Riding the bus

Persons of a certain inclination -- travelers, vagabonds, you know the type -- have a romantic idea of traveling by buses in their heads. You get transported, and you travel, they think to themselves, such a great way to understand a place and it's people! And to absorb in the scenery! They go out of their way to schedule their journeys in buses, multiple connections and multi-hour transits are considered totally fine, because the trip would be worth it. Such people are often from somewhere in Europe, or places with lots of mountains and awesome scenery, such as Nepal. I know about them in such intimacy because I used to be one of them.

The reality of traveling on buses is, in America at least, they suck. The seats are uncomfortable. No, that's an understatement. The seats are evil -- it's almost as if someone went out of their way to design seats that would hurt your bones and muscles under an hour. I have a desk job where I sit on my chair all day long and barely move some days and my back is generally fine. I sit on a greyhound for an hour and my coccyx begins stabbing my lower back, my legs start tingling, my neck needs regular cracking or else it creaks. How a simple seat can be so unergonomic I'll never understand. It's not about the legspace, that's the notable part, I'm quite short by American standards and I often complain about too much legspace during flights even with the cheapest airlines. I'm not a particularly wide person either, au contraire I'm quite slim, on the sides at least. It's confounding really.

And that's just the beginning.

Let's talk about scenery. Allow me to cut short with this: there's no scenery anywhere, it's just empty highway and boring trees, if even that. The buses always take the shortest, cheapest route between point A and point B, the views be damned. I'm not complaining here; this is just a statement of the fact that bus rides on highways are as boring as they get, and no sane person should take a bus for the views. There are going to be none.

Then there's the smell. The buses -- the sorts I have been on, Greyhound, Megabus, etcetera -- have a smell. Not necessarily a bad smell like farts or childshits as you might first fear. It's a more subtle smell, more rancid and bitter. Sort of like the smell of New York and Philadelphia, or any big city, Boston even. And the smell permeates. It doesn't stop at an assault on your sense of smell it also invades all items of clothing you are wearing and any other fabric you have out in the open. After a five hour ride in the bus, you smell like the bus. You ARE the bus. Only the deepest of clean cycles in your washing machines will rid you of that sickening smell. To be fair this is not a terrible thing to happen necessarily, particularly if you are an urbanite and already live (and smell!) in a big city. This should however be a fair warning to those who don't wish to smell like a sweaty, smelly, old metal coin.

Now the punctuality. Don't count on it. It's a bad idea to have less than a few hours of transit time between legs of a trip. Even then you could be cutting close. Or you might be several hours early because the earlier bus was late and they're picking you up too because why not. Don't count on it either way though. The busride is not for the impatient. The buses could depart fifteen minutes before the schedule (happened to me once in ATL) or three, four, five hours late. And departure time is just the beginning. The buses break down. Or sometimes catch on fire. And you wait for the dispatch to send another bus. And that bus gets lost because the drivers new to the area. Shouldn't he have used GPS, you wonder. Stop! That's being impatient. Resign yourself to the fate of your fellow passengers, flow like a river, go where the poorly planned logistics takes you. When you finally get in the backup bus, but not after your original bus is fixed and headed out half hour ago, have been stuck in the traffic for an hour, and haven't so much as made an edgy tweet, you are in the Nirvana. You are in the zone, you have made it. You are worthy of the bus experience. Don't think about the various connections you missed by almost days until the absolute moment you need to because what's the point. Isn't this what they call mindfulness?

I know the biggest ragging Greyhound and its ilk get from people are it's passengers. Here's some facts on that: most of the bus riders are either students or poor people. There's a few people who planned poorly (exhibit A) or tourists (Europeans and others, see first paragraph). None of the groups deserve to get ragged for their circumstances. Except the Europeans. Those idiotic romantic bastards!

And that is your busride. After ten hours of bumpy and uncomfortable ride you get to your destination. You had hoped to catch sleep during all that time because you had figured the body would be naturally inclined to do so in absence of other stimulation. You will have realized that was not the case. You are tired your bones ache you need sleep. Never again!, you promise yourself. I'd rather take the plane, which was only twice as expensive, the next time, you vow. And then the next time comes around and you haven't bought your tickets until two days to the day of. And the cycle continues.