We Have A Serious Problem - Part 1

Last fall I took an online class in creative problem solving.  My online group assignment was for one person to start a story with the line "After my uncle invented a time machine..." and write two paragraphs of a story.  Then the next person would pick up the story from there and so on. 

I was really bummed out by the performance of my peers, to say the least.  The next paragraph was copied and pasted directly from the forum.  Bear in mind that this is a college course.  It begins: 

"After my uncle had invented a time machine, I had decided to explore it to see where it could take me? What a chore to decide where to go and explore first. To the future or the past?  Do I want to see history or be the first to see some amazing thing in the future?  I decided I wanted to go back to the 1700’s and see what everyone went through when coming to America for the first time. I set the dial for my destination and off I went. “To be a pioneer and get the chance to explore uncharted territory would be amazing,” I thought to myself. When I arrived in Philadelphia it was July 2, 1776 and those involved in writing the Declaration of Independence was putting the final touches on it. That same day British troops arrived in America and it was all quite scary. However to see the Declaration of Independence read out loud for the first time on July 8, 1776 was a great thing to see."

Aside from the sentence structure, punctuation, tense, subject-verb disagreements etc. etc. etc... there are a few things things I just can't get around.  First, how can go back in time and discover new territory?  If you're from the future all you can do is go back and steal credit from whoever did it before.  Second, it's a time machine, not a teleporter!  If you weren't in Philadelphia already, you're not going to arrive there in a time machine.  But I split hairs.  Let's see what happens next...

"I then decided to go to Boston to see what all happens there. “ Wow off to see the ships coming to America for the first time, an unknown place for everyone who arrives,” I thought to myself as I hoped on a horse cart heading that way. Traveling by horse is not its all cracked up to be. It took days to get to Boston and boy did I smell bad! Once I was able to get all cleaned up I went to the harbor. There was many people that arrived on one boat. They lived for months on a boat with all these other people just to go to a new place for a new start. How scary yet exciting. Just then I realized something…"

I like the premise, but is this college level grammar?  COME ON!  Alright.  Red pen - deactivate!  Maybe I should join the grammar police.  Tomorrow I'll post the next two paragraphs, which consequently were submitted by me.  I promise not to edit them, so if I made errors I'll deserve any criticism I get! 

TSN