Field Trip to Montana

I met Christin in my geology 210 class (Earth’s history and evolution).  In fact, she was in practically all of my classes, so we decided that we should be friends, so we did.  She was two years older than me, was from Arlington, Wash., and loved sports.  She spent a year or two on the WSU crew team.  I got to know her pretty well on our geology 210 trip to Missoula, Montana.  The reason for this trip was to learn about glacial Lake Missoula and the ice dam that broke and formed to what is now known as the Palouse and scablands of Eastern Washington.  We stayed at a dorm facility near the North Fork River in Clark Fork, Idaho.  We spent the weekend looking all of the geological phenomena’s around Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho and Western Montana.  Some of the stuff was amazing.  

I know we are not suppose to do this with school property but…a bunch of the 21 and over kids wanted to go to the local bar and they wanted to use the school issued vans to drive themselves there.  For some reason the professor let us.  My friend Christin wanted to go but did not want to go with out me.  I was only nineteen at the time and I told them that I wasn’t old enough to go.  Christin just told me to say I was the designated driver and so I did it.  We drove on over.  When we got inside, I started getting really nervous.  Christin said not to worry about it.  She would take care of it.  The bar tender was probably over 40 years old, kind of scraggly looking and was totally clueless of what was going on.  She checked id’s and told them to go over into a separate group.  When the bar tender wasn’t looking Christin shoved me over into the checked id line.  We had no problems.  That night I got into a bar under-aged and Christin bought me a drink.  That was my first time in a bar, illegally.  The bar had an outside part to it where some people were playing horseshoes so we joined them.  I actually got a ringer!  I was so excited.  At one point when we were throwing them, I let go of one too late and almost hit Christin in the head.  Also that night, we got to see a lightning storm, no rain and no thunder, it was different than what I was use to.  I still can’t believe that the professor let us go.  Well, a while later he showed up in the other van and told us all to come back to the dorm.   We broke so many rules that night.  Non-registered driver for the van, drove the school issued van to a bar, had alcohol in the vans…I am surprised we did not get into huge trouble.  

 On the way back to Pullman on US 95, our driver Bonny (who was the TA), was going 95 in a 60 mph zone.  I said quietly to the people around me…”wouldn’t be hilarious if we got pulled over and the other van drove past us while we were pulled over?”  Well…we did a few minutes later and the other van did drive past us while we were pulled over.   The cop came up next to the driver’s side and asked Bonny for her driver’s license.  He asked us why we were in such a hurry and she lied by telling him that we were late getting the school vans back to WSU.  He let us off with a warning.  I couldn’t believe it...we were going 95 and didn’t get a ticket!