Week 5: Famous Last Words or My Cool Trip to Lubbock, Texas

This is a very belated Famous Last Words for Week 5 that I felt a compulsion to write since the weekend of week 5 was a very eventful one for me. On Saturday and Sunday--September 19th and 20th, I went on a Christian on Campus trip to Lubbock, Texas. I woke up groggily at around 6:15, put myself together hastily, and drove to the church where we were to meet before we set out. A little more than twenty people were going down, and so we took two van fulls of people and embarked on the approximately six-hour journey to Lubbock.

The van in which all the guys rode is incredibly old and has a long history of breaking down on such trips. The thing burns oil like it does gas, has terrible air conditioning, and is in general very cramped. Despite these annoyances, the trip was still going smoothly enough when the van decided to break down on the highway. After pouring oil into the van and still being unable to get it to move, it was concluded that the van's engine was busted and needed to be replaced.

So about nine guys and myself are stuck on a service road beside the highway, right next to an overpass. It's ninety degrees outside, and we have to figure out what to do even as we bake in the sunlight. Luckily, some members of the church affiliated with the Texas Tech Christians on Campus volunteer to come rescue us. Since we're still about an hour or so out, we've got a wait ahead of us.

So what do we do? Well, some of the more adventurous guys decided to climb up near the overpass and take in the sights. Here's a somewhat bad picture I took on my phone:

I made it big so you could better make out the three guys hanging out up there. 

Eventually we decided it would be a good idea to throw the frisbee around to kill time. So we idled maybe ten minutes of time throwing the frisbee with the guys on the overpass. Since the frisbee is made of cheap fake plastic, it breaks pretty quickly, and then we're left with no other option than to clamber back into the van, crank up the air conditioning, and embark on a campaign to kill the flies that have invaded the vehicle.

Eventually we got picked up and made our way to Lubbock, cosigning the van to being picked up by a tow-truck later. The first thing we did when we reached the city was tour Texas Tech, with numerous Tech Christians on Campus members tagging along to talk to us and help show us around. It was a great time, and I was incredibly impressed with the campus. It's absolutely sprawling, and the buildings are just plain gorgeous, all of them bearing a lovely and distinctive Mediterranean style that I found very appealing.

Afterwards we met at the club campus house and ate dinner with CoC members and some of the local Christians who live nearby. We then had a short meeting, after which we went to separate hospitalities provided by local members and spent the night.

The next day we had morning service at the campus house, went out to an awesome Tex-Mex place called Rosa's to eat together, then set back out for Oklahoma. Yeah, the trip was incredibly short--too short, in my opinion--and not everything went perfectly, but overall I loved my experience there in Lubbock.  Our sister club at Tech is thriving, and the Christians we met there were incredibly kind and hospitable. It was an awesome time!

Personal photo of our group at the campus house near Texas Tech (taken September 20th, 2014)