It took Odysseus 10 years to get back to his wife, and while it took me only 12 hours on a Greyhound bus to get from Oklahoma to Albuquerque, the ride was just as much an odyssey. What follows is a blurry recollection of the trip. Journey forth with caution:
The wait
The bus was supposed to leave at 9 p.m., but it was running late. Two hours late. I should have known bad things awaited me as the cashier at the counter refused to provide service to the three people waiting.
Or maybe I should have paid attention to the woman crying in the lobby who was stuck at the station. She said she waited for hours at Norman for a bus that never came.
I had to convince myself that wouldn’t happen to me.
In the lobby, an old man begged not for cigarettes, but cigarette wrapping paper. A one-legged man walked in and out the station to smoke stubs of cigarettes. A woman stormed in, ran to the bathroom, came back and then demanded toilet paper to which the Greyhound officials eventually responded.
I should note traveling by bus, there is less security. The bag claim took two seconds, and at no point did any Greyhound official frisk me. This glimmer delivered me through the two-hour wait and into the crazy depths that is the Greyhound bus.
Boarding
My first impression of the Greyhound clientele is that most of them don’t understand the concept of a line. That is, when the bus arrived everyone poured out, and stood in a giant glob at the front door.
Getting on the bus was one part luck, one part timing, and one part willingness to elbow an old lady in the face for your spot. Also, watch out for cigarette burns.
The majority of riders smoke, and they do so until the last possible second. This means they throw their cigarettes out at the door of the bus, when there are still plenty of people around.
As bad as boarding the bus was, it wasn’t terrible sitting on it. The seats are roomy, and there are two outlets per seat. Also, the bus has Wifi, which is the only thing a college student needs to survive.
This would be the perfect traveling condition if Satre’s maxim, “Hell is other people,” wasn’t true.
The Ride, Part I
People were rowdy getting on the bus, and they stayed that way for a while.
The second thing I learned about Greyhound riders: A surprising number of them are felons. The lady in front of me talked about why methadone was worse than meth, her reasons for quitting shoplifting — the fines were really adding up — and told stories about her previous two boyfriends. She dumped both because they got arrested and thrown in jail.
Keep in mind, she was not talking to me, or the person next to her, but on a phone so that the whole bus could hear.
Behind me, two guys talked about cigarettes and weed. Apparently one of them only eats pot raw now because smoking it doesn’t give him the same effect. At some points, writing falls short of conveying the absolute madness that came out of people’s mouths. For example, this needs to be captured verbatim:
“And we are all on food stamps at the halfway house, so one guy goes into the grocery store and spends them all on ice cream. For three weeks, he ate nothing but ice cream ’cause we sure as hell weren’t sharing.”
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After awhile, everything quieted down, and everyone struggled to sleep on the seats that leaned back, but not far enough. Our collective necks rubbernecked till Amarillo.
An interlude of mundane proportions
We stopped in Amarillo, and everyone poured off the bus. The terminal was designated a non-smoking area, so about 20 people rushed into the smoking area, a 10-foot-by-10-foot pen, and lit up.
Initially, I tried to join them.
There’s a sense of solidarity that all smokers share, even when they are corralled into a cage like animals.
I had to shove my way in, and I was just about to light up, when I saw a 12-year-old kid smoking a cigarette.
At first, I thought he had a bad case of the Benjamin Button disease, but then I realized, ‘No he really is 12. And smoking.’ Surely, his parents would have something to say about that.
“Yeah I started smoking when I was around 9 years old,” he told the crowd as it watched him like he was a performing circus monkey. “They thought it was hilarious. I have been smoking ever since. It helps with depression.”
I stepped out of the smoking area and smoked my cigarette in peace while two guys talked about the best way to draw breasts.
(Note: Draw them larger when in doubt.)
The Ride, Part II
It was 4 a.m. when we got back on the bus, and the crowd had quieted once again. That is, most of it had, save for the children on the bus who decided that 4 a.m. was the best time to throw a party, by which I mean scream their lungs out.
Here’s a recollection from the woman sitting next to me as she tried reasoning with her 18-month-old child.
“OK, Bubba. Time to sleep.”
The child screamed.
“No really, Bubba. It’s time to sleep.”
The child screamed louder.
“Goddamn it Bubba. Stop it!”
Surprisingly, the child didn’t not stop. He eventually tired himself out, and the bus was silent
till Albuquerque.
The unloading
Getting off the bus at 8 a.m., I felt nothing. The reality of riding the bus had ended, but my brain couldn’t comprehend it. My legs’ movement felt foreign and unrealistic, yet somehow it happened.
My journey ended, but they were people headed to L.A. or Phoenix or Portland who would be on the bus for another two days.
I wished them the best, but they only stared at me with glazed eyes that flared slightly with jealousy when I told them my trip was done.
Don’t get me wrong: There are pros to the bus. You can work on homework; the ticket’s cheaper, and it’s probably safer than flying, but you just have to keep in mind there’s a trade-off.
If you’re looking for something you have never experienced before, then by all means ride the Greyhound, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
