Shut up and Drive

When I was little, I was told never to get into a car with a stranger. I used to be really obedient to this rule. But this weekend, I discovered the ride board.

I decided kind of last minute that I was going to spend my 4th of July weekend in Rexburg with Nicole and my friends at BYU-Idaho. I started looking into how I could get there and found that the Salt Lake Express could get me there for only $54 each way! .......Yeah no thanks.

I tried the ride board at BYU, but everyone I txtd was full. So Alyssa looked on the BYU-Idaho ride board and found me a ride! It was a guy who was going up to BYU-I from Salt Lake to visit his girlfriend. And he still had room in his car.

Even after (I'll admit it) facebook stalking him to make sure he wasn't a creeper, I had my doubts. Facebook doesn't tell you everything. What if he smiled nauseatingly and said everything as an exclamation and expected me to be enthusiastically engaged in conversation the whole way? Suppose he only liked screamo and I arrived in Idaho half-deaf and crying?

Then again, what if he was normal, but his car was a total piece and we barely crossed the state line before it broke down? I imagined standing outside in the rain, sniffling under an umbrella as the ride board mystery man tried and failed to fix the problem. Eventually he would give up and thrust me into the road, hoping that someone driving by would take pity on me and give us a ride the rest of the way. But then....what if that person was even worse than he?

Besides that, I had no idea who the other passengers would be, and I had no way of facebook stalking them. I'm not thattt good. Thus, I was plagued by visions of smelly co-passengers who sang along to the radio off-key, or fell asleep with their heads lolling around on my shoulder as they drooled on me.

This was, thankfully, far from the reality. All my ride buddies were refreshingly normal, charmingly witty, and low-maintenance. I spent the first two hours of the trip deliriously happy with my good fortune. I was this close to pledging my allegiance to Garhett - the pleasantly tanned, 80mph driver with a firm handshake and good taste in music - and never accepting a ride from anyone else, when one of the girls said that she'd actually never had a bad experience with the ride board.

So apparently my fears were irrational, but I was still relieved.