Dartmouth CB/ACO

Top Ten Travel Disasters In Dartmouth CB/ACO History :

1. October 1997 : Perhaps the stock market dip should have warned Ben Sternberg to beware. With six people crammed into his trusty Ford Taurus, the entourage set off late to compete at MIT. On the exit from I-89 to I-91, Ben's car skidded and missed the exit, causing cosmetic damage to the right side of the car. Again, Ben has difficulties with omens. As the car and all the inhabitants thereof were A-OK, the six decided to continue. While on I-89, Ben saw a big canvas tarp that had fallen off a truck, tried to change lanes, hit an oil slick and lost control of the wheel. This time the left side of the car, front and rear, whacked the divider on the right side of the road (figure that one out!) and did several 360s before ending up in the median. Aside from some high blood pressures, everyone is (thank God) all right. After dealing with the bitchy state patrolwoman (who, we pray, has no internet access, although she still has my insurance card) we get towed to a nearby garage by a happy-go-lucky mechanic. The car won't start, but at the garage a mechanic resets the fuel pump and AAA covers most of the cost of the tow. Ben's car is built Ford tough, and still works, amazingly enough. The tow truck's battery is dead, so we offer the driver a jumpstart, and then drive to K-mart to patch the car together with bungee cords, cable ties, and duct tape. Three intrepid people decide to try to make it to MIT. The ride is without incident, until we get to Boston. There is no sign for the exit we want, so we enter the city, and there is construction on seemingly every bridge into Cambridge. We finally find the only on-ramp -- through a fraternity parking lot. Ben's team loses in the first round of the playoffs, and the team wanders around Cambridge before deciding on Uno's for dinner. It is awful, and the cute waitress never emails Ben. The trip home is uneventful.

2. January 1994 : En route to Penn Bowl IV, Grant Bosse, while attempting to pass a car on I-91 in Vermont not far from Hanover, skidded off the road onto a snowbank located on a median strip. The van suffered some extensive cosmetic damage, which made the rental car people rather reluctant to trust us for some time. While waiting for a tow truck, the 8 participants lost valuable time and arrived at the event late, despite the driving of Steve Schmidt. which led to 3 forfeit losses. Unfortunately, this meant that Dartmouth A faced eventual champions Chicago A in the first round. Apparently, Georgia Tech faced a similar fate on their trip.

3. 6. Februay 2001 : The biggest travel disaster to date in the presidency of Michael Philpy '02. On Friday, Philpy picked up the keys to a 15-passenger van to transport the team to Boston University for the NAQT SCT's. He was told when he picked them up that they were for the van sitting outside the building. The next morning, the team assembled at 6:30 to depart for Boston only to find that the keys given to Philpy were for another 15-passenger van and not the one sitting right outside. Searches of the campus by both team members and Safety and Security proved fruitless and the rental company didn't open until 9:00. Finally getting ahold of a college troubleshooter, the keys to the second van were located, but authorization to leave could not be given. The woman who could give authorization had recently moved and no one knew her new phone number. A third search for the van by the troubleshooters finally found it parked in the outer reaches of the medical school's parking lot. It was now 7:45 with rounds starting at 9:30. Those left at Dartmouth piled in the van and the group finally left for Boston. Coming down a hill just before getting to the interstate, Philpy (intending to try to keep the team from missing more than one round) missed the speed limit change from 50 to 40 and is pulled over. The registration is not in the glove compartment and a search in the car couldn't find it. The officer then proceeds to ticket Philpy for $72, as well as waste an extra twenty minutes of time. The team finds the registration above the shade 10 minutes later and finally gets in to BU about 10:15. The second round proves to be a Dartmouth/Dartmouth game and one half is played with Dartmouth A coming out on top. However, Dartmouth A gets credited with a first round loss to Brandeis B and loses a playoff seed eventually ending up out after the semifinals. To make matters worse, the whole incident ended up causing Dartmouth to just miss qualifying for NAQT nationals.

4. February 1998: Whilst driving alone back to Dartmouth listening to Radiohead at a volume that would shatter the eardrums of a sane person and ingesting mass quantities of caffeine, Ben Sternberg feels Mr. Sandman's dust tickle his nostrils. Deciding to get off at the next exit rather than risk falling asleep at the wheel, he pulls up unceremoniously to an "EconoLodge" somewhere on the MA/VT border. The desk receptionist was too busy watching "Hercules: The Legendary Adventures" to help Ben check in (cf. 1, esp. "omens"). He had used the words "sketchy" and "skanky" before, but had not quite fully realized their true meanings. Too tired to care, he checks in and falls asleep for twelve hours. Only upon awakening does he notice the strange stench inhabiting the room, and quickly returns to the familiar stench of his dorm room.

5. April 1994 : Attempting to reach College Park, MD for 1994 ACF Nationals, Steve Schmidt's car unceremoniously died near a now-famous gas station in Whately, MA (between Greenfield and Northampton.) As Steve and Ted Schuerzinger went to a local mechanic to get it fixed, Tim Young and Dan Clark sat at the diner. The waitress snapped at Dan for eating a bagel from Hanover. Giving up on Maryland, the team headed back and the car gave out again just south of the MA/VT border. Steve called a tow truck (using those not-quite-useless MA motorist aid call boxes) and got the car started, only to die only 2 miles later at the "Vermont Welcome Center" rest area. As Ted and Steve were taken to Brattleboro to rent a car, Tim and Dan sat in the pavillion of the Welcome Center for about four hours, with Tim trying to call for help a few times unsuccessfully. As Dan did his physics homework, Tim read random Vermont tourist brochures. Eventually, the four made it back to Hanover.

6. August 1994 : Returning from the Philadelphia Experiment, the muffler on Tim Young's car came loose on the NJ Turnpike near Newark, NJ, causing sparks to fly everywhere. Bill Hall called his parents, all NASCAR devotees with sophistcated car-care equipment in tow. Dan Clark and Bill's brother hacksawed off the connector pipe, leaving both the muffler and the rest of the exhaust system intact. Except that the car made enough noise to bring the dead back from the grave, and everyone left their windows open on what had to be the coldest mid-summer night/morning ever. Additionally, after dropping off Ted Schuerzinger in Kingston, NY, Tim received a $100 speeding ticket on the Mass. Pike (I-90) in Blandford, MA (just west of Westfield). Overall, the ordeal started at 6:00 in the evening and ended at 7:00 the next morning.

7. February 1996 : Tim Young, with the help of other to-this-day anonymous brothers in Bones Gate, woke up Steve Schmidt to go BU Terrier Tussle on the Saturday morning of Winter Carnival. It was not an easy task, to say the least. About 10 minutes into the trip, Steve threw up in Tim's car - mostly out the window, thankfully. The car had to turn back to Hanover to bring Steve back to bed. (Steve does not recall that any of this happened, to this day.) Becuase Tim was supposed to be navigating, Sergey Shpaner and his contingent got lost when they reached Boston, though they found BU eventually. Becuase Tim made near-record time from Hanover to Boston, representatives from both teams arrived on time, and no forfeits were necessary.

8. November 1995 : Due to a lack of communication, the people travelling to Princeton got lost. The car of Josh Adams '97 arrived in town with no idea of where to sleep so the four guys ended up staying at an area motel. The return trip was especially long, due to a freak fall blizzard in NH/VT. Contrary to what some people further south may believe, it is not supposed to snow heavily in New England in November.

9. March 1996 : Tim Young attempted to make the drive to Cornell despite a nasty 24-hour stomach flu. Near Cobleskill, NY he had to pull over to a gas station, kneel down on a grassy hill, and throw up while his gut made some of the scariest bodily noises ever. Thanks to forced food consumption, ibuprofen courtesy of Ben Sternberg, and a brief driving spell by Dan Clark, the team made it there and even Tim played well the next day.

10. February 1997: Steve Schmidt, Josh Adams, and Matthew Lubin returned to Josh's car after the Boston University tournement to find that the car's battery was dead. Numerous attempts at a jump proved futile. Steve took a taxi to a neighboring town, bought a battery and tool set using Josh's credit card, and installed the battery.

Hon. Mention. October 1993 : Eight people are somehow crammed into Tim Young's compact station wagon to go to Beaver Bowl V at MIT. At a rest stop, someone forgot to take their box of donuts off the roof of the car and the passengers watch the box fly off the car, in what apparently was a sacrifice to the traffic gods. At Princeton a month later, the team would do the same, but not for Penn Bowl IV. (See #1 above.)

(Editors' Note : While we thought the curse had been lifted with the graduation of Tim Young '96, it seems to be back with the Presidency of Ben Sternberg '99. Must be a History major thing.)

Return to Dartmouth CB/ACO Home Page