One if by Land, Two if by Air

During high school, I had to take the bus through IL several times a year. A six-hour car ride, by bus it took much, much longer. But doing the bus ride several times a year, at least once had to be interesting, right?

Well, if I were my brother, I suppose. I'm not sure how, after having to catch the late-morning bus several times a year, three years in a row, on his last-ever northern Illinois to southern Illinois bus ride he could possibly oversleep and miss the bus. How the passenger list is known, and checked before leaving, he could get left behind. But manage it he did.

Of course, it's entirely possible this was on purpose. While the ride is eight-plus hours by bus, and six-ish by car, it's certainly much shorter by airplane, even if it has to make a stop halfway. And being the last time he'd have to ride the bus, he couldn't get in too much trouble for doing so, he wouldn't have to have help catching it the next time or anything. And he was pretty much guaranteed to get the short ride home.

So it could have been a brilliant move.

But that might be giving him too much credit. It's much more likely that instead, he spent too much time the night before partying with friends, and simply overslept. Pure accident. At least that's what the parents were led to believe.

Either way, it's certainly fairly obvious, if the backup plan is far preferable to the primary plan, there's little reason to strive to make the bus on time. Party all night, airplanes were made for a reason.