A Note From The Road: Portland to San Francisco

I loved the ride from Seattle to Portland. It was short, it was smooth, the people were few and spaced out and we left Seattle and arrived in Portland on schedule. There was no muss and very minimal amounts of fuss. I thought, "How good is this?! Buying a Greyhound Discovery Pass was the greatest idea I've ever had." First impressions last. They're also, more often than not, completely and totally wrong and you don't have to be a character in a Bollywood film to realise this. I figured out just how incorrect my first impression of Greyhound the minute I witnessed the queue going to San Francisco on the 6:15 coach. They were packing the bus to the rafters. I realised that this ride was going to be considerably more confined than my previous journey but I retained a sense of cautious optimism after all, what's the worst that could happen...right?

Why on earth are people stupid enough to be optimists? Being optimistic and telling onesself Hey things aren't that bad/They could be worse/Let's look on the bright side is basically dangling the proverbial carrot in front of the fates and begging them to show you just how far they can stick it in. Don't be optimistic, kids. A semester of first year Philosophy will teach to listen to the greats: Hobbes, Voltaire and well, me. We'll tell you that if expect the worst, then you'll leave enough room to be pleasantly surprised. The only people who wax lyrical about the joys of optimism are tools like Rousseau...an idiot, communist and I hear he tortures puppies on the weekends he doesn't spend jacking off to his own doctrine regarding the state of nature. If the symptoms of optimism persist, fine...be that way, but at least try and suppress these instincts if you ever plan on travelling with Greyhound.

So, I realise five seconds after I sat down that I've made a huge mistake. I'm leaving the greatest city in these United States to get on a night flight bus that's filling up with your regular circus sideshow acts and the ringmaster is heading straight towards me. I could smell this guy before I saw him. It's a combination of stale beer, crusty sweat stains and cigarettes with a hint of the military. I was still in my stage of cautious optimism as there were a few seats left and I thought that maybe I'll be that lucky one who doesn't have to fight for elbow room for sixteen hours. However. As soon as I caught that scent, I knew that fate had once again taken up the orange rod and was aiming squarely for buttocks. I heard the slurred words "Anyone sitting here? You look like you'll be good for conversation" and had no choice but to take one last look around before uttering "Uh...er...ohbuggerit. No. I won't be chatting though, because this is a night bus and I intend on sleeping."

"We'll see about that." say the Fates.

Joining myself and the lead tenor in the 'Down With Personal Hygeine' acapella chorus on the bus to Sacramento were three girls around my age taking up the three seats behind me and a mother and daughter directly across the way. One of the girls looked as though she required the extra two seats for herself alone and well, she was fortunate enough to be able to take up two. Bitch. One would spend the next 9 hours talking aimless, vowel-elongating trash on her cell phone (re: 'Yeeeeeahhh....liiiike...I knooooow etc etc), causing me to fantasise about hijacking the bus and taking it on a trip to Facestab city. The other one would spend most of her time sleeping and if you think that would give her an exemption from a taste of my critical bile then you're wrong, because she snores and therefore I hate her. Not as much as I do the King of the Four Whiffs next to me, because he proceeds to pull from his bag of ancient relics one pre-(Gulf) war cassette deck and over the ear headphones which will allow him...and everyone else within a four seat radius...a chance to listen to his collection of 80's metal and hardcore hip-hop at full volume. It is so loud through his headphones that I can hear lyrics.
Thankfully, this is why phones now double as mp3 players. I look at mine only to discover that I'd forgotten to charge the battery last night. I have 18% of my battery power left and even when I become desperate and play Golden Skans for the 14th time that day, I can still hear a half-arsed riff spewing forth from the wax-laden inner ears of the Arizonian Asshole next to me.

This is why I hate the human race. I sit back and think of drag queens.

Too many godforsaken hours later, I can no longer feel my toes, it's the next day, we're somewhere just outside of Medford. I am not sleeping. I have not slept. Sgt. Blotto, despite my protestations, is still playing his music. That bitch behind me is still on her phone and the other two are bonding with my cellmate because they appreciate his taste in tuneage. I'm going to allow you to Madlib the emotion I was feeling at that moment, which you can feel free to insert [here]. Our one meal stop is at Taco Bell so I decide to pass and maybe get a glorious half hour's worth of snoozy goodness. Approximately 13 and a half winks later, we're back on the road again, the bus driver/my hero is warning The Cell Phone Trio to shut up before they're evicted from the Big Greyhound House and I'm using my last 5% of battery to play Golden Skans. Yes, again. I'm just at the point of reaching peace when the old lady in the front row heads to the back of the bus and promptly begins retching. This is why I don't eat at Taco Bell. Her contralto solo lasts for three rounds of five awkward minutes and suddenly, the Military Breath Monster and his collection of 'It Came From Planet Journey' cassettes doesn't seem so bad. It's right about now that my batteries decide to breathe their last. I sit back and think of sweet transvestites.

I wake up just in time for the sunrise, somewhere outside of Sacramento. We roll in at around six and finally the Fates decide to play it my way and I see that Captain Puce Heart and the Skankettes are queueing for the San Diego bus. I even manage to score a seat all to myself on the way to San Francisco and there may have been a few more half hours (although still not enough) of poorly-positioned napping because the Californian desert scene outside can only hold my interest for a short while. We roll across the Bay Bridge on time and all I can do is sit back and think about the Pearl I left behind.