"Leave the Driving to Us": Conclusion

 I don’t love New York.  At least I don’t love New York City.  Sure I've heard all the stuff about New York City being one of the most exciting places in the world.  I've heard all about the great shows, the night life, the wonderful sports teams and supportive fans.  And the restaurants.  And fabulous hotels.  It’s the city that never sleeps. Blah, blah, blah.  Maybe if I could afford those shows, hotels, restaurants and sporting events I’d care more for the place.  The only pleasant memory I have of NYC is a day spent with a banjo player friend of mine.  I’m not sure if that says more about me or the city.  However this past Friday night the only memories I made were of the confusion and chaos of the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

When I first entered the terminal my immediate goal was to find a bathroom.  A ride up the escalator and several quick walks through shoulder to shoulder crowds brought me to a men’s room.  But it was closed for repairs.  So back up to the other end of the terminal I went, quicker now, only to find a long line formed and waiting for relief.  I glanced at the women’s room.  No line there.  I was tempted but I still wasn't that desperate.  Eventually my turn came to enter the smelly room where unidentifiable liquids covered the floors.  Paper towels were being thrown around everywhere because the trash cans were overflowing.  Men, try to stand at a urinal and take care of business while holding a small duffle bag that you’re afraid to put on the floor for fear of soaking up a couple gallons of bodily fluids.  It can be done, but it isn't pretty.

Next I needed to find out where the bus to Dover would be loading up.  So I went to the information counter.  It was closed.  Then I looked for a departure and arrival board that might have the information I needed.  I found the board but the information was so cryptic that it might as well have been written in Sanskrit.  No wonder no one else was looking at the thing.  So I decided to go to the Trailways/Greyhound ticket counter and ask a human being for some help.  After waiting in line for about fifteen minutes I finally got to the counter.  The young lady was very helpful.  She looked at her computer.  She shook her head.  She consulted a supervisor.  The supervisor shook her head.  They both looked at me with mournful pitying expressions on their faces.  My new friend, the ticket clerk, asked me if the ticket clerk way up in Malone had told me all of the conditions of the ticket I originally purchased.  I said “Well, she told me I’d go from Malone to Albany to New York City to Dover and that I’d change buses in Albany and right here in New York City.  I changed in Albany and now I’m going to change here.”  The kind young lady said “Yes, that is true but the change can’t take place until 8:15 tomorrow.”  I said “You mean I have to wait until 8:15 in the morning, twelve full hours, to get a bus to Dover which is four hours away by car?”  She said “No, you have to wait until 8:15 tomorrow evening, twenty four hours, to get that bus to Dover.”

Well, I had been an awfully cooperative bus passenger up until I heard that “twenty four hours” phrase.  The young lady went on to explain that my ticket was essentially a “space available” voucher that needed to be exchanged for a boarding pass.  There were no seats available on any bus going to Dover until Saturday evening.  I asked if there were any seats on any bus going to Wilmington, Delaware that might be stopping long enough for me to jump off.  It wouldn't be so bad and my wife could make the forty-five minute drive to pick me up at that bus station.  The young lady said “Sure, there’s a bus that has a seat available at 10:30 tomorrow morning that stops in Wilmington around three in the afternoon.  It takes a long time because it stops at twelve places in New Jersey.”  My patience was gone.  I started yelling and demanding that a supervisor come and talk to me.  I may have used some unpleasant language.  I may have threatened people.  A police officer stepped up behind me and asked me to lower my voice and to discontinue the abusive shouting.  I said “Oh yeah?”  He tapped the grip on his pistol and said “Yes, sir.”  Well, since he called me sir I agreed to calm down.  At this point I noticed another customer buying a ticket for Philadelphia.  So I asked the clerk, who seemed much more at ease with the cop on her side, if I could exchange my little ticket for one to Philadelphia.  My wife could surely make the drive there since it was only an hour and a half from Dover.  The clerk said “I’m sorry sir, your ticket is not exchangeable.  You’ll have to write to the issuing office to get a refund on the part you didn’t use. But a ticket to Philly is only twenty two dollars and seventy cents.”  I said “Are you sure I can get on the Philly bus?”  She assured me that I could, so I bought the ticket.

With my Philadelphia ticket in hand and clear directions to the gate I hustled back down to the bottom level of the terminal.  I found the line but when I got to the end of line I was too far away to see the gate.  Boarding began.  People streamed through the doors and happily got on the bus.  The doors closed.  A jolly Greyhound employee announced that the bus was full but they had a cleaning crew coming along to get another bus ready and we all would be boarded and headed to Philadelphia soon.  So we waited.  I called my wife.  Actually I tried to call my wife but the cell phone wouldn't stay connected since I was so far underground.  I did manage to give her the basic information that I was waiting for the bus to leave and I would call her when we emerged from hell.

After about an hour standing in line we finally were allowed to board the bus.  By the time I got on the thing the only seat available was on the aisle, directly ahead of the bathroom.  Not good, I thought. The bus driver came on the bus and delivered his little safety spiel along with a pep talk.  He also said, and this is a quote, “If you’re mad, don’t be mad at me.  I’m just the driver.  You need to be mad at the big grey dog.”  Getting out of the Port Authority Terminal was truly one of the high points of my life.  It was raining, thunder and lightning were all around but I felt like it was just a perfect night.  I called my wife.  She wasn't happy.  I heard stuff like “I told you we should have taken two cars to Malone.  I told you Memorial Day was a bad time to travel on public transportation.”  She may have said more but I have a policy of not listening after two “I told you so” statements.  But we made our arrangements.  She was a little leery about driving to the center of Philadelphia late on a Friday night but she agreed to do it for me.  She’s a good woman even if she does like to remind me how she’s always right and I’m not.

Sitting in front of the bathroom was an ordeal.  Traveling on the bus were some folks who were, against all the rules, drinking alcoholic beverages.  And they needed to make frequent bathroom visits.  They also had some affliction that caused them to light a cigarette every time they went in to urinate.  For nearly two hours I was regularly treated to the jostling of drunken passengers heading to the bathroom followed by the smells of their output and their inhaling.  Not a pleasant way to spend my time.

But through the dark rainy night we traveled on to Philadelphia.  We had a brief stop in Mount Laurel, New Jersey where some of the drunker passengers got off.  As soon as we crossed out of New Jersey the rain stopped which seemed to be a good omen as well.  When we pulled into the Philadelphia bus terminal my wife called me on the cell phone and said she had seen the bus.  She told me she hadn't been able to find a close parking spot but was about a block away down near the 7/11 store.  I quickly found my way outside and headed down the street.  Sure enough there was my dear wife standing next to our car waving at me.  Oddly enough there were some other women along the sidewalk, some even in the street, waving at men walking or riding by in cars.  As I got closer I saw that most of those women were dressed in skimpy, form revealing outfits and six inch spiked high heels.  I began to move a little quicker because I saw that those ladies were eyeing my wife with evil intentions.

We managed to get out of Philadelphia without further incident.  But when we stopped for a bite to eat at an all-night diner in Wilmington we were accosted by a hopped up crack-head who needed some lunch money.  I beat him senseless.  No, of I course I didn't do that.  I just ignored him because after my Greyhound adventure nothing much could bother me.  But in the future, you can be sure, I’ll leave the driving to myself.

"Leave the Driving to Us" Part 2

“Leave the Driving to Us” Part 2

The Albany bus terminal was a welcome break in the journey.  That is if one considers a break to be standing in line for a half hour while a bus gets cleaned and prepped for the journey to New York City.  I couldn't find any person trustworthy enough (there were still seven or eight of those ex-cons milling around) to watch my duffle bag and I didn't want to lose my place in line so bladder relief had to wait.

Finally we were allowed on the bus and in short order were heading south out of Albany.  I was sitting directly behind the driver again, which is my preferred spot.  My hope is that someday they’ll give me a turn behind the wheel.  So far though, they haven’t.  On this part of the trip we had a full bus and a lovely young lady was seated next to me.  She had a really fine and fragrant sub sandwich that she consumed in a very lady-like way.  Just as the driver wouldn't give me a chance to drive, my seatmate wouldn't share her sandwich.  But the young woman and I did exchange a few words.  I believe she said “May I sit here?”  Of course I replied in the affirmative.  Then one time she sneezed and I said “Bless you.”  She said “Thank you.”  When I asked for a piece of her sandwich (since we were getting along so well) she said “No” in a very kind way.  That was it.  She followed her training about speaking to strangers in a rigid way.

Here are a couple things I learned about modern buses; they are quite powerful and can do eighty miles per hour without any strain, they have old fashioned bathrooms (though with chemical toilets) that are quite similar to a rolling outhouse, they have cruise control.  I also learned that I am incapable of voiding my bladder while rolling along at eighty miles per hour.  It must be psychological.  I don’t have that problem on airplanes.  Maybe I’m scarred by the hundreds of times my father told me I’d have to “hold it” until we got another eighty miles down the road.  Or maybe the resemblance of bus bathrooms to outhouses put me off my game.

The driver of this bus was a pleasant young Hispanic fellow who knew how to navigate traffic.  I thought that if he was an airline pilot he’d have no patience for a holding pattern and would somehow be first in line to land or take off every time.  He managed, time and again, to squeeze that forty-five foot vehicle into a space that only looked long enough for a four door Prius and never, ever chipped the paint from a bumper.  Of course car drivers do tend to feel intimidated when one of these coaches starts to insinuate itself into a line of traffic.

As we neared the New York - New Jersey border I noticed that the ex-cons were using the bathroom quite a lot.  It soon became apparent that they were in there sneaking smokes.  Our driver got on his little announcing microphone and said that the law strictly prohibited smoking on the bus and that it would be considered a parole violation which would necessitate a brief stop at Riker’s Island jail if he caught anyone else breaking the law.  Everyone laughed but the smokers quit their sneaky ways.

The bus crossed into New Jersey and pulled into a bus stop in the town of Ridgefield.  Once again all the smokers jumped off the bus and lit up.  Several passengers, including my seat-mate, got off at this stop, apparently finding Jersey more welcoming than the prospect of New York City’s Port Authority.  A couple of the former jailbirds stayed in Ridgefield as well.  Soon we were back on the road again and heading into the morass of traffic that constitutes an everyday commute into the Big Apple.  I pity the commuters.

Our driver was a regular Mario Andretti as he navigated the expressways and tunnels that brought us ever closer to our finish line.  When one path closed up the driver found an alternate that I never would have spotted.  And if there was no open road he somehow forged a whole new lane.  Other vehicles behind us began following the guy like he was Moses crossing the Red Sea.  Even if they weren't going to the Port Authority they were attracted by the idea of motion on an island of stagnation. 

In no time at all we were dumped into the special Hell that is the Port Authority Bus Terminal.  Two hundred twenty three departure gates, stores, restaurants and thousands of certifiably insane people populate this massive building.  On this Memorial Day weekend the place was jammed with people trying to travel to destinations all over the eastern seaboard.  And these crowds were complemented by thousands more who were trying to get away from that same area.  It was chaos and my traveling day was about to get more complicated.

Part 3, The Final Chapter, is coming soon.

"Leave the Driving to Us" Part 1

Back in the sixties the Greyhound Bus Company had the snappy slogan “Leave the driving to us!” which supposedly encouraged millions of folks to climb happily aboard an aging fleet of diesel fume spewing, noisy clunkers.  Today’s buses, at least the ones I rode yesterday, are not nearly as noisy or pollution producing as those of the good old days.  But bus travel today is not for sissies.

We decided on using the bus after calculating the costs of driving two cars up to northern New York. This decision arrived when we found out that my dear wife needed to be back to work before our “elder care” mission was accomplished.  We looked at flying.  We looked at Amtrak.  The bus promised a long day’s travel but it was also comparatively cheap, especially with a substantial senior discount.  And since my wife is a girl, a natural born sissy, (I'm in trouble now) I figured it would be better if I took the bus and let her drive the car home.  And there was a little poetic incentive for me to travel this way as it was thirty-four years ago on a Memorial Day weekend when I made the journey from our home in western New York to Dover, DE as we prepared to uproot the family and start a new chapter of our lives.

So I went online to buy bus tickets.  I was able to search the schedules and fares but when I tried to complete a purchase the computer told me I needed to buy the tickets at the departure location. There was no explanation.  The company website just said “Transaction cannot be completed online.  Please see clerk at departure location.”  That should have raised a red flag but I’m a trusting soul so I went to the “Bus Station” to complete my transaction. 

The bus station in Malone, NY is a picnic table in front of an old single story motel up on the west side of town.  The ticket clerk is also the motel check-in, check-out clerk inside the little office.  She has a computer.  She looked up all the information I gave her from my search and said “Okey-dokey, give me the cash and I’ll give you your tickets.”  And so I did.  She also told me that on the day I was to board the bus that I should be there at least twenty minutes early because the bus schedule wasn't one-hundred percent accurate and the bus could be a little early or a little late.  Also, she said the bus was only at the stop for five or six minutes and it was important to be in the right spot or the driver might not notice and he would just pull on through and go on his way.  More red flags should have been flying.

The day arrived for departure and my brother brought me to the appropriate picnic table.  I didn't have to worry about the driver passing by because there were many other passengers waiting to board.  Coming out of the ticket office were eight husband and wife teams of Amish folks along with three or four of their offspring.  Following along behind that crowd were ten men who had just been released from the local prisons.  (Prisons are the largest industry and employer in Franklin County, NY)  It’s not hard to know the ex-cons as they all wear a standard prison-issue release uniform – bright white cheap low cut tennis shoes, cheap loose fitting khaki slacks, and a stiff white long-sleeved shirt hanging loosely over a fresh white t-shirt.  All of that and several “prison tats” on their necks and arms identified their general fashion motif as “hoodlum chic”.

So we all climbed aboard as the driver, a friendly and efficient fellow, handled bag storage and paperwork duties in a matter of minutes.  And we were off.  This particular bus, the only south bound carrier from Malone, travels down through the Adirondack Mountains following winding scenic byways.  And this bus makes a lot of stops.  We stopped in Paul Smith’s, Saranac Lake, and Lake Placid.  Then we stopped at a little crossroads where we had a lunch break at the Mt. Severance Country Store and Deli, very nice and very reasonable.  We proceeded on to Schroon Lake, Warrensburg, and Lake George.  At Lake George the bus disgorged all of our Amish friends.  Apparently they were there for a pray-and-play convention retreat weekend.  At least that’s the only reason I could come up with for Amish folks in a resort town like Lake George.

At every stop, no matter how brief, all of the ex-cons hustled off the bus and lit cigarettes.  They sucked that noxious smoke into their lungs just as deeply and as quickly as they could.  Prison must be a great place to really reinforce those wonderful social habits.  But cigarettes are about eight bucks a pack up in the North Country.  How did these jailbirds make enough money to feed a two pack a day habit?  But I digress.

In Warrensburg we picked up several earnest looking young women in woodsy outfits who had just spent ten days hiking in the deep woods.  Their Deep Woods Off had let them down though.  They were all covered with some nasty looking mosquito and black fly bites that looked really itchy.  Our chariot then moved on to Saratoga Springs, Glens Falls, the Albany Airport and then, finally, the bus station in downtown Albany, NY.  If I were to make the drive from Malone to Albany it would take, on a bad day, three and a half hours.  This little bus trip took five and three quarter hours.  But it was the pleasant part of the trip.  The trouble was still ahead.

Part 2 – coming soon.