Washington to Atlanta. 14 hour bus journey

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24th May Washington to Atlanta
I woke up feeling refreshed, which is more than I can say for Richard. By this point of travelling he had picked up a cough. From what I can remember in the middle of the night, one of the Chinese people in the room got up at three in the morning and left the room along with all his belongings. Rich tells a different story however. Apparently rich and him who were sharing the same bunk were having a little fight during the night over the air conditioning and riches constant coughing. Basically the night before I had been waking up in sweats and not being able to sleep as it was too hot. This night we made sure that the air conditioning was on before we went to bed and made sure it was on before we went to sleep. This was to the frustration of the guy below rich. First of all, apparently he was too cold and second, Rich was coughing a lot throughout the night. This guy turned the air con off when we went to sleep, but when he went to the loo in the middle of the night, rich turned it back on. I thought rich was going to get himself ninja'd by this angry Chinese man. This along with riches constant coughing the inevitable happened and rich felt multiple stern hits to the bottom of his mattress. Apparently this went on for a while. Rich didn't react, I don't know why. Maybe because he was scared this guy knew Kung fu or the more realistic reason for he doesn't like confrontation. Either way, I don't know where this guy went but as I said he left the room at 3.30 in the morning never to be seen again. Once we were up and about we charged all our gadgets I'm headed on our long walk to the greyhound bus station. This was a good hour and 30 minutes away. Most people would get a taxi as it would cost less than $10 but with us being on a budget and two hours spare with thought to walk it. By this time we were used to walking a very long way with some very heavy bags. Not going to lie, we walked through a pretty rough neighbourhood in which we stuck out like sore thumbs. Two lads with two backpacks strolling through the ghetto holding a subway cup each. Easy targets. Our suspicions of it being a rough neighbourhood were coming to life when we saw not one, not two, but seven police cars pulled up to a bus stop about 30 yards ahead of us. I don't know what guy did but he was severely outnumbered and was still struggling arrest. We swiftly moved passed and tried to stay out the way and keep on track. We eventually got there but we had half an hour to kill so we went and sat in the local McDonald's. We both got drinks but didn't get food due to our previous subway. However to our delight some guy walked through the door and gave us a free cheeseburger as he said he had eaten too much and was feeling sick. We weren't particularly hungry but who would turn down a free cheeseburger. Our bus was set to leave at 3:30 PM on a 14 hour trip towards Atalanta This time the bus was very full and me and Richard were separated for the journey. This sounds a little bit pathetic but who knows which characters you were going to be sat next to on the greyhound bus. I was lucky enough to sit next to a 70 year old lady who kept herself apart from her numerous bits of food flying out of her mouth and onto my lap. This was only a two-hour journey to Richmond where we would get off the bus and transfer to another bus. We were meant to have 45 minutes to find our bus and transfer but due to traffic we were an hour late. We got off our bus just in time to get in line of a very long queue to get on the 10 hour bus to Atlanta. With a lot of messing around and a lot of stress we made it onto the bus, this time with at least six young children on. Great. We were separated again on the bus, but we have a tactic that if we talk enough to each other from one side of the bus to the other ,single travellers tend to move and allow us to to sit together. It may be wrong but who wants to sit next to an obese woman eating fried chicken from the gas station.

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