It was the perfect John Hughes scene. A middle aged guy, all balled up in consternation, completely disconnected from the common reality (and an advertising guy to boot) tries getting a bus full of strangers to sing along to an obscure Sammy Cahn (all due respect to Jule Styne) song to no avail. John Candy saves the day with a classic, wildly popular prime time cartoon theme song. An aerial shot shows the bus roll happily into St. Louis.
In real life, however, buses in the United States are nothing like that. They're smelly, often leaky, vessels of despair held together with (what should be duct) tape and the faith of their mostly Latino and Urban passengers. What a word to describe people, "Urban." White people crack me up, we'll get to them later. Some of them now, the ones who do ride the bus. Mostly carrying garbage bags as luggage and sporting some seriously poorly thought out neck tattoos.
Bus stations are even worse. They're inhabited by folks who are about to take a bus, pick someone up from a bus (a new-hire from Des Moines whose own neck tattoos got her a new gig as a fleshy amusement ride for business men visiting Birmingham), people who are just flat out napping and a ton of folks who couldn't scrape together $12 to get to the next town. And the employees? Wow, you thought your waitress the other night couldn't give two shits? You had bad customer service at the post office, did you? Drop by the bus station some late evening and have a chat with one of these wonderful people.
Why do I know so much about buses and bus stations?
Because at 46, I thought it was a good idea to sell everything and just start traveling. Maybe write about what I saw across our 50 (52?) states and anywhere else I ended up. Without a fancy rig, without a Producer, without a sponsor, just me and my terrible iPhone camera skills. And a pen. And a notebook. And this 1994 HP Pavilion G Series "laptop" with a 36" screen, weighing in around 47lbs.
How good of an idea was it? I'm currently 4,500 miles from Chicago, in my 24th city of the trip, I've been in a couple fights, several yelling matches (mostly in Italy), seen a couple pretty rowdy brawls, lots of boats, a hell of a lot of buses, even more trains, an admirable amount of prostitutes and sailors (not like that, you sick bastard), some pretty amazing food items, even more glasses of wine, most of the wonders of the world, a couple decent museums, TONS of jorts, several future terrorists, too many homeless people, tens of thousands of sketchy gypsies and grifters (no lie), an insane hail storm, a couple news crews, a man who lives in an ambulance and a lot of really incredible, decent, kind and loving people. So read on and you tell me...
In real life, however, buses in the United States are nothing like that. They're smelly, often leaky, vessels of despair held together with (what should be duct) tape and the faith of their mostly Latino and Urban passengers. What a word to describe people, "Urban." White people crack me up, we'll get to them later. Some of them now, the ones who do ride the bus. Mostly carrying garbage bags as luggage and sporting some seriously poorly thought out neck tattoos.
Bus stations are even worse. They're inhabited by folks who are about to take a bus, pick someone up from a bus (a new-hire from Des Moines whose own neck tattoos got her a new gig as a fleshy amusement ride for business men visiting Birmingham), people who are just flat out napping and a ton of folks who couldn't scrape together $12 to get to the next town. And the employees? Wow, you thought your waitress the other night couldn't give two shits? You had bad customer service at the post office, did you? Drop by the bus station some late evening and have a chat with one of these wonderful people.
Why do I know so much about buses and bus stations?
Because at 46, I thought it was a good idea to sell everything and just start traveling. Maybe write about what I saw across our 50 (52?) states and anywhere else I ended up. Without a fancy rig, without a Producer, without a sponsor, just me and my terrible iPhone camera skills. And a pen. And a notebook. And this 1994 HP Pavilion G Series "laptop" with a 36" screen, weighing in around 47lbs.
How good of an idea was it? I'm currently 4,500 miles from Chicago, in my 24th city of the trip, I've been in a couple fights, several yelling matches (mostly in Italy), seen a couple pretty rowdy brawls, lots of boats, a hell of a lot of buses, even more trains, an admirable amount of prostitutes and sailors (not like that, you sick bastard), some pretty amazing food items, even more glasses of wine, most of the wonders of the world, a couple decent museums, TONS of jorts, several future terrorists, too many homeless people, tens of thousands of sketchy gypsies and grifters (no lie), an insane hail storm, a couple news crews, a man who lives in an ambulance and a lot of really incredible, decent, kind and loving people. So read on and you tell me...
It kind of started here... with the Foundry House Five.
(and this asshole's BMW)
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