60 Days of Greyhound

After spending 60 days travelling around USA on the infamous Greyhound bus service we thought we should honour this achievement with a blog... as always! Yup indeedy, 60 days. That's:84 hours, 48 minutes and 12 seconds of actual travelling! Perhaps. . .

Responses to the fact that we've completed this feat have been interesting. Most have been that of pity - especially when they thought of us travelling with ex-convicts on their way home from prison. This did happen on some occasions. It was easy to spot them as they were always wearing the same clothes: blue t-shirt, beige trousers and blue plimsoles. That and they were generally the loudest people on the bus and they had some competition believe me.

We saw our fair share of interesting people on the Greyhound ranging from bible-bashers to singers (who wouldn't shut up!) to crabby old men. But in truth most were quite normal and kept themselves to themselves. Other than the extrovert, we were fortunate not to witness any crazies or loons like the ones we had become quite fond of during our stay in LA. The stations were generally pretty crappy, but matched the state of the buses quite well. They often had a restaurant which always had the same American staple diet: fried chicken, hamburgers, chips, Coke and lard! Believe me, anyone wanting a normal stool sample at the end of the day does not eat in the McRestaurants in the Greyhound stations. Saying that I'm always up for a challenge and with this in mind ate with ferocity whenever I could. Until one day that is... I rock up, hungry and in need of my daily dose of carbs drenched in fat. I walk to the counter and order a burger only to be told, 'sorry sir we're closed'. I look up at the clock above her, physically stunned as the small hand clicks to 1 and the big hand slides to 12. I'm pretty sure closing at lunchtime in the USA is the same as treason and is punishable by electrodes to the testicles! She got away with it a good ol' english 'tut' under the breath.

Halfway through our two month ordeal, we thought it would be clever to go on a night bus to Roswell. Not a good idea as it turned out. We went to a late night showing of '500 Days of Summer' at Albuquerque Cinemaplex, left satisfied and ready for the bus in the Greyhound station. After some time, numb bummed, we boarded the bus. We had one transfer at 4.30am and a 30 minute wait before boarding another bus to Roswell for 5 hours. Easy. The problem was that our first driver spoke very little English and was a total idiot! Not once did he try to wake anyone up at any stops. Every other driver would turn on the light and anounce the stop on the tannoy. Not this guy. This resulted in us waking up in Texas, at the wrong station, with our bags at the correct station. Not cool. Panicstricken, we tried to get information from the extremely unhelpful retards at the Greyhound Station. Eventually we found out that we were about to board the bus we had wanted to board, just a station too far. We jumped on, reassuring each other that our luggage would be waiting for us in 20 minutes time. Of course our bags were nowhere to be found when we got there. We started to panic. Fortunately, our driver to Roswell was extremely reassuring, and told us that our bags had probably been put on the next bus which would be passing through Roswell later.

The next 5 hours were the longest of our lives. Everything we owned were in those bags! It was a truly unthinkable situation to be in. We arrived, spoke to the lady in the fly-infested tin shed that Roswell calls a Greyhound station and she advised us to come back in 2 hours when the other bus unloaded. We didn't have much choice so went off to our Days Inn and patiently watched 'Cops' on Tru-TV. We couldn't even go in the pool, as skinny-dipping in Roswell may well get you examined by aliens.

Fortunately they arrived the next day, just before we were to go to the mall to get some more Speedos and who was to deliver then to us, but the very reassuring bus driver who took us to Roswell. His name is Migel, I'm getting a tattoo of his face on my face as a tribute... a true American hero!

So to summarise, Greyhound has been a true endurance test. We've seen a lot of things and what doesn't kill ya only makes you stronger, eh? It helped us to travel across America which we will be always grateful for, but next time I think we'll drive.

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