Transportation

Don’t leave the driving to the bus

There have been four times in my life when I took a Greyhound bus on a trip longer than eight hours. The first time was not my choice. I was playing softball in college and our team won the New York State champion for 2-year schools. As a result we earned a berth at the College World Series tournament held in Omaha, Nebraska. The school, SUNY Farmingdale, did not want to spend the money to fly the women’s softball team from New York to Nebraska. The best they offered was a 30-hour bus ride that would take us almost 1,300 miles halfway across the country. Being young and stupid, we agreed to these terms and endured a pretty disgusting trip both to Nebraska and then back to New York. And what’s worse, our team, although the best New York 2 year colleges had to offer, was no match for the teams from Arizona, Florida, and California. We lost all the games we played.

That trip was in 1975. It took me more than 30 years to consider taking a bus trip again. But for some reason I did two more times - once from Denver to Albuquerque, and then a second trip from New York City to Montreal. Both of those trips were shorter, around 9 hours each way. And both were uneventful.

It’s now almost 50 years after that first bus trip, and once again I decided to give Greyhound my business. Why? Well, I’ll be moving to Albuquerque soon and I needed to begin the process of transporting my things south. First to go was my van. I rented a storage space in town and drove it the 450 miles south along I-25. There were no problems yesterday as my friend Sharon and I took turns driving. We got to town, found the storage place and parked the van in its new temporary home. (One note, we did forgot two open packages of Little Debbie donuts on the shelf area above the passenger seat. Hopefully all that happens is that they are stale when I go back in a few weeks.)

Now I should have realized this trip would be problematic when I heard the news that one of my friends who lives in Albuquerque tested positive for COVID. That was strike one. Then on Sunday morning we got to the bus station, began the journey, got about 100 miles north of Albuquerque, and the bus had a mechanical problem. The hose leading from the radiator to the engine blew off, spewing antifreeze all over the road. The driver managed to get off at an exit (amazing since exits are few and far between in northern New Mexico). When I started writing this we’d been sitting on the side of the exit ramp for over 3 hours waiting for the replacement bus and driver. At that point all the driver could tell us was that Greyhound knew about the problem and was working on it. We would continue waiting for the new bus for an additional 2-1/2 hours.

Sitting on a rock enjoying the New Mexico scenery

Acknowledging the bus is dead at 11:49am, then the problem is resolved at 5:18pm

You may be asking yourself, “why would you torture yourself and take the bus?” Well, I’ve been planning to move to Albuquerque for a while. But the actual move date was unknown. It was all based on when my friend Sharon’s house sold. Once she got and accepted an offer, the wheels started turning. I have my furniture and stuff, my car, and my van that I need to move. I decided to space things out, moving the van this past weekend, the car in two weeks from now, and the stuff a few days before we are out of the house. Making plane reservations on short notice (less than three weeks) really bumps up the prices. It would have cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 per ticket for the 1-1/2 hour flight, even on a budget airline like Southwest. So the only other choice was to take the bus. (Amtrak does go from Albuquerque to Denver, but it is via somewhere in Illinois and the trip takes a total of 44 hours. That’s a very bad option, wouldn’t you say?). The Greyhound price for a one-way ticket was $49 per person. Sharon agreed to the bus “adventure”, and the reservation was made.

Do I regret not changing the date to move the van and looking for a better fare on a flight? Maybe, but considering time is getting tight there really wasn’t another date we could do this trip. Another factor is weather. The further we go into November, the greater chance of snow. There is only one high point to go over on the trip (Raton Pass, 7,835 feet above sea level - not the highest, but still a winding, treacherous road when there is a snowstorm).

Do I regret not paying the $600 in plane tickets? No, and it’s a good thing because we wound having to stay in a hotel room and I had the money I saved by taking the bus available for that. Will I ever consider taking a Greyhound bus trip again? No, my bus riding days are over. Two terrible trips, two ok trips. I can’t say any of the trips were great, and I never really want to go through what happened this past weekend again. When I bring my car down here in two weeks I will be flying back - already booked the ticked on United Airlines. Here’s hoping the plane doesn’t have any mechanical issues.

PostScript #1

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At 5:20 pm the new bus arrived and we were once again moving. I have crafted a few emails to complain to Greyhound and their response was basically, “tough titties”. At this point we had about 350 miles to go, and would likely arrive in Denver sometime around midnight. So it goes.

PostScript #2

The bus made a few short stops once we got on the road - Love‘s truck stop for some food and a clean bathroom, then a few towns to pickup/dropoff passengers. We pulled into Denver’s Union Station bus terminal at 11:29 pm. That gave us enough time to catch the light rail train and get us home by 12:30am. It was a very long day and I was very glad it was over.

Antifreeze all over the ground, corroded battery terminals, and broken storage compartments on the bus. It was a real beauty.