The Greyhound Grind

One of the amazing sights I had the opportunity to see because I went by bus

When I announced my plan to get a bus ticket from Connecticut to Denver, the decision elicited grave concerns, fears for my safety and sanity, the broader question of why I would voluntarily take a slower, shittier mode of transportation than air travel.

Had I instead declared my intention to slash a bunch of wounds across my flesh and jump into a nearby cesspool, those people would probably have more horrified and confused, but only slightly.

Bus travel offers the chance hang around with people that you may not particularly like for extended periods, and a looming sense of claustrophobia for approximately the same price as a plane ticket.

However, it is also one of the greenest ways to get around. As a neurotic, self-doubting environmentalist, I can’t allow myself to take a plane without feeling a sharp pang of hypocrisy. How do I tell others to make sacrifices to improve our planet, when I’m putting thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere so I can ride an aluminum bird?

Riding the bus across country is a few degrees suckier than taking a plane, but it also produces a lot fewer carbon dioxide emissions, even fewer than trains do. I could lay out the nuances of the argument here, but I think I would rather leave that to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Check it out!

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/greentravel_report.pdf

While cross-country bus riding is not without its suckitude, it remains my firm belief that my generation will have to start making sacrifices in order to offset the greater suckitude of climate change and the accompanying drought, fire, flood and famine. I know that I’m no angel, that many of the things that I am doing remain wasteful and produce more waste and pollution than they should.

Sinner that I am, I consider the bus ride to be less of an act of virtue and more of an act of penance.

However, my time in purgatory did offer a few perks, including the option of sleeping en-route (when I could sleep) and the opportunity to catch up on reading (when I could concentrate.) Moreover, the bus brought me a small sense of moral righteousness over air travel (which no one will care about because they’ll think I’m crazy or a pompous ass.)

Now that I have emerged successfully on the other side of the journey, I can speak with an expert’s authority about what it is to take a bus across most of the country: why it just might be the best way to travel, the worst way to travel or a fun way to feel less of your butt and more empathy for people who shake screaming babies.

The thing about screaming babies…

YEAHHHGHHHH!!!!!!!!

The thing about screaming babies…

YEAHGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

…is that…

AGHHH! AGGGHHH! (choking sounds of the tiny body trying to get hack up mucous so it can scream some more)

…is that…

yeaAGHHHHAhhaaaaeeeyheAAAAA!!!!!!!…

…they make it really, really hard to read to concentrate on reading or writing.

EeeeeyAHHHHH!!!!! EeeeyaAAAHHH!!!!! EEEEYAAAGGHHH!!!!!!!!

This is not the best time to be trapped in a small, enclosed place.

You look at the emergency exit bar on the window and wonder how well you would fare doing “tuck and roll” down the highway median at 60 miles per hour.

 It is simple biology. All of us with intact and functioning frontal lobes should hear the baby’s cry and feel the need to make it stop, make it stop, protecting the fragile offspring. Of course the system that makes us think this way isn’t sophisticated enough to differentiate whether the baby is ours or not, nor to make us care whether we shut it up with a bottle or a chloroform blankie.

Nearby, other people are making do with earbuds cranked up to full volume. These earbuds stay at full bore when there are no crying babies. I get to enjoy all the music lyrics, even from several seats away. The situation makes me contemplate just how much ear damage people are willing to inflict to listen to their beats at top volume — and how such damage would only encourage them to crank the music louder over time.

Cleveland

At least, iPods have user-friendly volume controls. Babies do not; nor were the parents considerate enough to bring a duct tape roll. For the next 45 minutes the other passengers and I get treated to an a capella screaming fit that would make for excellent background music within the pits of hell.

As darkness closes in, the screams subside, and I pray for sleep, if only as a means of escape from the bleak realm I inhabit and into the blissful arms of Somnia. As soon as I shut my eyes however, I feel 10 times more awake. I just don’t sleep well in seats. Nonetheless, I try to cheat my nature by putting my head against the window and lean my feet into the aisle — the number one position recommended for people who like to die in bus accidents. The fact that a sudden deceleration could go poorly for me is not as important as my need to be unconscious.

At first it seems like I might be able to pass out successfully, but soon I find that I’m putting a lot of torsion on one ass cheek.  I’m also at risk of falling between the seats and am ready to try something else.

I flip around so my head points toward the aisle and wedged my feet against the side of the bus. My jawbone picks up the hum of the bus motors, a lullaby. Finally, my mind shuts down and I get about two hours of sleep.

Then we’re in Cleveland and we all have to get off the bus for a cleaning (by which I mean they’re cleaning the bus, not the passengers, though I probably could have gone with a shower at this point.)

We gather inside an eye-stabbingly bright fluorescent terminal where an enormous television on a pedestal above our heads blares out an advertisement for bowel medication at bowel-loosening volume. I must be in a badly-written dystopian sci-fi movie.

The television goes from the bowel ad to an inspirational made for TV basketball flick. The unbearable noise must be the bus station’s way of making sure that no one falls asleep inside.  The acoustics send the noise bouncing all over the walls in a series of funky echoes. There is no escape.

 I limp listless towards the bathroom to unload my bladder.

I see myself in the black felt cap staring back from the mirror at the sink, stubble on my cheeks, crazed expression.

I brush my teeth while another dude shaves his head with an electric razor.

“Yeah I ride the bus,” I my expression seems to say, “You got a goddamn problem with that?”

The shot clock is winding down on the inspirational basketball game as I get into line to re-board the bus. A woman tries to board the bus but is in the wrong line and the Greyhound employee is being kind of a dick about it. I say nothing, glazed eyes pointed dead ahead, handed the employee my ticket and get on board. There are miles yet to travel.

Pennsylvania

Darkness on the road again, and I’m making feeble attempts to fall back to sleep. The hard seats say, “No!” Also, I am sitting next to the window that admits a steady stream of the cold night air through a gap in the insulation. It wraps around me like an icy snake, keeping me awake.

At 6 a.m. we hit a rest area in Milesburg, Pennsylvania. When everyone shuffles in, I find the driver and ask if he can open up the hatches below the bus so I can grab the parka out of my pack. If I’d had any brains I’d have had it out in the first place, or I would have been smart like the woman next to me who brought a blanket.

Fortunately, the driver is willing to help, and even shines his flashlight into the busses undercarriage until I find my pack. I quickly dig out my jacket and thank him.

When we all get back aboard, the driver asks if anyone else had found it cold over the last few hours of driving. Several answer in the affirmative. Well, this is as high as the heaters go, he tells them. And if they want to get warm, they should step outside and then get back on the bus, so it will feel warmer to them by comparison.

I feel like a wuss in my super-insulated orange parka, meant more for isolated mountain peaks than for slightly heated busses. At least I’m not cold.

I finally get some sleep, which lasts until the Delaware Water Gap on the New Jersey border. The riders file out for cigs and fast food and I walk around the parking lot in order to un-kink my legs.

Soon enough the New York skyline is in view.

NYC stopover and the final push

I choose to stay with some friends in Brooklyn and the day of walking around, taking subways and running from Prospect Park to Coney Island is a nice break from all the bus crap.

That night we dine on Indian food and grab some drinks from Sharlene’s Bar in Brooklyn.

The next day, I take the subway over to the Port Authority and get on the next bus for New London, Conn. where my parents will pick me up. The last state that I travel through turns out to be the worst. Not only are we on I-95 hell, but there is also possibly the most annoying couple in the world sitting on the bus. The antics of the middle-aged dynamic duo would be hilarious in a movie, I decide, but something about sitting next to them for four straight hours of traffic jams makes them somewhat less than wonderful bus companions.

It starts with an argument about caffeinated soda and evolves into the man telling his wife to fuck off, and cranking up his headphones so he can sing along to the music. Before the bus starts moving, he announces that he is switching seats, because it feels like a metal bar is going up his butt.

I stare ahead and try to stop imagining myself turning around to punch the guy in the face. The couple gets into about five more arguments in the next fifteen minutes and the guy cranks his headphones up again. No wonder why the dude, is so damn loud, I think, I bet he can’t hear himself.

I try to get back to Emerson essays on my Kindle, though it’s hard to hold any concentration. I’m reading about the importance of self-expression and I realize I have an important opportunity to put theory into practice.

With my rage and frustration at the breaking point, I do the unthinkable. I go back, lean over the guy’s seat and politely ask him if he can turn the music down.

The dude is surprised.

“Are you sure, it’s my headphones?” he asks.

“Yes, they’re your headphones,” a guy from the seats nearby tells him. I thank him silently. The annoying dude turns them down and apologizes. I get back to my seat and grimace the remaining miles home.

Eventually, I’m heading back west, and must admit that it is tempting to say ‘screw this” and just grab a plane to Denver. At the moment however, I am sticking with a plan to go by bus. I can’t say that there is any particular hallelujah moment that convinced me that I should ride back rather than fly. The best explanation I can give is the obstinacy, which got me on the bus in the first place.

It should be a fun trip back.