Sunday 12 Mar 06 --3

The trip home.

i would have filed a few posts from the road if only i had bothered to memorize the email address! i did send one but 12 hours later was informed it was returned.

Mom & Dad took me to the bus stop, a truck stop and arby's in Ft. Pierce, and my sister, bro-in-law, and niece met us there to send me off. a bus pulled in bearing the destination "new york" but i thought i was looking for a bus labeled "detroit" and this one was 40 minutes early. the station manager checked and found there was 1 seat left on this bus, so i got it. another "new york" bus arrived before we left, but it also looked full. i don't know how well greyhound's computer manages seats, whether they knew there would be 1 to pick up in ft. pierce and saved it for me, or if it was just luck they didn't sell all the seats before getting there.

the bus was full until we left columbia, sc, then my seatmate, whom i refer to as silent silvia--i saw her name on her ticket, we never said one word to each other--was able to move to a seat of her own, but then i got another seatmate, a man who told me he takes the bus around the country but frequently has to fly to barbados.

we awaited a connecting bus in jacksonville, so we left 40 minutes behind schedule. (I think many times that people say too much, and this driver was one of them. he told us "we're 40 minutes behind schedule..." which was enough, but then he droned on "we were supposed to leave at 10pm and we're leaving at 1040.") unfortunately, we made up the lost time by getting shorter breaks. one young man i talked to in jax said he was coming from ft. meyers, fl, and, in his opinion, about 85% of the people he ran into there smoked crack! he was upset because all those crack smokers used up his lighter! he admitted to using drugs that morning, but he was not unpleasant.

M&D called while we were on a break in salisbury, nc, and the call continued after the bus got back underway. i had to put my father on hold while i got a return call from Dave to tell me my blog did not have an email entry from the road, too bad, that would have been cool!

the bus we boarded was supposed to go all the way to columbus, oh, so i would make no more transfers, but for some reason we did have to change, i think in charlotte, nc, it looked like they sprayed my side of the bus with diesel fuel, it was still dripping when we retrieved the stuff we had left to mark our seats.

in winston-salem, nc, i got a new seatmate. the bus was not full but he didn't want to sit in the back of the bus cuz he thought it too rough a ride. (the seat i got in ft. pierce was in the back, but i had moved up in orlando because the engine is so noisy.) he was retired army, retired teamster, twice-divorced but said the court gave him back the house and car and hardly gave his newly-ex-wife anything, and claimed he was going to put some property on the market for $1 million, but he packed sandwiches and snacks and didn't buy anything at the breaks. we had 2 meal breaks, a mcdonald's at columbia, sc, and another mcdonald's at wytheville, va, at noon, who staff panicked when 2 more greyhounds pulled in (wouldn't that be a daily thing?). my seatmate got his own seat at wytheville and i didn't get any more for the rest of the journey.