Southern Nazarene University’s bowling team had its first out-of-state tournament in Fort Worth, Texas. So what does any normal college group of friends do when one of their friends is on the team? They obviously make a road trip out of it for the weekend. And with that, a group of four of us left at 11:45 p.m. Friday, heading to Fort Worth.
About 30 minutes into the drive, Brooke Landry was the first one of the girls to fall asleep. Shortly after, I was out, and then Quinlyn Johnson took her turn sleeping. Poor Leon Jones was stuck driving alone while everyone else was dead asleep. To keep himself awake, he jammed out to Disney music and had his own personal concert.
Around 3:15 a.m., we arrived at our destination—our motel. Leon got us checked in, and by the time we stepped foot into the room, everyone was in bed and sound asleep. So asleep, in fact, that we slept through all our alarms and didn’t wake up until 11:30 a.m. We had to hurry to get ready so we could make it to the bowling alley to support our girl.
When we finally got there, we were shocked to see how crowded it was. We found standing room behind the lanes where the girls were bowling—at a back counter behind some people—so our view was a little blocked. After about an hour of watching, we left because we were starving and needed to refuel. The women’s bowling team ended up placing third that day after an outstanding performance in the 10 baker games they bowled.
After grabbing food at Raising Cane’s, we went back to the motel to rest, take some long naps, and watch Major Payne. Later that night, we went out to eat and then to Target to mess around with the Halloween costumes. Before that, though, we stopped at a mall to kill some time and ended up at a another mexican mall. Everything was written and spoken in Spanish, but there were some pretty cool dinosaur statues. To end the night, we drove to Arlington to see the Rangers and Cowboys stadiums. We got back to the motel around 10 p.m. and fell asleep watching Friends.
The next morning, we actually woke up in time to see the start of the bowling matches. We were bundles of energy with McDonald’s in our stomachs and ready to cheer on the team. We held our signs high and jumped up and down whenever a strike was bowled. After the matches, we headed to the Fort Worth Stockyards to watch the cattle drive. On our way there, we saw the most Texas thing ever—a guy riding a horse on the sidewalk like it was totally normal. The cattle drive featured about 10 giant longhorns walking down the street, and it was pretty cool to see how they herded them with horses.
On our way back to campus, we stopped in Frisco so Leon could show us his hometown. Then we grabbed food at Qdoba and made one final stop at the glorious Buc-ee’s. We messed around exploring the massive store and then began our descent back to SNU.
During the drive home, I was wide awake—and stressed—watching the Denver Broncos game against the Philadelphia Eagles. They ended up winning by four points, and only then could I finally sleep peacefully along with Brooke. Quinlyn and Leon stayed busy playing a license plate game to keep themselves awake and entertained. At exactly 5:22 p.m., we arrived back on campus with just enough gas to make it to Hills.
We unloaded our luggage and concluded the biggest college side quest any of our friends could think of: a road trip to Fort Worth, Texas.
Photo by Austyn Knight