Greyhound

A friend told me he has been seeing commercials for Greyhound Buses full of smiling, happy people enjoying their deluxe trip on the bus. I feel like I should have taken actual footage last weekend and put it up on YouTube.

We (Adam, Mark, Josh and I) were dropped off by Lisa at the Greyhound station in San Francisco. After walking by several homeless men sleeping in the walkways and a few people screaming at each other, we made it to the ticket counter. We asked Ryan, the man behind the counter, if he had any tips for our long trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Ryan said that we need to remember not to drink alcohol or smoke anything on the bus, but that if we saw any ladies we could feel free to take them to the back of the bus and have a little fun. "If the bus driver looks at you funny, it's just because he's jealous." Okay, thanks for the tip. Ryan then informed us that it was our lucky day. Not only would we be riding on an Express Bus (the first of several times we heard of these mythic super buses), but there were going to be some strippers on our bus!! Could it get any better??

The only thing I cared about was getting some sleep on the first leg of our trip which started at 10 PM on Saturday (San Francisco to Los Angeles). Alas, the story started off a different way. A woman sat behind Adam and myself and asked us not to recline our seats. She then spoke in a very loud voice the entire drive. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, never really sleeping, I heard lots of talk of praying and pastors. The ironic thing is that I don't think I saw one other cell phone amongst the hundreds of other Greyhound riders I came across during the trip.

We stopped in Oakland, Coalinga and Glendale on the way to Los Angeles. At Coalinga most of the other passengers grabbed some quality food at McDonald's. Having read Fast Food Nation a couple weeks ago, I definitely passed and thought about standing at the entrance and begging people to not eat the stuff, but instead I stood in the parking lot and stretched.

Upon our arrival in Los Angeles, we took a look at the waiting room full of metal chairs and interesting smells and decided to take a walk downtown. As soon as we reached the sidewalk we were offered bikes for $10 each by some local businessmen on the corner. We thought about it but continued to walk. We passed an organization I had heard of called Midnight Mission with around a hundred people in the courtyard (this was around 5 in the morning). On the surrounding streets were dozens of tents and makeshift homes of cardboard and shopping carts. Trash filled the streets along with boxes of clothes that had apparently been donated to the people of the street. We wondered aloud how much good was being done by this type of rescue mission. The presence of the mission seemed to have created a dense ghetto that chased away the rest of civilization. A heavy spirit filled the air and the complexities of helping the American poor rushed to my thoughts.

We returned to the station for the 7 AM to Phoenix and were about to board when a woman yelled to stop. There was no more room on the bus. The crowd quickly accepted the bad news. I was puzzled...no one would complain? We asked the woman, all the while suspecting that the bus was full of people who had tickets for the 9 AM trip to Phoenix. She gave us some meal vouchers for the food area and promised that the 9 AM bus was an "Express Bus" that would get us there right on time. Sure...
After choking down some free food and wondering where the bacon and eggs originated, I found Mark and Adam sleeping on the floors on opposite sides of the room. I tried to make my old Ipod mini work, but since the batteries have been on the fritz for a year or so, that didn't quite work.

Finally on the way to Phoenix!! We stopped in San Bernadino for 10 minutes, and I hopped off the bus to enjoy the sun and call my wife. After listening to a voicemail that Ryan and Holly Sharp had a new beautiful baby named Paxton, a young man, probably 18 or so, suddenly yelled at me that I could not stand there. "On the bus or in waiting area!!" was his command. A part of me wanted to yell back and inform the young man that 1. No one talks to me like that 2. Ever heard of a thing called customer service? 3. Since when is it illegal to step outside? After the 5 second burst of anger rolled through my veins, I smiled and nodded and slowly walked back into the bus, feeling like a part of a herd of cattle. I later chuckled when Adam recounted Mark being called "boy" when an agent demanded his ticket.

We needed to arrive in Phoenix in time to get on the 4:25 bus headed for Albuquerque, but we took several stops that were a bit too long and got there at 4:45 or so. We were told that there was another bus coming in 10 minutes so we had better hop in line. After waiting in line for half an hour we sent Mark to the ticket counter. Before long we finally were informed that the next bus wouldn't depart until 11 PM, but we could have some free meal tickets :) We met a woman with her son that told us there was a bus at 5:30. Suspecting she had been lied to we talked with her for a while and advised her to head to the ticket counter and make sure she got the scoop. After we took a walk in the rain in Phoenix and turned down some Rolex watches, we were finally on our way to Albuquerque, and we were scheduled to arrive at 10 AM Monday morning. The problem is that I had booked a hotel on Priceline that we had planned to enter at 3 AM. We realized that you can't make firm plans when riding Greyhound and wondered what it was like to live like that. On top of that no one had cell phones, so it added up to some serious waiting around and never knowing when you would arrive.

The crazy thing about the experience is that our tickets cost $79 and my return flight from Albuquerque cost $94. Add in food at McDonald's and the Greyhound stations (we didn't see anyone else get meal tickets) and not only have you thrashed your body but you've also spent another 15-30 dollars. Factor in having a job that pays by the hour and does not include vacation time, and Greyhound is a seriously bum deal. I suspect that many of the people on our buses do not know how to find cheap tickets on the Internet and may not factor in the total cost of the entire trip. You also don't need a credit card as you would to book a cheap flight ahead of time. I think our bags were checked once the entire trip, and our ID was never checked. We saw many prison tattoos. What really got me was the single Moms with their kids. Little humans being yelled at by their mothers for not being willing to hold more things in their laps. I heard whispers of former husbands and boyfriends and lives of frustration and desperation.

Someone had an interesting thought: is there any company that is geared to serve poor people that is run well? If anyone has a thought I would love to hear it.

As for me, I am committed to carving out some time to calling and writing a letter to Greyhound to complain about some of their practices and how they treat people and take advantage of them. It feels so luxurious to ride in a car these days...