Bus Travel Not What it Used to Be

[Sukie1941]

A couple of summers ago I decided to take a G---hound bus from Southern Oregon to the San Francisco area. I decided to take the bus to make it easier for my aunt to pick me up closer to where she lives rather than drive to the airport. (I don't drive in California! Too terrifying!)

It had been a number of years since I had traveled on a bus (other than a few trips on local busses) and I was really in for a shock.

Shocked at how filthy the bus line has become. You dare not use the on-board restrooms at all, and the So. Oregon depot was closed when I left here about 2 am. It was scary to be the only one standing outside at the time of night.

It was hard to find a seat (and I got NO help from the driver) because alot of people were sleeping across two seats.

I read on another forum recently about a guy from Australia who is a big country music fan who wanted to experience a bus trip from Texas to Nashville. He hears alot of country music talking about those lonely bus trips around the south. He sat in the back of the bus until he realized that there was a couple "starting a family" behind him. Then he moved forward.

While I was sharing this story with a neighbor recently, she told me that she and her six-year-old son took a bus from So. Oregon also to San Francisco. After the bus was on the freeway awhile, there were two very naked people in the back of the bus, not far from where she and her son sat. Those people had boarded the bus in another city. She had trouble finding other seats.

Just recently a young woman was on a Greyhound passing down Interstate 5 here on the West Coast. She was sleeping when she awoke and realized there was a man sitting next to her who had his hand in the wrong place. She fought with him and had the driver call 911 so there were police waiting for the bus at its next stop. The man escaped but police located him and he was arrested.

I won't be riding public long-haul busses any time soon, but I wonder just how safe people are, particularly women and kids. I remember as a child my parents putting me on the bus to Sacramento every summer to spend a few weeks with my cousins. No way today!

Ever get the feeling that airplanes are getting really tacky, too?

And I worry that maybe there aren't any decent people "out there" these days.

[mike_c]

1. I hear you, but I had some pretty sketchy bus trips twenty years ago...

...that put me off bus travel. Especially when large inner city bus terminals were involved.

[AndyTiedye]

2. Amtrak is MUCH Better

You could take the Coast Starlight between Oregon and San Francisco.
It is a beautiful train ride.

[Sukie1941]

4. I have thought about the train....

but I always thought it traveled at night. I would probably take it from Klamath Falls, Oregon. I think it also stops at Dunsmuir to pick up passengers. I would take it anyway, even if it travels at night.

Will check it out.....

[AndyTiedye]

14. The Northbound Usually Goes By Mt. Shasta After Sunrise

[Withywindle]

3. Sounds pretty much like all the trips I took back in the late 80s.

Don't forget the one where the bus breaks down and sits there in the rain for four hours.

Or the seatmate with the Jack Daniels in one hand and the Bible in the other who still manages to find a way to grope you while he's slurringly preaching.

It's always been good country-song material.

[cgrindley]

5. When was this golden age of bus travel, like 1953?

The losercruiser sucks and has sucked for at least the last 30 years or so. Buses are horrible, soul-destroying, filthy forms of transportation filled to the gills with nutjobs. The last time I rode a bus was in 1995 from Glasgow to London and some deranged hooligan made me stay up all night chain smoking silk cuts and drinking luke warm cans of beer with him. It was one the more terrifying nights of my life. I'd sooner die than ride the welfarewagon ever again.

[salvorhardin]

6. Reminds me of a Sylvester McCoy line from Doctor Who

The Doctor to Ace: "I loathe bus stations, terrible places, full of lost luggage and lost souls."

I remember thinking to myself how appropriate that quote was 20 years ago when I heard it and it's gotten worse since then. I would also freely substitute "Walmart" and "bad produce" into the quote these days.

(for the inferior Star Wars fans out there, Sylvester McCoy was the 7th regeneration of the Doctor)

[rusty_parts2001]

7. Plane travel just a step above bus travel

Its certainly not what is used to be!

[devilgrrl]

8. I couldn't agree more. Remember Peoples Express?

I referred to it as a bus with wings.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

11. Peepholes Distress, I used to call it.

Flew it several times, hated it.

On one return trip. they announced families with kids could board first. 73 Hasidic jews, with one child, rushed aboard, and stuffed their hat boxes into every overhead compartment. the rest of us (100+) were mightily unhappy.

[pitohui]

13. yeah well on the plane people gotta keep their clothes on

and when the perv tries to stick his hand up your skirt, he'll get his happy ass met at the gate by the feds

way better than the bus and not much more expensive if you're a good shopper

[youngdem]

9. I don't know what bus travel used to be, but the two times I have used it over the past 30 years

It was worthy of a expose. People freebasing in the back, overflowing toilets, drug using bus drivers, a guy huffing glue, blow jobs, an encounter with a drug dog, filthy bus stations, seats that smelled like beer farts, windows smeared with the human oil of a million passengers, etc.

At one point, the bus driver slammed on the brakes, walked to the back of the bus, pulled a problematic passenger (smoking in the bathroom, disabling smoke alarm) out of his chair and off the bus in the middle of nowhere. We got underway again, and the girlfriend of the passenger went berserk and had to be put out. Good times.

Buses are how people who can't afford cars and don't have friends or family get around after they get out of jail, apparently.

Scary shit.

I will say that on my trip, once I approached the Northeast, there was a sudden influx of functional, non-meth addicted job holders (college kids and folks heading to relatives homes from Philly and Boston and NYC).

Putting a kid on a Greyhound is really irresponsible. The child could have quite an experience, to put it politely.

As expensive as airfare is, it is worth it.

[Neoma]

10. Everyone tries hard to be lazy.

No one cleans up after themselves or gives a helping hand. If you really want that bus clean, you might have to clean it yourself by the way things are going.

[pitohui]

12. it was like this in the 70s too

many people on buses have a mental or physical illness that prevents them from being able to drive, unfortunately some of the mental cases are unable to keep their private parts private

as far as i know it was ever thus, but certainly it was that way in the 1970s