The Tour Guide from Hell

It all started innocently enough. We got to SF super early so as to not miss our four-hour bus ride to Yosemite (and keep in mind, this is me waking up at 5am the day after my parents arrived and I got the key to my apartment and I threw all my crap into trash bags only to throw them into the new apartment around midnight.. read: sleep deprived). So the tour guide, who told us we couldn’t be picked up in the East Bay (aka paying $40+ for parking in a SF garage the whole day) and that we needed to arrive at least 15 minutes early, shows up 20 minutes late. Strike 1.

But whatevs, right? We’re going to Yosemite!! I got my coffee, I got my parents, all is well. Until he starts talking. And no, I’m not just a judgmental ho bag. This guy spent the next 20 to 25 minutes (still parked) detailing the itinerary of the pick up schedule of all the people we would be stopping for along the way (in the mother effing EAST BAY). He then proceeded to have passengers raise their hands to show the rest of the bus who was going to be dropped off 13 hours from now and where. Then, of course, before he started driving he had to tell us about every food and bathroom stop we would be making along the way and what we would be doing once we finally got there. Strike 2.
I get it, he wanted to be thorough so we would know what was going on. That’s all well and good except..

When he finally did stop talking to start driving, he turned on music that resembled silent film accompaniment except more annoying and turned up to 11. Strike 3. And when he finally stopped the music, he rambled for the next four hours about the year John Muir was born, how many siblings he had, what his favorite color was, how many freckles he had on his forearm, how often he clipped his toenails.. What food options there are at Jack in the Box, Subway, Burger King, how a buffet-style restaurant works, a B.S. story about how raisins were invented (followed by, “I don’t know, I imagined that’s how it happened”) and at the very least a three minute description of how we should exit the bus said in three different, but still the same, ways every time he released us from my own personal hell.

Oh, and he had us stop at store/restaurant devoted solely to cheese. As in, he took about an hour away from our already-too-short amount of time in Yosemite to hang out in a place full of the only food grouping that I cannot have. COOL. Luckily at one point he put on a CD of crickets chirping and I was able to tune out his voice long enough to have a hilarious conversation with my mom. But it wasn’t long before we were on our way back and he forced us to watch boring, made-in-the-80s, ridiculously loud documentaries about bears and another one about all John Muir, repeating all the same shit he told us on the way there.

I was physically angry. In fact, I’m not sure why I even wrote about it because it’s making me angry now just thinking about it. But the point here is that my parents are so cool that I can go on THE worst tour in history and still have a great time because they were there. Also, never ever, ever book a tour before checking TripAdvisor (you can bet your bottom dollar there will be some choice words about Robert the Tour Guide from Hell on there pretty soon).