For those of you who have never experienced the joy of traveling a significant distance on a Greyhound bus, I implore you to take the voyage at least once. Go home, go visit a friend, go enjoy the sights of I-81- anything above 200 miles counts for credit here.
I suggest this, not because it is by any means a spiritually enriching exercise, but because it is probably the most interesting carnival of bizarre human behavior you could ever hope to experience. I've been in 7 countries in my lifetime. I go to school 413 miles away from home. I've been in practically half the states in this country. When I was twelve, I was offered a bag of weed on the streets of Jamaica. But there is nothing, I mean nothing, like the twisted little pseudo-reality that goes on in the intimate setting of a Greyhound bus, with its charming grey plastic-and-disco-upholstery motif.
On my most recent trip, a little over a week ago (Columbus to Ithaca and back), I had the good fortune to experience the following:
-A man verbally assaulting a Border Patrol officer, telling him he had the documents and photos to prove that 9/11 was an inside job ("Distraction and deception, man! Distraction and deceptionnnnn!!!")
-The same man putting his headphones on and singing in an unintelligible falsetto for the next hour
-Going from Akron to Columbus with the man in front of me having his seat all the way reclined, and the woman next to me having her baby's head rest in the crook of my elbow while it slept. So for approximately 90 minutes, I couldn't really move or breather particularly dramatically, for fear of a screaming baby and/or bruised knees
This isn't meant to be a post where I bitch and moan about how awful my life is, and how terrible the good people at Greyhound are. Actually, if you're one of those people who can hold their tongue while acts of unfathomable rudeness and general weirdness are going on all around you, there's no better way to spend 12-14 hours traveling. My first time ever on a Greyhound, I spent a good deal of time listening to the man behind me explain to the French exchange student next to him how his watch worked, and how it was the 19th anniversary of his "famous actress" girlfriend being raped and killed. I later witnessed this same man attempt to purchase pot from anyone in the Buffalo line that was "holding", and even later dealt with the mystery of this man's disappearance at a Utica Thruway stop when the driver stopped to de-ice the windshield. Gone, into the night, just as bizarrely as he had swept into it.
Riding long distances on a Greyhound, while not the most palatable way to travel, is a unique form of human experience that has so far been unmatched for weirdness in my life. Also, Amish people. So come on, take a chance and ride- and hope beyond hope that the stickiness on your arm is someone else's gum.
