Over the weekend I joined a group of friends and strangers, there was about 35 of us altogether, on a party bus that left Grand Forks, N.D., and headed outside of Fargo for what's called, "Acres of Terror," a haunted tour. I love anything scary, Halloween is one of my favorite times of year-the horror movies, haunted houses, costumes and parties.

The bus was an old school bus that gets rented out on the weekends for such things. When I heard we were taking a bus, I was hoping for more of a Greyhound type coach bus, you know, plush seats, a bathroom-all the amenities.

When I saw the old school bus drive up, I was a little disappointed, but it wasn't going to ruin my fun. It had been a long, very long time since I had been on a school bus, and I thought to myself, have these seats always been so small and close together? I also noticed right away that the exhaust fumes were overwhelming. It was almost like there was a hose was running from the exhaust pipe to the passenger cabin.

At first the whole scenario brought back memories of being a kid, sitting on a yellow bus, smelling the distinct diesel fumes. I'm used to the smell and actually like it most times, but I'm rarely exposed to them in such heavy concentrations. The drive each way was about an hour and a half, so after sitting on the bus for a total of about three hours that night, I had a pretty bad headache, and my eyes were burning slightly.

At first I thought, maybe it was the beer, but then I thought, well, I never get a headache like this from beer.

I mentioned this to a friend who was with, and she said, "Maybe it's from being inside the dark haunted schoolhouse, or being scared…" I said, "Hey! I wasn't scared…" And she said, "Then why were you screaming?" I responded, "I may have been startled, and if I screamed it was purely for effect."

The whole experience of the long bus ride on Saturday got me thinking about how much our young people are exposed to these exhaust fumes every single school day, and how important it is for school districts to take advantage of retrofit programs to install diesel particulate filters, and of course, fueling on biodiesel. I commend those districts like St. Johns in Michigan, a town just down the road from where I lived in Michigan for eight years, and many, many others that have embraced biodiesel.

A bus ride shouldn't be a scary thing for the nation's youth-unless that bus is going to "Acres of Terror!" Enjoy the season of fright.