2:45 am — You might not find it as funny as we did, but I think that everyone can take a little from it. We took a trip via Greyhound leaving at 12:01 p.m. on Wednesday and arrived around … God knows when, it was a blur. We encountered a little bit of everything on the trip, and the following is the greatest hits of the Greyhound bus trip to Los Angeles, Calif.
10. DRIVER PLEADS WITH PASSENGERS FOR DIRECTIONS
Our first bus driver of our 54-hour excursion was a knowledgeable gentleman from the Chicago Greyhound station who asked the bus passengers, in all seriousness, if anyone knew where I-94 was. While this might not be that funny to some, consider we were about two blocks east of I-94 and we went past two sets of signs for I-94. A minute into the trip and we had already seen the way Greyhound operates. This obvious question proved to be just the tip of the hat to the horrible voyage.
9. ST. LOUIS CARDINALS HANG OUT IN BUS STATION
For some inexplicable reason, there were approximately 10 birds loose in the St. Louis Greyhound station. While this isn’t necessarily surprising, it was in a great bus station that was likely top class during the Eisenhower administration. Greyhound decided if it couldn’t make its customers happy, the least they could do was please the birds. They provided these wild birds with actual bird housesin the station. Why? I’m not sure, but those damn birds sure were cozy. When we made it to Indio, Calif., we also saw some sneaky pigeons working their way into the station, only to be chased by a three-year old boy. Cute, yes, but he likely was at risk for Avian Flu.
8. THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
While we were sure we would be meeting some definite characters on this trip, there were some special ones that stuck out. First was a man who was rocking a lot of religious apparel, namely an “I heart Jesus” hat that was actually quite fashionable. His highlight was getting into it with two, young black people after re-boarding the bus. He claimed this duo had stolen his seat and moved his bag that should was saving his seat. He started yelling at the entire bus, especially “you people” to the two black people, which I thought for sure would incite some racial violence, but none happened. The religious zealot continued to tell the bus of tales of rapture and Armageddon, saying it would be “Worse than Katrina and the Tsunami.” At the climax of his rant he reached into his bag (which he found in the front row). The passengers gasped for a moment, fearing for the worst, but they were soon relieved to see the Jesus fan pulling out a photograph detailing the end of the world. He was interesting to say the least.
Character No. 2 in the play was Camo Dude. We met this man at the aforementioned St. Louis station, a reformed convict and self-proclaimed alcoholic, was talking with others at the station who were about two hours out of prison. Among other things, said Camo Guy was drinking a 24-ounce Busch Heavy from a plastic cup in the train station and how to water the rain-deprived state of California.
Other small roles in the play were:
Kansas City Chiefs guy; this man, surprisingly, was covered in Kansas City apparel. While this was odd being that we picked him up in Joplin, Missouri, he came up to one of our travel members, Alex, and said something that could not be defined as English, but some how conveyed his point in a grunt that he wanted to sit with Alex. He also snored a lot, which pissed me off.
Teardrop; One of the recently released convicted, I don’t think he was in for his “teardrop” being that his sentence was only six years, but who knows. He likes meth, has a farm and a six-year old daughter, all by his own admission. He had 29 months added on to his sentence for beating his parole officer after the officer accidentally spit on him. He said the spitting was probably an accident, but he, “kicked his ass anyway.” He ran from the police, but eventually was caught. Not very sly.
7. A FRIENDLY REMINDER FROM THE ST. LOUIS POLICE: DON’T GET KILLED
When we were at the now infamous St. Louis station, there was a recorded message from the Greyhound Company, “The St. Louis police advises passengers not to leave the premises of the station.” The station wasn’t paradise, but it wasn’t Compton. We were walking around some, and saw some of the area, which was pretty sketchy, but it instilled a lot of confidence in me that the Greyhound institution was more or less telling us we might get shot if we left the secure confines of the station.
6. THE STORYTELLING DRIVER
Our third bus driver who drove us through the vast majority of Arizona told us an interesting story around 3 or 4 a.m. The lengthy tale began, “Interesting story about this area, I was driving this route a little bit ago when we were leaving the Flagstaff station. After a while, a bunch of people in the back of the bus were yelling that this guy had a gun and was threatening to kill people and calling people the n-word. Luckily, I worked my way back there and tackled him, I got the gun from him and we called the cops. It looked like a Christmas tree around the bus with all the flashing lights on the cop cars around us. Turns out the guy robbed a bank in the city and was trying to get away. He would have, if it wasn’t for us. It was local news, it should have been national news, I don’t know why it wasn’t, but I was reprimanded by Greyhound, because when we took a picture with the local news, my vest wasn’t buttoned.” He paused after the story in hopes of laughter but like a wannabe comedian quickly pulled another story from the vault. The driver described the dangers of elks and detailed another driver’s previous encounter with the large beast. He then warned the passengers to be on the look out for elk and to yell if anyone saw one.
5. MACED IN THE FACE
When we were leaving the Albuquerque station we had just come back from a local watering hole called Tuscano, where we vastly overpaid for some beer. We were feeling relatively good when Jason Grodsky, a football writer, noticed a man getting maced outside by the station. The police…maybe…ripped off his hat, continued to mace said guy and used some physical force to subdue him. I felt bad for the guy, but all of us were just kind of laughing at him from the confines of our mace-free bus. Sucker.
4. THE LOVE GLOVE
While we had some memorable quotes from the characters we met, the first that made the list came from Camo Guy. We were talking about healthy living during our five hour delay, and Camo Guy was talking about healthy eating and eating broccoli. Another healthy thing? Intercourse, as long as you are protected. “Ain’t nothing wrong with a little bump and grind, as long as you wear a love glove.”
3. BORDER PATROL JUMPS THE BUS
Back at the Indio Greyhound station near the California-Arizona border there was another occurrence that went down. When we were pulling into the station, I spied immigration agents waiting for us. I didn’t think they were going to investigate the bus, but I was sorely mistaken. Before any of us got to get off the bus, two immigration agents got onto the bus and ordered everyone to sit down and get out identification. I was confused, and scared that I wouldn’t find my ID and be sent to some random country of their choosing. While that didn’t happen, a “backwater” white gentleman asked if “All the white people could leave the bus.” The agents ignored his question and like the other 46 passengers he was forced to his citizenship. Our bus was moderately populated with minorities, so I was slightly concerned that some business might go down. Unfortuntately someone was questioned by the immigration services and he was forced to leave some one who I am assuming was his wife. We discovered he was a resident of Peru and from the agents less than friendly demeanor with him, he might have been an illegal. It was a rather surreal thing to see the Peruvian taken from the bus and then have to get his luggage and be detained by the immigrant services.
2. JESUS FAN LIKES COOL TEMPERATURES
The religious zealot makes his second appearance in the top ten with his memorable quote of the trip. Our second bus driver asked us if we thought that the temperature on the bus was acceptable, or if it was too hot or cold. The zealot didn’t seem to think that it was good enough and tried to persuade the driver twice to lower the temperature some how. After three unsuccessful attempts, he tried to ask Alex and another football writer, Mike Theodore, if they could ask the driver to lower the heat. Alex and Mike didn’t understand his pleas at first either and it took him another attempt to finally convey his message to the two. Alex didn’t particularly care for him and his constant complaining and told him to “Let’s see if it gets any better, then maybe I’ll go talk to him.” The zealot wasn’t satisfied with this response, and a few minutes later, while shaking like a leaf, he screamed in some very poor English, “Issssss toooo Haaawwwt!” I don’t know if it was the fact that he seemed a lot bit crazy or if we were starting to become delirious, but this caused us to lose it in a fit of laughter, and caused the vast majority of the entire bus to hate us. Screw them.
1. THE NEW GREYHOUND—JUST AS CRAPPY AS BEFORE
The top-notch customer service from the Greyhound Company. Honestly, I couldn’t ask for anymore from these people. You ask a question about time of arrival, they didn’t respond or give a crap, and just seemed to make things longer. We were delayed approximately 10 hours during the entire trip. Luckily, we skipped stops on the way to LA and made up time, getting in around 5 p.m. today, when we should have been around 11 a.m.
This was only the beginning of the trip, but I have a feeling that many more wacky adventures will be ensuing. Stay tuned to DailyIllini.com for more riveting updates.
