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Published: September 24th 2010
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The Bus Depot in Glenwood Springs
Tate and his flat black car dropping me off. Days 12-13
SOME TELLING NUMBERS ON GREYHOUND TRAVEL:
Days of Travel by Greyhound: 13 days
Hours logged on the bus: 106 hours
Layover hours at various stations: 21 hours
Total Greyhound experience hours/days/minutes: 127 hours/5.29 days/7,620 minutes
Out of 13 days of travel percent of pure Greyhound experience: 41%
Level of Satisfaction of the Experience: Very High
Level of Satisfaction of the Service: below the scale
Places Visited: Philadelphia, Washington D.C., New Orleans, Denver, Colorado Rockies, San Jose
States we stopped in and drove through: MA, RI, CT, NY, NJ, PA, MD, DE, VA, NC, SC, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, CO, UT, AZ, NV, CA............22 states is nearly half the Continental US!!!
Towns we stopped in: Too many to count
Number of times the bus broke down on my journey: twice
Number of hours lost because the bus broke down: nearly 20 hours
Money Spent to get to San Jose all expenses included: approximately $650.00 (Greyhound ticket was $343.00 and lodging about $65.00 for
three nights in Washington D.C. and New Orleans.....most other expense were meals and tickets for tours such as the bike tour I took in New Orleans)
GREAT QUOTES FROM THE LAST DAYS
My late bus
My bus arriving six hours late. OF TRAVEL:
"This town is run by little Hitlers!!" from the woman at the Philips 66 station in Glenwood Springs, CO who booked my last Greyhound ticket
"This is the most middle of nowhere place I've ever been to." from our very funny and quotable bus driver who drove us from Green River, UT to Las Vegas, NV. The quote was in reference to a town in UT (a truck stop is more like it)..........it is so appropriate that I have forgotten the name.
"I exist!!!" from a passenger on the bus in Des Moines Iowa who had just been released from a mental hospital in Minnesota and had stopped taking his medication. He was running around naked on the bus and at the bus stop shouting this. (The guy sitting next to me on the bus relayed this story)
MY LAST DAYS OF GREYHOUND TRAVEL:
My friend Tate dropped me off at the Greyhound terminal in Glenwood Springs, CO (a Philips 66 station mountainside) and I purchased a ticket for a 3:40pm bus. The bus did not show up until 10:30pm. Apparently it broke down, but they didn't tell us until about
Dawn in Utah
The sunrise the next morning in Utah. an hour before it showed up that this was the case. We called Greyhound and received no information. We talked to the ticket vendor who also didn't know. Finally, a guy in a pickup trucked stopped by (with a laugh) and told us he saw a Greyhound broken down about an hour from where we were. As I have said repeatedly in this blog, it always the people you meet and run into on Greyhound journeys that make the travel experience worthwhile. The service at Greyhound is quite abysmal and I've run out of energy trying to come up with more adjectives to describe this poorly run monopoly business. On the plus side, I do have to admit that they go everywhere, often times the only service in many locations.
Fortunately, the Greyhound was all about the travel experience for me and being able to stop and see all of the little towns where Greyhound has bus stations (not a small number and part of the reason for the slow schedule). It is fun to get a feel for the character of different towns as you pass from the Northeast, to deep South, to Texas and parts of the
A weary traveler
It is a tiring ride but I suppose I got used to it. West and Southwest. Few other modes of transportation would allow you to see the United States in the same way. Furthermore, the people on the bus are an integral part of the experience. Their accents, clothing styles, attitudes, and styles of conversation are something that is so full of life and so real. Although the annoying people that smell bad, talk loud, hoard extra seats or talk too much are difficult to endure sometimes, most people are not like this and these "most" people transform the journey into something that often transcends the lack of service on Greyhound. ( I will admit there are a number of people in bus stations that are quite hard to endure, but I rarely felt unsafe....just uncomfortable and aware of my surroundings all the time.)
Two people kept me going on this trip. First was the guy who waited for the broken down Greyhound with me in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He was a garbage man from Phoenix who had come to visit his college age daughter who was a baker in town. He had also been a construction foreman and truck driver before hooking on with the city of Phoenix and all the
My funny companion from Minnesota
This beer drinking jokester kept me going for hours. great benefits a state job supplies. It was fascinating listen to him describe which trucking companies are good to work for (apparently most of them treat their employees poorly and pay them equally dismally). He would comment on many rigs that pulled into the station while we were waiting. Cab amenities, driveability, company pay packages and the lifestyle on the road were all interesting topics he shared with me. He was quite simply the smartest garbage man I had ever met and perhaps the only one I can remember ever talking to for six hours.
The second person who was great on the trip was a young man (early 20's) from Minnesota who seemed to like nothing better than drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. The latter he enjoyed at every bus stop we took (nearly once every hour-and-a-half) while the former he apparently enjoyed while the bus was broken down near Vail, Colorado on the side of the highway. Apparently, while the bus was broken down, a couple guys hunting deer near the place the bus broke down offered weary passengers a part of their case of beer. This young fellow gladly partook and could speak of nothing more
Arizona
A beautiful view not far from the Grand Canyon. during the bus ride than his next one when he arrived in Utah. Other than that, he told of his weariness and how he had been on the bus for over 24 hours. The funniest thing he related to me was the story of a released African American mental patient who had stopped taking his medicine and began stripping off his clothes while running around the bus and scremaing "I exist!" in Des Moine, Iowa. Apparently, the medication he had taken did not last until he got home and the police finally coaxed him off the bus with a Big Mac and some fries. I am sure the slowness of Greyhound service did not help.
I finally arrived in San Jose at 6am Sunday morning after a long layover in LA the night before. After having no internet and limited recharging during my bus ride, my first stop was a nearby Starbucks (the only bus stop since Colorado which had one) where I could get online and get some caffeine flowing. The 29 hours of travel from CO to CA were wearing on me and the over 100 hours I traveled over the course of 13 days had definitely
worn me out........................It was nice to be in Northern California!!!
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