Thursday 22 October 2009

[edit 10/25 120a] these are my tweets as sent to twitter in real time. i'm correcting obvious typos, and i'll flesh them out as time allows.

• 01:50 here's goes my computer! i'll tweet from my phone till i get to florida and get back online #
• 04:09 i'm at the bus station, an hr before my bus leaves, but a bus just pulled in! greyhound never offered me a 4am bus #
• 04:18 that bus is going to florida but greyhound never offered it as an option. that's weird #

to elucidate, i bought my bus ticket from http://www.greyhound.com/. i checked a dozen different date combinations over a couple weeks, and every time it offered me only 1 departure option: leaving 450a from Chillicothe, and there's a link that i could click to show me the route, which was northbound to Columbus. The website never offered me the option of choosing a southbound route out of Chillicothe, so i presumed it had been discontinued. image my surprise when, while waiting for the northbound bus, a southbound bus pulls in! i told the driver the website never mentioned a 4a southbound bus, and he just said, "that's greyhound!" !@#$%!

• 05:09 boarded my bus in Chillicothe OH, trip is underway #
• 06:27 rode the bus 1 hr north to Columbus OH so i could catch the southbound bus, which boards at 730a #
• 07:15 hey dave! RT @davesib following norm travel to florida. #
• 07:20 Bus station in Columbus OH http://post.ly/9hGJ #
• 07:33 boarded bus, finally heading south. my email acct at my former company was just deleted # 
• 07:38 i was too hasty, we're leaving Columbus station now. so far i havent had a seatmate # 
• 08:54 arrived at Dayton bus station # 
• 09:08 leaving Dayton, now i've got a seatmate, Diane # 
• 09:33 we couldnt get out @ Dayton, so no smokes since 730a. Diane is going to Texas # 

Diane had a hard luck story too, but i was sleepy and not paying attention. She had been in Dayton visiting an aunt for 3 weeks, now headed back to Dallas in time to move. The aunt apparently had access to all sorts of industrial health supplies; i overheard her tell her daughter about getting a 4-month supply of some medication from her. She also said she had a whole suitcase full of Starbucks ground coffee, and when she got off the phone, she told me about it too, and later on got into her suitcase and pulled out 5 single pot packs to give me!

• 10:12 in Cincinnati, getting a smoke, then i'll go charge this phone some more # 
• 10:35 they have a tv here in the Cincy station and i'm watching Ellen for the 1st time # 
• 10:41 2 black women who only speak French just tried to ask me questions # 
• 10:47 Bus station in Cincinnati http://post.ly/9j1v # 
• 11:07 @davesib the tv was too close to the charging station # 
• 11:08 not french! RT @suselynn @DyNama Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't that been the start of one of your long time fantasies? # 
• 11:11 we have boarded and are preparing to leave Cincinnati. 6 hrs after i started i'm still only 2 hrs from home! # 
• 11:17 at 1st the driver said we would wait 10mins 4 connecting bus, so we started out to smoke, then he shoved us back in & said no we're leaving # 

the driver was saying we would wait an additional 10 minutes for a connecting bus, so if anyone wanted a smoke, we could get one while waiting, but before we got out the door, he said he'd just heard that the other bus was all the way back near Kings Island, so that would be too long to wait.

• 11:20 leaving Ohio! finally on my way! see ya later Ohio! # 
• 11:47 twitter friends, i may not be able to tweet my whole bus trip cuz the battery of my cell doesnt seem to be holding a charge # 

i admit i didn't charge up the battery of my cell phone wensday evening, but it had been fully charged that morning and i was totally surprised that it went dead soon after starting the trip. nearly every greyhound station we stopped at had a charging station, a bank of outlets for recharging phones and ipods, and i'd plug mine in and get about 40 minutes of charge, but it would go dead again soon after leaving the station. i really thought that just my luck, the battery was going bad, or my charger, not a genuine samsung charger but an after-market "travel charger", was a lemon. so several hours during the trip, my battery was dead, or the phone turned off to save a little charge. i don't really think i missed very many tweets of "important" stuff, but i might have made a few more observations or sent more pictures if i'd had a working cell phone.

• 13:01 arrived at the Louisville bus station. got a smoke, now charging my phone some more #
• 13:16 so far no bus station has had a vending machine with hot coffee. seems they all used to have them in the past # 
• 13:26 Bus Station in Louisville http://post.ly/9kXt # 
• 13:38 leaving Louisville, on the road again # 
• 14:27 Elizabethtown KY, but no break for us smokers # 
• 15:32 getting a smoke in Bowling Green KY # 
• 17:01 Nashville TN bus station http://post.ly/9mc5 # 
• 17:31 leaving Nashville TN. left my water bottle behind, had to get them to open the door and let me go back in to get it # 

i was pleasantly surprised about the lack of security on this whole trip. no one ever looked in my luggage, and even this time, they let me get off to get the water bottle i'd left at the charging station.

• 18:21 we are at a pickup spot but the driver didnt say where. Tennessee i think # 
• 18:57 Manchester TN, quick smoke break # 
• 23:03 Here at Atlanta bus station http://post.ly/9pKn # 
• 23:07 we had quick smoke breaks in Chattenooga TN at 835p and Marietta GA at 1020p, i'm now in Atlanta GA # 
• 23:57 about to leave Atlanta, on last leg of journey #