and hadn't pulled over because someone was sick, we could have been in the landslide.
That was a scary thought.
So going on the alternative route on Highway 42, we stopped into a McDonald's for dinner in Coos Bay, and I was quite impressed, because the place was so clean, modern-seeming, had real "personality" and a "neutral" and neat color scheme (great for a fast-food restaurant) and even had TV set to Fox News. I also learned to appreciate my Arch Card, which is a McDonald's gift card.
After McDonald's, we were on our way. We drove through a couple of towns and mostly highway, then we went through Winston and Roseburg, finally getting to Oakland at about 9:30 (And yes, I did call my family about the landslide and our new schedule, so they weren't freaked out.)
The landslide would make the front page of the News-Review on Dec. 5, and my grandma pointed out that God had timed it all right for us to arrive safely, and I realized that too.
So really on Dec. 4, I learned not only about new food and did a regular Knowledge bowl, but also saw the Divine's hand act to save us.