Rasmenia

“No vacation goes unpunished.” ~Karl Hakkarainen

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” ~Lin Yutang

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” ~G.K. Chesterton

.

When the guy across the aisle from us began discussing stabbings & which mixture of drugs enabled him to best endure such an incident, I knew that I had had enough of fucking Greyhound.

We arrived at the Greyhound station in Denver after our brief stop in Amarillo.  We had 2 hours to stand in a line in front of the door where the bus would arrive.  Sucking down our mediocre & over-priced nachos, Olivier & I observed that while the bus station in Denver was larger & cleaner than what we’d grown accustomed to, being forced to watch Fox News on the overhead TV screens negated size & cleanliness.

We were almost there.  Just another 45 minutes on the bus from Denver to Ft. Collins & the shitty bus ride would be over… & we’d only be arriving 1 day late.  Yes, we spent an extra 24 hours bent over while Greyhound stuck it to us.

Finally, we boarded the bus to Ft. Collins – an hour late, no reason given.  An enormous man from Tennessee sat across the aisle & just in front of us.  He seemed to only speak gibberish that was indecipherable.  Olivier & I watched in helpless horror as he removed his shirt, sitting in his seat topless.

“Ok,” I said.  “That’s a clear indication that it’s time to get off the fucking bus.”

“Oh my Gawd,” Olivier said.  “That’s so fucked up, I don’t even wanna think about it.  We have to go before he takes something else off.”

Luckily, we arrived in Ft. Collins moments later, where a friend was waiting to pick us up, in spite of the fact that it was 1:00 in the goddamn morning.

Now the next week until our flight home to France would be easy.  Well… easier than a cross-country trip on Greyhound.

Sure, we had shopping to do.  We had precious American products to buy – important things like Pop-Tarts, Levi’s & Ranch Dressing.

We had very important places to go to…

I hadn’t been home for 2 years, so I had dozens of people to see.  That meant a hell of a lot of socializing.  Let me just say this about socializing: I don’t like it.  I’m not sociable & regardless of how much I may like someone, I’m not one to call & chat on the phone, or make big plans to get together with them.

Yeah… & party planning… not real big on that, either.

But, I managed to plan a couple of parties – by “parties”, I mean set a date & time for a bunch of people to go to a bar, where I would be drinking.

For the most part, this worked pretty well.  Most people have no problem being told to go to a bar.  If they’re free, they go.  If they’re busy, they don’t.  Simple.

Again, I’ve expected too much from the humans.

New Year’s Day found us at a bar in the town where I grew up, a town that I despise & become slightly nauseous upon entering the city limits: Longmont, CO.

Welcome back to the worst years of your life.

But, I admit… swilling Guinness with people that I haven’t seen in 2, 10 or even 20 years was all right… as far as socializing goes.

It didn’t suck, is what I’m saying.

However, I had planned a 2nd gathering with a different group of friends for the following night.  It should have been easy.  Go to a bar… or do not go to a bar.  Instead, I had to stop checking my email due to the slew of messages that I was receiving.

“Um… yeah.  I don’t wanna do that.  Maybe you could make time just for me.”

“Well, I don’t want to go to THAT bar.  Maybe we can go somewhere else.”

“I’m not going if THEY’RE going.”

“I’m not going unless (insert name here) is going.”

I began to feel as though I was planning a birthday party for a group of spoiled Jr. High kids.  In the end, I gave up, I stopped checking my emails & messages.  With the Peril in Pennsylvania, the Voyage through the Various Circles of Hell & a full itinerary of things to do in Colorado, I just couldn’t find the time to cater to any last-minute whining, or appease any complaints.

Then again, I’ve never been much of a people-pleaser.

"They want me to do WHAT?"

In the end, the quibbling & moaning was ignored, beer was drunk, food was eaten, laughs were had & butter knives were wielded… for some reason.

A week later, Olivier & I found ourselves in an airport in Salt Lake City.  We’d caught an earlier flight out of Denver to be sure we wouldn’t get fucked out of our flight to Paris.  Yes, it’s a little out of the way when traveling from Denver to Paris, but by this time, we were immune to such things.  Our home in France was in our sights for the first time in 3 weeks, we would soon be reunited with our fuzzy feline & we would be a whole family unit once again.

Olivier laughed in the seat next to me.  “You do realize that the plane we’re about to board is the only mode of transportation that is on time & that we were actually supposed to be on?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “But we shouldn’t talk to much about it.  Something could still go wrong.”

Luckily, nothing did.  Other than the fact that we had shitty movies… but, isn’t that a typical & expected problem on an international flight?

We arrived at Charles De Gaulle airport on time.  We found a taxi right away to take us back home.  It was snowing, we were cold, exhausted & longing for home… & a real espresso.

Dragging our luggage through the door, we were greeted by the yowling & mewling that we’d been missing for the past few weeks.

Mind telling me where you two have been?

Our bags laying on the floor around us in a scattered mess, I scooped up our cat & squeezed her as hard as I could without smooshing her completely.

“I get it,” I said.

“What do you mean?”  Olivier’s voice was muffled in our tiny group hug.

“Remember at the very end of Return of the King, after Samwise puts his buddies on the boat, then comes home, scoops up his kid & says that he’s back?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “It’s kind of like that.  Know what else?”

“No,” I said.  “What?”

“You’re a total geek.”

He was right.  It was geeky, but it was true.  Indeed, when I entered our home that afternoon, I felt as though I had just been to Mt. fucking Doom & back.  We had fun, we had some complete fucking misery… people had disappointed me beyond belief, while others had pleasantly surprised me beyond my expectations.

It’s all quite blurry now, but what I remember of it all is full of various landscapes, faces & suitcases.  There was eating, drinking, merriment &… mucous.

Fucking holiday travel.  It’s always a lot of planning & stress, but we had a plan – a simple plan.  We believed that there was no way that it could fail.  We were mistaken – the entire plan failed, everything went wrong.

So, we’ll probably be staying home here in France for a while.  That is, until we can come up with some new & exciting way to torture ourselves… of course, this adventure will be hard to top.

"The brochure says we can try the Thumbscrews, the Breast Ripper AND the Rack."

So, there we were, a frozen December night in Tulsa, with our faces pressed against the cold, dirty glass, staring at our empty bus.  The Greyhound station was small.  The movies had gotten worse – instead of Billy Bob Thornton, we were now trying to avoid looking at the screen as an estrogen-soaked Lifetime movie cackled in the background.

Olivier & I went outside while I shivered & cursed.  The Greyhound employee inside had informed us that we would be stranded until 3:30am, when the next bus for Amarillo, TX was due to arrive.  If we could get a seat on that bus.  We tried to come up with some sort of plan to get ourselves out of Tulsa.  What we came up with was… jack shit.

We went back inside & ran into the kid with the Hari Krishna hair.  “I saw a bar down the street,” he said.  “I really like beer.  I make my own brews at home.”

Olivier & I smiled & nodded politely.  “Yeah,” I said.  “Beer is good.”

I looked down & saw a little man with a face much too round & chubby for his small body sitting in the corner.  He was wearing green pajamas with the Mountain Dew logo all over them.  Standing next to him was the scary Erik Estrada.  I noticed that he, too, was wearing pajamas.

“Check them out,” I said to Olivier.  “Do you suppose that they’re some sort of gang?”

We looked around.  There were 3 guys standing in the corner that had just walked in from the street.  Everyone pretended not to see them.  They were wasted, belligerent & seemed to be looking for something violent that no one else wanted them to find.

The hippies were sitting in a circle on the floor with the Rasta Man & the Iggy Pop lookalike, who was busy telling his new friends all about his knitting.  Now he wore not only his grandma afghan poncho, but several knitted pouches hung from his neck in all sorts of tacky, parrot-like colors.

“I made this one between St. Louis & Tulsa,” he said, holding one up with pride.  “It’s to hold my cell phone.  I made this orange one right after, so I could have something handy to hold my smokes.”

I wondered what he had against pockets.

“Check out my pant legs,” the male hippy said.  “They’re all crunchy & we haven’t even gotten to Frisco, yet.”

We drank vending machine soda & squeezed ourselves into 2 uncomfortable metal chairs next to a woman who was taking up the rest of the row with her baggage & bulk.  She made strange sounds & weird smells wafted all around her.  I leaned on Olivier’s shoulder.  I fell in & out of sleep, lifting my head from time to time to wipe the thick thread of drool connecting my face to his jacket.  I realized that I was slobbering & snoring loudly.  My hair had gotten greasy over the past couple of days.  My clothes were dirty.  In this crowd, in this place, no one noticed.

I stood up.  “I’ll be right back,” I said.  “I’m off to the bathroom.”

I walked in & found 2 stalls built on a dirty concrete floor.  Piss, toilet paper & tampon wrappers lined my path to a horrifying porcelain petri dish.

Sitting there, not really enjoying this time alone, I was interrupted mid-stream when someone else entered the bathroom.  At first, I barely noticed, assuming it was likely that some other woman had to piss at 2am.

“Shawna,” a deep voice said.  He was just on the other side of the door.

“No,” I said, from inside my dirty toilet stall.  “Shawna’s not here.”

“Shawna, get the fuck out now, or I’m leaving without you,” he said.

“I… am… not… SHAWNA,” I said, wondering if I was about to be murdered.  He cursed, then exited the room.

So, Shawna, whoever you are, wherever you are, your boyfriend is an asshole.

I went back out & told Olivier about Shawna’s cockbite boyfriend.  “Man,” he said.  “St. Louis was bad, but this place is so much worse.  I’m afraid to think of where we’ll end up next.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.  “We’re just traveling to each Circle of Hell… with no fucking Virgil.  I can’t even imagine what Amarillo will be like.”

"Hi! Welcome to the 9th Circle! Or, as we like to call it, Amarillo."

That was when the Amazons came blustering through the door of the bus station.  Two black women, each one over six feet tall, blew into the room from the bus that had just arrived.  Each one of them dragged in a confused looking toddler.

“No heat on the mother fucking bus!”  One of them leaned down to get nose-to-nose with the security guard.  “You get my babies on a bus with heat… YOU HEAR ME?”

We all heard.  Everyone looked away, even the security guard.  No one wanted to incur the wrath of the Frozen Amazons, who now sat on patrol at the door of the bus station, barking at anyone who dared to open it, thus letting winter air inside.

“Man,” Erik Estrada said.  “Are we actually going somewhere?  Why are we lined up in front of the door, standing around like fucking idiots?”

That was when the Greyhound employee informed us that we would now be leaving.  On the same bus that we had arrived in, which had been sitting outside with its engine running for the past 8 hours.

We trotted out to the bus & jumped inside, bouncing around on our seats & whooping like a bunch of 1st graders ready to embark on a field trip to the zoo.

As soon as I sat down, I was asleep & didn’t wake up until we were in Amarillo, TX.  It wasn’t exactly the torturous inferno that we had been anticipating.  We were surprised that they actually handled our luggage for us – which made us a bit nervous.  We were having profound trust issues with these people by this point.  The bathrooms were overflowing with stale, swampy shit water, but we managed to find an oasis just across the street.

We could hardly believe our eyes.  Snacks?  Burritos?  No rubbery cafeteria meat?  We ran out the door.  Inside the tiny restaurant, we found 2 tiny tables & a smiley Mexican man behind the little counter.  He was laughing & friendly… we’d forgotten what people look like when they’re not miserable or insane.

Filled with joy once again & spicy breakfast burritos, we boarded the bus to Denver.  The driver, a little round bald man, came to each of us – much to our surprise – to ask about our destinations, giving us an estimated time of arrival.  He was making jokes & being kind to the passengers, all the while letting us know that if we dicked around, getting drunk & shouting, that we’d be “shit out of luck & off the bus”.  We liked him immediately, which wasn’t something that we had been accustomed to with our previous bus drivers.  Ditching us, snapping at us or rolling their eyes at us had become commonplace.  This guy was like… some kind of freak.

Olivier looked over at me & patted my thigh.  “See?  Things are finally looking up,” he said.  “Soon, we’ll be in Colorado & all of this shit will be behind us, then we can laugh about it.”

Looking back, it is all quite laughable.  It turns out, traveling on Greyhound can be much, much worse…

When Olivier & I arrived at the Greyhound station in Erie, PA, we were giddy.  It was 3pm on Saturday, the day after Christmas.  We’d had a big pile of Arby’s earlier that day, so I had gotten my fix after craving their delicious, cheddary slop for the past 2 years.  We were leaving behind the stress of a Festivus gone bad & were looking forward to a week at home in Colorado.

We had our bus tickets, 200 lbs. of luggage & a box of chocolate donuts.  We were ready to voyage across the country for the next day & a half.  We would have to change buses several times, but still… it was only a day & a half.

A day & a half.  No sweat.

Cozy.

The first thing that we figured out was that there was no dicking around when it was time to board the bus.  If you’re traveling with someone, it’s next to impossible to find 2 seats together.  Most people are traveling alone.  They all want a window seat & will not move if they see that it would allow a couple to sit together.

After the first bus ride from Erie to Cleveland, OH, we knew from then on that it was necessary to knock bodies out of our way in order to be at the head of the line.

Ok, so a day & a half of sitting in a bus & pushing strangers to the ground.  No problem.

It was around 10pm when we stopped in Columbus, OH.  We would be stuck there until 1am, waiting for the next bus to take us to St. Louis, MO.  Olivier & I were parked at a table, eating a bus station cafeteria salad when another couple sat at the table next to us.

The woman kept silent, making strange faces with her mouth.  I soon realized it was because she had no teeth.  Her husband was a short, squashy little man who would jabber at anyone within a ten-foot radius should they happen to make eye contact.  They carried black plastic garbage bags for luggage.  He turned to younger couple seated at a nearby table.

“Where you guys headin’ to?”

“Uh… we’re going to St. Louis,” the younger guy said.

“Oh, yeah,” Squashy said.  “That’s where we’re tryin’ to get to, but the guy over there at the counter just told me that there’s all kinds of cancellations in St. Louis.  He said he could rerout me through to Texas, but me & my wife, we’re goin’ to California & I think we should just take our chances in Missouri.”

I turned to Olivier.  “Fuck me… did you hear all of that?”

Olivier nodded.  “Yeah, I heard it,” he said, getting up from the table.  “I’m going to go check it out with someone who works here, just in case that guy’s got his information mixed up.”

I drank a cup of shitty bus station coffee & watched Olivier go to the counter, nod his head a few times, rub his beard & then walk back toward me.

“Well,” he said.  “It seems that there is a bad storm in St. Louis, but it may clear up.  We just need to get on this bus & not worry about anything until we get there.”

No problem.  We knocked a few bodies out of the way & got into the bus.  Within an hour, I was asleep.

Like a drooling, sweating baby.

I woke up for a moment when we stopped in Indianapolis, where we picked up a couple of hippies, a Rastafarian & a French woman.  I managed to fall asleep again in spite of Squashy jabbering at full volume to anyone & everyone.

Without opening my eyes, I heard people getting on & off of the bus in Effingham, IL during a stop at McDonald’s.  Everything remained blurry until just before 7am, when we entered St. Louis.  The sun was coming up, not a trace of snow or storm clouds in sight.  I didn’t see any reason why we would be delayed here.

Now I realize that this is because I underestimated the dipshittery of Greyhound.

With 20 minutes until our bus to Denver was to depart, Olivier & I dragged our 200 lbs. of luggage through the bus station.  With our eyes half closed, we blasted anyone who stood in our way with morning breath & ran over their feet with our heavy wheelie suitcases.

An hour later, we were still standing in line with all of the other chumps trying to get to Denver.  A stout, bored looking woman in a Greyhound uniform walked over to us.  She leaned over & grabbed the address tag on my suitcase.

“Where you all going?”  She read the tag.  “Huh.  Denver.  Well, you ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

This was how they informed us that our bus had been canceled.  She walked away without giving anyone any more information than this.  It was easy to see why Greyhound has so many consumer complaints.  While there hadn’t been any snow when we arrived in St. Louis, there was now a thin layer of fluffy white flakes on the ground.

We ate rubbery cafeteria bagels while listening to the hippies explain where they were going.  “Oh, yeah, man… the Dead is playing in California, man… you really should go sometime.  It’s not about the music, you know… it’s about the love, man, the LOVE.  Everyone’s dancing & you can just feel the spirit of the LOVE all around you… it’s magical, man… magical.”

On the TVs hanging above us, a horrible movie with Billy Bob Thornton was playing.  A skinny man that looked like Iggy Pop in a baseball cap was walking from one end of the station to the other, talking on his cell phone & rallying passengers together in an attempt to… well, I don’t know what.  I couldn’t figure it out.

“He’s just the Layover Guy,” Olivier said.  “There’s always that guy during the layover that has to make friends with everyone.  In Columbus, it was Squashy.  Now we’ve got Iggy.”

“Better him than the hippies,” I said.  “Wonder what the penalty is in St. Louis if I were to go over there & bludgeon one of them, let them feel my LOVE.”

Olivier shrugged.  “Dunno.  They probably make you stay in the fucking Greyhound station watching bad movies.”

This is what you get for beating hippies, asshole.

Instead of leaving for Denver at 7:20am, we left for Tulsa, OK at 11:30am.  The reason that we were given for this detour was… Kansas.  At all costs, we had to avoid Kansas.  No one explained why, so I’m guessing that it was pretty bad.  I would advise you, too, to STAY THE FUCK OUT OF KANSAS.

There were only about 20 people left in the bus station, all of us stranded, trying to get to Denver.  Happily, we all piled into the bus bound for Tulsa.  It was out of the way, but everyone was glad just to be out of the bus station.

The woman driving the bus didn’t fuck around.  She made it clear that she wasn’t supposed to be working that day & that she was in a hurry to make the 8-hour drive to Tulsa.  No one disagreed.  No one complained.

We sat in the bus, happy to be going anywhere while we noshed on stale chocolate donuts.  Olivier & I spent a lot of time watching our fellow passengers.  Iggy Pop the Layover Guy was busy knitting, which explained why he appeared to be wearing a poncho that looked like a grandma afghan.  The hippies were busy trying to convert Rasta Man to the Temple of the Grateful Dead.  A guy who looked like Eric Estrada sat quietly, looking as though he was about to get all stabby on the next person that spoke to him.  An enormous black man from Tennessee was shouting at someone on the phone in what sounded to be complete gibberish.  His chubby daughter traveled from seat to seat, staring at snacking passengers until they became uncomfortable enough to shoo her away.  A 20-something guy with a laptop & Hari Krishna hair was telling a woman what a seasoned Greyhound traveler he was now that he’d gone across the country 6 times & had only had his shit stolen once.

“You know,” I said.  “I feel a little like I’m in a rolling, live-action version of that ‘People of Wal-Mart‘ site.”

“Yeah, it is kind of like that,” Olivier said, laughing.  “Bus travel is colorful.  At least the weather is clear here, so we’ll be in Denver tomorrow morning.”

We arrived in Tulsa at 8pm.  Our driver informed us that we would have 20 minutes to take a break & change drivers.  Leaving the bus running outside, she quickly disappeared.

30 minutes later, a little man in a Greyhound uniform & a Santa Claus hat informed us that there never was another driver, that there was no one available to drive us out of Tulsa.  The gist is, St. Louis had 20 people to get rid of, so they took us to Tulsa & ditched us there.

Olivier & I stood at the door of the bus station next to Erik Estrada, Iggy Pop & the hippies as we all pressed our faces to the glass & stared longingly at our empty bus, engine still running, ready to go nowhere.