The first time I traveled on a Greyhound I was 18 and had never traveled anywhere alone for a very long time. As I sat outside the Greyhound station in Bozeman, Mt at three in the morning, the chilling summer air gripping my body causing my teeth to chatter violently. The bus was nearly a hour late and I was wondering if this whole thing was a bad idea. Finally after sitting there for nearly two hours the long sleek whale of a vehicle rolled in and psssssshhhhed to a stop in front of me. I stood up to meet the bus driver handing him my bag to stow under the bus. He took my ticket and I stepped onto the bus. My first impression was a good one. Many seats were empty, leaving me with the choice of wherever I wanted to sit. I found a pair of empty seats to camp out till the next stop. All was quite except for the rumbling of the engine, combined with the bumps of the road its a good environment to fall asleep in...and its all good till you wake up.
That was last summer and after seven days total on a bus I told myself I would never ride a greyhound again. However, here I am in a Star-bucks coffee shop, in downtown Phoenix, Arizona with nearly three weeks left of a two month greyhound trip around the country.
The moment you step onto that a Greyhound bus, time has no meaning. Its similar to the twilight zone, or what I would imagine the twilight zone to be like. After about ten hours on the bus everything blurs together. If your lucky enough to find a pair of seats to yourself, you might be able to sleep two or three hours till the bus driver flips on the overhead lights and as if the talk directly into your ear announces the town that you will be stopping at for ten minutes over the speaker systems, so that the smokers can get there nicotine fix. Imagine being comfortably asleep and in your dream (whatever it may be) you hear the screech of a walky-talky. Ripping from you like separating an egg yoke from the egg white, as you lift up your head an excruciating pain engulfs your entire neck as you the an unrecognizable name is spit over the intercom. The only relief to all this is the realization that you can stretch you cramped legs for a few minute, while the majority of the people on the bus stand there and suck subtle death into there already blackened lungs. Everyone re-boards the bus, you try to persuade you pillow into a comfortable position, knowing that sleep in the only way to escape the stale claustrophobic smell of the smokers. You look at your phone, the lit up screen almost blinds you as you squint at it, 4:47am, the number hardly hold meaning. 10 down, only 23 hours to go. Far to the east, you note the sky is slight lighter as you drift of to sleep.
This time the cramping in you neck wakes you even before you open you eyes. The road vibrates through the bus and rattles your head against the window. The blinding sunlight prohibits you from opening your eyes. After you adjust, you check the time. 7:30 am. Only half an hours till the bus reaches the terminal and you have to collect the oh so heavy bag and haul it to the next gate to do it all over again. The lights outside the station are almost nauseatingly bright, your strung out body barely seems to have the energy to move as the attendants throw bags off the bus,you hope the next one will be yours. Half awake you flinch at the excessively loud" PSSSSSSHHHH" sound the bus makes and hits your sensitive ears drums like a freight train from being in silence for so long. After locating you bag you limp toward the next gate, only 30 minutes till you can board again and go through the whole process again.
The terminal is one of the most entertaining places, especially when your strung out from sleep deprivation. People watching is one of the most hilarias thing to do. A person in the corner sleeps and snores...loudly. A couple to the left are arguing in Spanish. All the people in line with me seem to be hypnotized either looking at the clock or the TV playing the local news station. The interesting thing is that there is no sound and rarely subtitles...I assume master lip readers...YES! A muffed mumbling female voice announces over the intercom that gate 3 (where I am standing in line) is now boarding. As soon as that happens the line deteriorates. Everyone huddles close to the door like a bunch of kinder gardeners hoping their ticket will be the next that the bus driver grabs. I am intolerable to this behavior and do not participate, however because I have hardly slept for the past 24 hours I am not myself and in turn am pushed closer to the door because I am usually near the front of the line.
You find a seat on the bus and hope that the person that chooses to sit next to you will smell better...that well, something bad. The further south you go the more packed the buses become. A wave of relief sweeps over you when the bus driver announces your stop. "Now arriving in Rocky Mount, North Carolina" in his hardly recognizable southern drawl. You have arrived no more of this damned bus for at least three days.
I could go on for longer than you care to read, about life on a greyhound, and maybe have already may have reached that point, but I will stop for you convenience and thank you for reading this far.
Ok, just because I know you the reader enjoy my writing so much I will tell one more little story that happened in the bus terminal...I was in the bus terminal in El Paso, Texas I believe, just standing there in line slightly glancing around. My eyes fall upon a grungy looking man about ten feet away staring at the line I was standing in. With his eyes wide in the direction of my line and to no one in particular he says " Don't do it...not a safe way to travel, take it from me, our bus blew up....lost everything." A few people around him looking to be in the same condition. There bus blew up? What? That doesn't even make sense. We got kamikaze bus driver now? What is this world coming to?
Hope you enjoyed have a nice day.
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