That Time I Took a Casino Bus Trip from Hell

My mom loved to gamble. Her answer to my nightly alcoholic dad passed out in his easy chair was to drag me to smoky, crowded bingo halls. By God, she loved the adrenaline rush of winning—even though she lost far too often in my high school honors math opinion.

Mamma’s love of gambling started with bingo and, after a divorce and remarriage, she graduated to casinos. She’d spend hours at a variety of penny slots, hoping for a big jackpot that never came. But she absolutely loved it, and after she died, my sisters and I went to a casino on the shores of Lake Charles, La., and scattered her ashes in the water. Because that’s where she was the happiest.

My mom died in August four years ago, so my sister Susan and I decided to honor her memory by taking an overnight tour bus trip to the Lucky Eagle Casino and Hotel in Eagle Pass. My sister found the tour bus company via the casino website, so I never questioned its reputability.

We rolled out of a Walmart parking lot a little after 8 a.m. Thursday in San Antonio, and it was an uneventful start. All the passengers were in good spirits. It reminded me of the time Mamma and I took a bus trip to a casino in Marksville, La. (Riders going TO the casino are always excited. Coming back, their pockets a lot lighter, they aren’t so happy.)

As the bus rolled on, I noticed something out of the corner of my eyes in the front side bus window. Something green was sliding back and forth in a wave. It was water. Green water. At the bottom of a double pane window sloshed green moss. (Gut sign #1 that this bus was not in good shape.)

Two-and-a-half hours later, we pulled onto the Kickapoo reservation, rolled down a long road out in the middle of nowhere, and like an oasis, the casino appeared. We all got off, my sister and I stashed our backpacks with the hotel concierge, and we agreed to meet up at 3 p.m. for our hotel check-in.

All was going well. I even won $20 right off the bat, and to me, a $20 win is a big deal because I’m not a gambler. I’m far too risk averse. I’m cheap and impatient. If a slot doesn’t hit in three tries, it’s like baseball: You’re out! So I spent the better part of the afternoon roaming around the casino tossing in a bet here and there at games that had significance: A goldfish game (fish are my spiritual symbols), a dachshund game for my dachshund mix Frederick, and a game for Paris in remembrance of a great trip years ago that Mare and I took to France.

I looked for my mom's favorite game, Wild Cherries. but I guess it had been replaced with some other new, loud, and visually frenetic alternative.

My sister and I checked into the hotel room, which was very clean and comfy, gamed a little more, lost a little more money, met for dinner, and while she lost a little more money, I went up to the room to watch the Olympics on television. We went to bed early, and repeated the day on Friday until it was time to board the bus at 5 p.m. Susan and I had a great time, and we thought Mamma would have loved this bus trip. We were both tired now, though, and looked forward to napping on the bus.

 

The Return Trip from Hell

 

We boarded late because the driver had to make an emergency phone call. (Sign #2.)

Hope everything’s O.K., I thought. It would suck to be out in the middle of nowhere with a family emergency in San Antonio.

But soon enough, we boarded the bus. It was the hottest day of the year, a blistering 106 degrees with a heat index of 109 degrees, and the inside of the bus hadn’t cooled down yet. The tour coordinator said that it was because the bus door stayed open too long during passenger loading.

O.K. I’ll buy that, I thought. However, the air coming out of my tiny vent wasn't even cool. It was hot air. (A sign of the verbal hot air to come.)

As we began to slowly roll out of the casino parking lot, the bus immediately stalled and died. And the air conditioner stopped working too. (Sign #3.) My trusty gut immediately tensed. I knew that this was likely to be a long trip home.

The bus driver restarted the bus, and it puttered, jostled, and jerked down the road at about 10 miles an hour. I knew that the reservation had a low speed limit, but I recalled us going much faster on this road when we arrived the day before.

Once off the reservation, the driver pulled into a Shell station, and passengers were joking that he must have forgotten to get gas.

“Everybody off the bus,” the coordinator said. “The driver needs to reboot the computer.”

Computer?

My bullshit meter jolted sharply to the right. (Sign #4.)

Susan and I joined the ant line of mostly elderly passengers, many moving slowly with walkers and canes, into the convenience store as the bus took a few test laps around the store.

My gut told me to buy a big bottle of water. Susan snagged some Gatorade.

We boarded the bus again, and the bus slowly pulled out of the parking lot.

At about 10 miles an hour.

And for the next 30 minutes, the bus repeatedly stalled and died; the air conditioner shut off and popped back on several times; and the bus advanced slower and slower—so slow that the driver hugged the edge of the road so that other cars could pass safely on the left. We made it past the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint when Susan and I, who were seated at the back of the bus, heard a pop.

“That wasn’t the computer,” I snarked. Susan laughed.

The bus, now on a two-lane road, advanced slower and slower until it stopped—not quite completely off the road—and the engine and air conditioner stopped again.

“Everybody off the bus,” the coordinator said.

Passengers started to grumble. “I ain’t gettin’ off no damn bus again. I’m stayin’ right here,” some proclaimed stubbornly. Mamma would have been one of those stubborn people. She always walked with a limp due to suffering from polio when she was a child, so she wouldn't have wanted to continue to climb up and down the bus stairs.
 

The coordinator was insistent, though. And when I rose from my seat and carefully made my way down the narrow aisle to disembark, I knew why: Texas Department of Public Safety troopers were outside—hands on their well-armed and equipped hips and not a smile within a thousand miles.

Troopers stopped the bus for a safety check. Thick smoke was flowing from the back of the bus, and the troopers didn’t want a repeat of a tragic casino tour bus fire that killed eight people and injured 40 in May.

Slowly, one-by-one, most passengers left the hot and humid bus for an equally hot 106-degree heat outside in tall, dry grass and uneven terrain.

“Be careful of rattlesnakes,” one person said. They weren’t kidding.

As we stood in the shade of the bus, I watched a frenzy of activity: The tour coordinator called the home office to try to get a mechanic or another bus, while troopers accompanied the driver as he opened the back of the bus. The source of the smoke? A split fan belt and busted water hose. And that's when I also got a good look at the assortment of past Band-Aid-like mechanical repair jobs. (Sign #5.)

 

Always Carry Water

Passengers were ill prepared to be in the heat, and I was never more glad that Mamma was safely in another realm, because she never did well in the heat and would have been the first to croak.

Most passengers didn’t have water and some were even wearing long sleeve shirts. Their walkers and canes didn’t help steady their gait, for the terrain was rocky and there were holes in the ground. One man fell trying to find a place to stand. No one could sit down because there were also ants all over the ground. So we all stood there like a herd of sheep, wondering what we should do. The tour coordinator, still on the cell phone, went into the nearby field and picked up stray branches.

What's she going to do? Start a fire? I thought.

She used the limbs to prop open all the windows of the bus so that fresh air could circulate for those still inside. And soon, she announced that a bus would be coming in two hours.

“Should Crystal come pick us up?” my sister Susan asked. Her daughter was willing to drive all the way from San Antonio to get us. But Crystal would arrive about the same time as the next bus. Why ask someone who has been working since 6 a.m. to drive two-and-a-half hours to get us if she didn’t need to? So we thanked Crystal for the offer, and declined.

In time, the most elderly passengers were starting to show signs of heat exhaustion. A nice lady driving by stopped to give us a big jug of water that she kept in her car. And finally a Border Patrol agent brought out a huge, trademark orange Home Depot water jug. No cups, but it was cold water.

The faces of some passengers were red, and by this time, the troopers were trying to coordinate a  two-at-a-time ferry system in which some of the more ill passengers would be taken to the Pilot gas station 20 miles back in Eagle Pass. There was water, food, and air conditioning there.

So the ferrying began, and though this is might be terrible to say, the process of deciding who went with the trooper felt very much like the sinking Titanic—everyone wanted to go first, but couldn’t, and we wondered when or if the trooper would return.

The sun began to set, providing a much-needed relief in temperatures. It also signaled the start of swarming mosquitoes.

“And there are coyotes that come out at night around here,” a passenger added.

Lovely.

About an hour later, area sheriff’s deputies and Border Patrol agents came with sport utility vehicles and vans to accelerate the ferrying process. By this time, we were way past the two-hour mark of the replacement bus, and there were many folks still left at the side of the road.

 

The Challenge of Keeping Your Cool in the Heat

All this time, I had decided that I wouldn’t complain—that I was hydrated, healthy, and mobile. I was a black belt, and I was fine. A replacement bus was coming. And even if it didn’t, my sister and I would eventually be taken to the Pilot station. I could stay out on the side of the road longer if necessary. But with the sun setting, I began to worry that a car would slam into the back of the bus because only one of the hazard blinkers was working and the bus battery was dying.

I've had a lifelong fear of dying at an early age, and I was slowly becoming convinced that this was it. I would die on the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere with people I didn't know because I wanted to go gambling with my sister.

Some things aren't worth the risk, I mumbled to myself.

“So I’m curious,” I said to the trooper. “Where is the safest place to be in a situation like this? I mean, if a car comes along and careens right into the back of this thing. I’m thinking as far away from this bus as possible.”

The DPS trooper looked behind him, pointing out toward the field. “Actually, I’d be out there.”

But before I could take his advice, a single thumping sound hit the brim of the trooper’s hat.

Plop.

Plop, plop.

Plop, plop, plop...

We stared at each other, then looked up at the sky.

And saw lightning in the distance. (Sign #6.)

Really, Mother Nature?

“Everyone needs to get back on the bus,” the trooper announced.

I wondered whether a replacement bus was coming at all and began making mental escape plans once I got to the Pilot station. Was there a hotel and car rental place in the area? By this time, I needed more water, food, a shower, and time away from the coordinator, who was still assuring us that the bus was gassing up and on its way. (Sign # 7.)

My sister and I left on the final ferrying caravan in the air conditioned comfort of a Border Patrol agent’s SUV. He was so nice and understanding. But now that everyone was safe, I was starting to get pissed. My cell phone had died long ago, so I didn’t take pictures of the folks standing around the bus, evidence of past shitty engine repair jobs, or the algae in the window. I got angry when I thought about the fact that the driver and coordinator didn’t stop in the casino parking lot when the bus died the first time. They should have stopped to fix the problem then. They put the lives of all these people in danger. I was fine. My sister was fine. But everyone else was struggling.

I give most people the benefit of the doubt, but when my gut tells me that someone is telling me a lie, it’s usually correct. And my gut had been screaming since we left the casino.

It was about 9 p.m. when we arrived at the Pilot station, and 10:30 p.m. when the replacement bus arrived.

A smaller replacement bus.

With bad shocks.

And fewer, smaller seats.

But we were rolling again, heading toward the broken down bus to retrieve everyone’s luggage and then off to San Antonio.

The new driver almost hit the old bus when we drove by it because it was raining so hard he could barely see it in the dark. In the driving rain, the driver of the broken down bus darted in and out of oncoming traffic to cart every piece of luggage from one bus to the next. How he didn’t get hit by a car, I’ll never know. It was also a dangerous place for us to be—parked in front of a bus without flashers like a sitting duck.

The driver finally loaded the last piece of luggage onto the replacement bus and boarded soaked. He had nowhere to sit, so he parked his rear in the aisle. The safety violations of this trip were piling up, and I decided that when I was back in Austin, I needed to contact the casino and urge them to sever relationships with this company. The number of customers this tour brings isn’t worth the possible loss of one life. The tour coordinator and driver were too irresponsible to remain employed.

After calming down, I finally drifted into a nap, and we finally arrived in San Antonio at 2 a.m. I’ve never been more happy to see my brother-in-law, Mark, who had waited up all night to drive us the rest of the way home.

 

And What Did We Learn?

1.     One of the lessons of this adventure is to do more research on who I allow to drive me anywhere. I did have a part in this fiasco. I didn’t have to take this tour.

2.     The other lesson is that it’s O.K. for me to back out of an agreement if I don’t feel completely safe. I could have waltzed up the bus aisle as we rolled out of the casino and inquired about the bus’s condition. And I could have refused to get back on the bus while at the Shell station.

3.     Probably the biggest takeaways from this is that it reinforces the fact that I should ALWAYS trust my gut when it tells me not to go along with the crowd—to be the squeaky wheel when others won’t be. I know that I wasn’t the only one whose gut was screaming that this bus wasn't safe. So next time, I’m going to honor my gut.

4.     And lastly, regardless of the fact that my mom loved casino bus trips, I think I’ll take my car next time. Some risks aren’t worth taking.