Trip From Hell
Over spring break I traveled back home to Charlottesville VA, a quaint little college town with unique atmosphere. It wasn’t the destination that caused me grief, it was the ride.
I started my journey in Norfolk VA, home of the Old Dominion Monarchs. I took an Uber, a cab service where you pay using your credit card though an app, to the Greyhound station. I usually like to get to the Greyhound station about 25 minutes early to ensure I get a good seat. You know, nothing to close to the bathroom, but not too far in the front.
This was not the case this trip. The Uber driver was from Hampton so she knew none of the roads, therefore, she showed up at 4:30 pm. My bus was scheduled to leave at 4:45, so you can see my worries starting to form. She then proceeded to ask me, what is the best way to get to the station because, “I don’t like the GPS”. After navigating my driver to the station, which she passed 3 times even though I told her it was right there, we arrived at 4:40 pm. I still had to check my bags and get on the bus, yet only had 5 minutes.
I got my bags checked and got a seat on the bus, in the back near the restroom, of course, and thought that the worst part of the trip was over. I believed that I could now relax and reach my destination, which was Richmond which is where I was to meet my mother who would then drive me to Charlottesville.
Yet again, it did not go as planned. I am not sure if any of you have ridden a Greyhound bus in the past year, but they are usually nice, with big plush seats with Wi-Fi and outlets at every seat. I did not get one of those buses this trip. I got a 1990’s “American Bus” bus, which had small seats with ripped upholstery that looked like it was older than 90 percent of the people riding the bus, no outlets, and no Wi-Fi. I could have dealt with all of that missing, if it were not for the passengers on the bus.
We got about 10 minutes away from downtown Norfolk and the guy next to me falls asleep. Usually great, because you don’t have a chatty Kathy beside you asking you where you are from and why you are traveling and all that needless small talk. But this guy, oh this guy was something to behold.
You know when someone is falling asleep, and they start to literally nod asleep, like rock their head back and forth before going to sleep. This guy nodded “asleep” for the entire 2 hour ride. It got to the point where I started to count how many times he nodded in a minute, which was 6 by the way, that is how absurd this was. And it wasn’t like I could just ignore him and look out the window, no the seats on the 90’s bus had no arm rest in-between us, so every 10 seconds that he nodded the entire seat shook as though an 8.3 earthquake was striking.
He wasn’t the only reason this was the trip from hell. The guy sitting caddy corner to me decided to bring a Subway sandwich on the bus. There’s no problem with that, he’s got eat something, because who knows where he was headed from Richmond. It was when he was finished with the sub, he took the plastic bag that carried his 5 dollar footlong and started to crinkle it, that I started to have a problem with. He did not crinkle it to just kind of confine it so it took up less space, which would be too logical for this bus trip. He just kept crinkling it over and over and over again. Seconds turn to minutes, minutes turn to 10’s of minutes. It almost became unbearable, between my seat shaking every 10 seconds and this guy trying to recreate Beethoven’s 17th symphony with a plastic bag. The crinkling finally came to a conclusion about 20 minutes from Richmond, but the head banger next to me kept kicking till the end.
I finally got to exit the bus, 25 minutes late of course, and got to get into my mom’s leather seats with seat warmers, a reclining chair and arm rest. The trip from hell was finally over. Within an hour I was home laying on my sofa watch ESPN while eating the first bite of good food I had had since Winter Break.
The ride lasted a couple hours, but the experience will last a lifetime. Now every time I have to take an Uber I will think about the gruelingly long ride I had to endure. And every time I see a charter bus I will cringe as I think about the guy next to me who was acting as though he was at a rock concert and the guy in the back of the bus who was trying to figure out if he be anymore obnoxious with his plastic bag. I now know it is not what you ride in, it is who you ride with that makes all the difference.