Greyhound 03/04/2006 You meet a better class of people on a Greyhound. Apart from the fact that the Greyhound bus is traditionally the way to see America, it also enforces a camaraderie that cannot happen on an airline flight. Being strapped down into one's place within the sardine can that is the modern airliner tends to work against meeting any of one's fellow sufferers. And anyway, everyone is just gritting their teeth and longing for the journey to be over; no thought of human interaction crosses the mind on those slingshot rides through the upper atmosphere.Not so on a Greyhound. A bus forces its passengers to unite in a common goal of endurance and resistance against the endless miles, the whims of baggage handlers and the desperate weariness of sleepless nights. As varied and random a selection of humanity as you may be, the long distance bus journey will reveal each one of you as a person with a story to tell.Not that airline passengers are without stories; but these will never be known. The relative brevity of journeys by air allows us to maintain our protective cocoons of silence for the duration. The bus will break you down, like it or not.The bus company is a willing partner in this process of erosion of interpersonal barriers. Almost invariably, the bus driver will be a stickler for the rules and make this clear from the beginning. No negotiation is possible; he has seen it all and will brook no dissension. And the penalty for any infringement, consisting of being left in some unfrequented stop in the wilds of Indiana, seems too awful to contemplate. The passengers will grumpily accept this, only sharing their rebellious urges in whispered comments when well out of earshot of the driver.But thus begins the welding of disparate personalities into a united front against adversity. The baggage handlers complete the process. It takes only the first disaster to some hapless soul to ensure that one becomes paranoid about baggage. Everyone learns that their first priority at each stop is to watch what happens to their bags in the hold. Are you continuing on the bus to the next stop? Be assured that a baggage handler will remove your bag and try to put it on another bus. Are you changing to another bus? Better grab that bag and keep it with you; otherwise, it will stay resolutely on the bus and head off to parts unknown.So at every stop a gaggle of watchful and jumpy passengers will form around the opened baggage doors of the bus. And, inevitably, tales of previous mishaps and near-misses circulate, bringing everyone together and creating new alliances.Most of the travelers are young but all age groups are represented. And, once the journey has begun and seating arrangements been decided, unlikely pairings and teams emerge. As time and distance extend, some leave and others join and new mixes are formed. We are all grist to the Greyhound's mill.And so the stories emerge. There is the young guy joining at Oklahoma City, already exhausted by the miles from San Diego and on his way home to Maine - from the south western corner to the north eastern end of the States, about as great a distance as it is possible to make on a Greyhound. A young African American with all the gear, trendy and hip, travels to Chicago to care for his father, desperately ill in hospital. A retired steelworker makes the short hop from Pittsburgh to Allentown, going home after visiting his girlfriend. And some good ole boys from Missouri swap lies of their exploits as they spread out on the back seats. All these and more, bound together by the need to be elsewhere, brought together by chance and co-existing in harmony as they travel.Days and nights of movement follow, interspersed with occasional waits between buses, and the little community changes gradually as it crosses the face of America. Soon those who began the journey with you have disappeared, their faces replaced with others, and you begin to feel like an old hand, accepting your new role of intrepid traveler and occasional help for the newcomer.Outside, America drifts past, always the same yet subtly different. The open plains give way to hills and mountains, the dry ranches of the south west to the hill farms of West Virginia. Great cities like St Louis, with its gateway to the west, that soaring arc towering into the sky, is succeeded by greater cities yet; and always the bus heads for the center where the skyscrapers crowd together as though huddled for protection against the vast emptiness of America.Nothing prepares one for the sight of New York City at night from the New Jersey shore. Here is a landscape of bright lights rising to the sky against the dark backdrop of night; a landscape stretching around and extending arms to engulf one as we draw near. I am not one for great cities yet the Big Apple lives up to all its promises - from a distance.I will say no more of the places I saw; this is, after all, a celebration of an institution that has receded from view as air travel becomes the norm. But the Greyhound bus remains as a reminder of its literary past. And still there are those who prefer it to the convenience and speed of flight; I met a tough little old lady who had plied the Greyhound routes for years and, though she complained as loudly as any other about the waiting and discomfort, she would not dream of going any other way.Technorati tags: Greyhound bus; Bus travel.
Clive
Mark Pettus Clive, I lost you in the vast expanse of blogdom, and am pleased to say I finally found you again... I once spent 18 hours on a Greyhound bus, most of it seated next to a young fella who was on his way to California to turn himself in - he was wanted on drug charges and faced years of prison. He had found a girl he wanted to marry, and didn't think it was fair to subject her to a life on the run, so he was going home to face the music. I wrote a story based on that journey. I think a bus ride is as close as you can come to finding the "Real" America these days. Date Added: 03/04/2006
Gone Away Good to see you again, Mark. Somehow riding the Greyhound is one of those things everyone should do at least once in their lives. My own journey took 48 hours and it was something that affected me profoundly. Date Added: 04/04/2006
keeefer Theres somthing almost mystical about the greyhound bus to those of us who have never encountered one. You conjure, almost, my personal vision of what such a journey will entail and the types of traveller one would encounter. I'm over air travel, it may be convenient but it is a soulless and frankly dull way of crossing continents. My fondest memories of India are crammed into rickety trains cutting a swathe through the endless miles of countryside and the, often very strange, individuals i encountered on the way (not to mention the sounds and smells of such a journey). It is not the bus journies for me at the moment, more the allure of the train. I fully intend to take the train from Adelaide to Perth whilst in Australia, and the wife and I are also considering the Orient express or some tran siberian rail adventure. But never the less Im sure a journey by bus can be just as wonderful an experience. Hail to the bus driver, bus driver. bus driver. Date Added: 04/04/2006
Gone Away I think I got over train travel in Africa, Keef. They were steam engines then and would, no doubt, have delighted any of those steam freaks that find and restore old locos, but to me they were hot, dirty and tiring, covering everything with a fine layer of soot as they lurched their way across miles and miles of Botswana emptiness. The bus may be more cramped and uncomfortable but at least it has nothing to do with steam engines! Date Added: 04/04/2006
John (Syntagma) Yay, the Greyhound bus, the NY Yellow cab, and the red London bus (now scrapped by Ken Livingstone). They're all redolent of place, and, as with the London vehicle, of time. I must say, though, I've always found long-distance bus travel incredibly exhausting. Not so the train, which I prefer, though it's now as expensive as air travel in Britain. Nice piece, Clive. Are you going to tell us where you went and why, and where you eventually ended up. ;-) Date Added: 04/04/2006
Gone Away I think the journey itself might provide a few blog posts, John, so all will be revealed gradually on that score. Destination was a little town called Danvers which is just north of Boston, Massachusetts. And as for reasons, well, I think they might become apparent in time. Suffice to say now that they were personal and involved a life change. Date Added: 04/04/2006
keeef How cryptic, Do we need to start calling you Clivella? or is it not that drastic a life change? Date Added: 05/04/2006
Gone Away Not quite, Keef. Although much else has changed, gender is retained, for the moment, at least. ;) Date Added: 05/04/2006
Wayne My own jaunts on Greyhound (or was it some other bus?) were always brief, comparatively. I would go from West Hartford to Boston sometimes, with the quick stop in Worchester, with its apartments rising diagonally out of the sharply inclined streets. We all made beeline for the vending machines. I look forward to reading more about your trip. Date Added: 07/04/2006
Luvyabye (aka: Selma) Oh my goodness!!! What a wonderful blog. I just started reading it a few days ago...because I just found it. I love your descriptive style of writing. I didn't realize that you and Kathy had just moved to OK when Dolf and I were there in November of '04. I have relatives in Edmond, Stillwater and Tulsa (well, all over the state, really). I hated that I lost touch with Kathy and had e-mailed a few times.....I didn't realize that she wasn't getting them. Please ask her to e-mail me because I really do want to stay in touch...I miss her!!! I ate at a Cracker Barrel for the first time when we were there in 2004....I, also, loved it!!! I just returned to the Netherlands 2 weeks ago but I'm already homesick for the buffets, etc, after reading your wonderful experiences. I love reading about the things in the state where I was born (town of Stillwater). Keep up the wonderful writing...and I'll keep reading current and past entries. Taker care, my friends and, Kathy, please write!!! Date Added: 07/04/2006
Gone Away West Hartford to Boston is almost local to me now, Wayne. Amazing how things turn out... Date Added: 07/04/2006
Gone Away Long time, no see, Luvy. And thanks for the kind comments re my blog. Kathy will be writing to you, I'm sure. Date Added: 07/04/2006
Kim Nothing gives me good character studies like tripping around on a cross country bus trip. So much time, so many different characters interacting. Good stuff. Date Added: 08/04/2006
Gone Away You have found the secret, Kim. :) Date Added: 08/04/2006
Scot Clive, Really enjoyed reading this. When I attended college in California, I traveled cross country a couple of times on a Greyhound, and it seems the experience of joining together "in a common goal of endurance and resistance against the endless miles" hasn't changed. On the return trip back to Monterey, a young lady boarded the bus at a stop in a small town in Ohio. I remember how she walked down the aisle. Her face down, she seemed nervous and unsure of herself. The seat next to me was the only one available. As she sat down, she briefly glanced at me and then pulled her bag up close to her. We went almost two hundred miles before she broke her silence. First, she began crying. A few sobs at first, but then uncontrollably. It was at least another twenty miles before she calmed down, and when she looked at me, she apoligized if she had made me feel uncomfortable in any way. I told her it was okay. Turns out she had left her husband after a short marriage of only 5 months. "He seemed so nice before. We went to school together. We were sweethearts. I never knew him to have a temper. But that all changed after we married." Anyway, it was not the kind of interaction you'd expect to have on a bus, but as I discovered, a lot of people with broken dreams board Greyhounds to take them to a place that holds the promise of building a better life. Thanks for bringing back a wonderful memory, and a possible reflection to develop into an essay. Date Added: 09/04/2006
Gone Away Before I traveled on a Greyhound, Scot, I thought it was about seeing America. Now I know it is much more about seeing life and people. And that's something no writer can do without... Date Added: 09/04/2006
Lissa I did the grayhound from Nashville to Knoxville and back, before doing an all nighter to New Orleans. I got chatting to many kind and humourous people - I also saw a few freaks. The big problem was the toilet - don't sit at the back! Phew!!!! Date Added: 28/08/2006
Gone Away You're right, Lissa - it's all about the people. And definitely not the toilet! :D Date Added: 28/08/2006
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