Ride the Hound 2: Dog-Eat-Dog World

A few weeks ago I wrote about a Greyhound experience that was not so pleasant, fully knowing I might have to repeat the experience again. You see, I'm in a period in my life where budget travel is the name of the game. It's not a choice - it's an imperative. I'd happily fly first class everywhere I need to go but no one is paying me to do so and neither am I making the kind of money to afford that lifestyle as a full time travel writer and photographer (very few do I'm starting to see).

So, Greyhound has become my best friend and true to form I found myself riding the hound yet again last week from Charlotte, North Carolina to Washington DC and back. If there's a cheaper form of public transportation in the United States of America [than Greyhound], I don't know of it. Which must be why it attracts the citizens it does. 

This trip started out like any other. Schlepping my luggage onto a bus that looked nicer than it would turn out to be I found a window seat and put my head down, earphones in, book in my lap. Immediately two things happened: 1) through the haze of my sinus infection I began to smell what can only be described as that of a garbage dump mating with a porta potty, 2) I heard the bus driver begin his welcome speech in a way that made me feel less than welcomed and more than a little alarmed. He simply seemed beyond irritated to be driving a bus and beyond irritated with his passengers who had only just a few minutes ago been put in his charge. I felt like a prisoner on a runaway train in a bad B-movie. Little did I know, it would only get worse.

Though I was in fact on one of the newer Greyhound buses advertised to have outlets and free WiFi - there was no working WiFi. And though it is illegal, by Federal law, to smoke on a bus - there was a passenger smoking. This same passenger started a riot while the bus was moving down an interstate in the pouring rain, when he was told to extinguish his cigarette. This same passenger felt it was his right to smoke on the bus and incited other passengers to support him and his right. This same passenger was opposed by some passengers who felt, appropriately, a Federal law is a Federal law and should be upheld as it isn't safe to be subjected to clouds of nicotine when one is trapped on a moving box with little ventilation in pouring rain and hazardous driving conditions. The ensuing riot reached a head when it came to light that the chain-smoking passenger had a shotgun IN HIS CARRY-ON LUGGAGE. Our kind bus driver, refusing to stop on the side of the highway to kick our chain-smoking-shotgun-toting passenger off the bus simply double-timed it [yes, sped up ... in the pouring rain] to Winston Salem where he finally decided to get involved by calling the cops to arrest our  chain-smoking-shotgun-toting passenger.

Meanwhile, I kept my head down, my trigger finger on my iPhone and my earphones in - inwardly resolving to hitchhike before I'd ever again step a toe onto a Greyhound bus. Of course, that was if I ever made it off the bus from hell to begin with. I remembered this note in the bathroom of the station I boarded in and somehow saw it as an omen I should have taken to heart ... had I even known.

It was with relief unlike any I've ever felt before that I took this photograph in the Winston Salem bus depot right after seeing the  chain-smoking-shotgun-toting passenger spread eagle on the wet pavement, held down by cops, handcuffed and arrested.

It turns out it's a dog-eat-dog world ... but I don't like the taste of dog.