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: 3/2 large brick home, with large shop on 1 ac corner lot. $259,900. See pics @ or 576-4069.
How do I know, you ask? Well, I just spent the past 32 hours riding on a Greyhound bus. No wait, let me rephrase that. I just spent the past 32 hours waiting for 50 adults to figure out how to form a line, waiting in that pitiful excuse for a line to get on a bus, waiting for the bus to start, waiting while the bus driver kicked off the drunk guy in the back of the bus, waiting for people to file off the bus and waiting in line again to get back on a different bus. Actual riding time on the bus was probably only 20 percent of my total bus experience.
So why did I submit myself to this horror? Well, in the grand tradition of great writers, I decided to take a cross country trip to see this great land of ours. I was planning a trip back home to Ohio to see my family any way and thought that traveling by bus would be a great adventure.
And I can tell you now, in no uncertain terms, that if the definition of an adventure is praising sweet Jesus you made it out alive, then my adventure rivals that of Odysseus.
Since I don’t have the space to retell my story from beginning to end, here are just a few of the things I’ve learned in the past 32 hours:
What is the most impractical thing to eat on a bus? Oh, I don’t know, how about fried chicken? I mean, what are you supposed to do with the bones? Well, apparently on a bus you are supposed to throw them on the floor next to the young woman who is silently sobbing and cursing the fact she chose to ride the bus.
The Dallas bus depot at 4 in the morning is what I picture hell to be like, only I’m pretty sure hell has cleaner bathrooms and better pre-wrapped turkey sandwiches.
Some people have no sense of personal space, like the Asian man I sat next to from Houston to Dallas. Call me a prude if you will, but I feel that if you have only known a person for 30 seconds, that does not mean you are well enough acquainted to put your butt on that person’s lap as you lay down to take a nap.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Take my experience with 19-year-old Wayne, the self-professed bisexual albino black man who, luckily for me, (she said with absolutely no bitter undertones) rode the same buses with me from Dallas to Dayton, Ohio. For some reason beyond my understanding, Wayne felt compelled to sing tone deaf versions of bad country songs at 6 a.m., insult every other passenger at the top of his lungs, throw things at the bus driver and get in a fight with the nice, tattooed redneck woman who was sitting next to me.
Believe it or not, the human body was not meant to sit in the same cramped position for hours on end. By the time I finally made it to my final destination, I felt I had just gone 56 rounds with Mike Tyson.
Age does not equal maturity. This was demonstrated to me repeatedly as I saw grown men and women butting in those aforementioned pseudo lines and pushing elderly women down to get on the bus first.
All Greyhound bus drivers deserve a huge raise. Each one had got me to my transfers on time every time, were very friendly and helpful and reassured me repeatedly that I wasn’t going to die. In fact, one particular bus driver, Sam, asked me to marry him. And when I politely declined, he took it surprisingly well considering our courtship lasted a total of three hours.
Where the Greyhound bus company goes wrong is the fact that they let the “public” ride their buses. And the “public,” when gathered in large groups in cramped and generally bad smelling locations, reverts into pure evil. I mean, even myself after about my 30th hour of not eating or drinking anything for fear of having to use another scary bathroom, became downright uncivil. In fact, I think I may have actually growled at someone when they asked me “Is this seat taken?”
To Be Continued…
Aprill Brandon is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6514 or abrandon@vicad.com.