On Sunday, freshman Jake Adams was seen stumbling toward Cedro with his luggage, having reportedly spent eighteen days aboard SuperShuttle 362 from SFO. Although his plane landed on January 6, he described the trip back to campus as like something out of a Kafkaesque horror story.
“It’s a good thing my mom packed me some Clif bars,” mumbled Adams through his thick beard as he sloppily shoveled noodles into his mouth. “If she hadn’t, I’d probably be dead.”
Upon his arrival, Adams waited four hours in a light drizzle for the cramped blue van to pull up, watching as van after van passed by and being told he wasn’t allowed to get on any of them until number 362 finally appeared. Thinking that the worst was behind him, Adams climbed into the stale, still air of what would become his tomb.
The shuttle then made stops at every airport in Northern California, including several privately owned airfields. Then, the drop-off process began. Guided by a fiendishly ineffectual GPS, the shuttle took a dirt road to Menlo Park, then sped south to LA, and then back to Menlo Park to return the customer’s forgotten pen.
“I’m pretty sure we were in Mexico at one point, but I was really dehydrated so I might have been hallucinating,” said Adams.
The driver made a pitstop to argue with his divorced wife, picking up his kids for the weekend and loading them into the already-full van. After taking them to get ice cream and spending the weekend bonding with them, he returned to the task of dropping off the exhausted and terrified customers in the back seat, 15 days after picking up Adams.
“At that point, all of us passengers were pretty good friends. We really had to bond because all of our phones died before the first day was up,” said Adams. There were still 3 passengers on the shuttle when Adams arrived on campus.
“Ah well,” said Adams. “It’s still cheaper than a taxi.”
