So, we woke up at 3 am for our 6 am flight. We needed to drive an hour and a quarter to the airport and then drop off the rental car and then get through security. We accomplished all of these things and were feeling good about the trip, ready for it to be over. When we got the the boarding gate, we found that the flight was oversold and we would not be able to get on that flight. No big deal right? There had to have been another flight to Salt Lake leaving soon. Wrong. The next flight was at 6 pm. And it was oversold as well. Not only that, there was a major snowstorm in SLC which was messing up the flight schedules. We did some investigation and found out that the next possible chance of us actually catching a flight (standby or not) was 6 pm on Friday. Mind you it’s now Wednesday at 6 am.
Frustrated and perplexed at our situation, we decided it might be good to rent a car and drive home. Upon consultation with the parents, we decided that their peace of mind was more important than getting home a few hours quicker than a Greyhound bus. We choose to catch the bus in Oklahoma City(OKC) and ride on it’s circuitous route through OK, TX, NM, CO, WY, and UT. All told, we planned on getting home at 11 pm on Thursday – a 26 hour experience. Because we had not gotten much sleep the night before, we got a ride with Sean’s brother and sister-in-law back to OKC and slept/relaxed until the departure time of 9 pm. Sean’s brother and sister-in-law then were kind enough to drop us off at the bus station in downtown OKC. They were lifesavers for us on the trip!
The immediate impulse upon arriving at the bus station was to hold on to all valuable possessions as tightly as possible. There was quite a variety of travelers, from two wide eyed BYU students to an Indian cowboy to those who have destroyed their lives through drugs and alcohol. We gingerly, yet quickly made our way to the ticket counter and picked up our tickets. We then immediately turned around and waited for the bus to load outside of the building.
When we boarded the bus, it seemed nice enough. It had WiFi, electrical outlets, and plenty of leg room. At this point, the passengers were fairly calm and the first leg of the trip was uneventful. We made it to Amarillo, TX at about 1:30 am and just had to wait until 3 am to catch the transfer bus. 3 am came and went and the transfer bus did not show up. People started getting worried and grumpy. I was just standing against a wall waiting, with my backpack at my feet. That is when the dirtiest, nastiest man sat next to my backpack. He had blood smeared across his cheek and every time he sneezed, the entire front of his shirt would be flecked with liquid. His leg slowly got closer and closer to my backpack, eventually touching it slightly. I picked up my backpack at that point and basically held it for the rest of the trip. I’m all for compassion, but I don’t need the sickness this guy had.
Also during this wait time, a man who had been sleeping in the corner woke up and started freaking out about how he is bipolar and schizophrenic. The Greyhound worker had to stand next to him until he left the station because he was “a threat to the safety of the other passengers”. The bus eventually came at 4 am which made everyone stressed out because we had another transfer in Denver which we knew we were going to miss since the bus was so late.
When we got on the bus we noticed that it was nothing like the nice new bus we had done the first leg of the trip on. It was old, dirty, and cramped but we were just happy not to be in that nasty Amarillo station anymore. By now, I was exhausted and it was still dark outside. I slept intermittently until 7 am when we stopped at a McDonald’s for breakfast. The redeeming quality of the old bus was that the seat cushions were so broken in that I was able to get comfortable enough to sleep – something all the other buses lacked.
We eventually made it to Denver around 1 pm, an hour after the transfer bus was supposed to leave. Amazingly, they had held it back just for us. (I think 90% of the passengers were on my bus – that’s why they held it back.) Denver was just getting the snowstorm that had messed up our flight plans, so the drivers immediately put on snow chains (which we lost about an hour and a half later). We started out from Denver on I-70, a major highway but before I knew it we were winding our way down mountain roads covered in snow and ice heading towards Steamboat Springs, CO. That was the most tedious portion of the trip because it was near white-out conditions on a narrow road whose markings couldn’t bee seen. Yeah – not fun.
We slowly crawled our way to Kremmling, CO where we stopped at Subway for dinner. There was one poor girl working that night, and 40 ravenous, grumpy bus passengers. She quickly called in backup and, although we were there for an hour or so, we all got served. While there one of our fellow passengers fainted while in line to buy food. Thus, an ambulance was called and the man had to be treated while the rest of the bus waited. All I can say is that it was unwanted excitement. I know that sounds callous, but if you’re going to judge me, ride a Greyhound bus across 4 states first. (Plus, he was just fine after about 25 minutes.)
The going was slow from then on. There was just too much snow to drive fast safely. The drivers did a good job of keeping us safe, if not entertained. We provided our own entertainment: watching Terminator Salvation on Sean’s iPad. We weren’t supposed to play music/movies without headphones, so we shared a pair. About 3 minutes into the movie I sense a presence near my left ear (between Sean and me). At about the same moment, the man behind us says, “Hey guys what’cha watching?” We told him. “Well, turn it up then!”, was his response. We explained that we couldn’t and he understood but decided that he wanted to watch it anyway, so for the next hour and a half we had an old guy peering over our seats watching a soundless movie. Weird.
About 2 am we rolled into Roosevelt, UT and the bus driver unabashedly announces that both he and the co-driver had run out of hours for the day. That meant that we were stuck for who-knows-how-long in the parking lot of a convenience store. We found out how long who-knows-how-long is. It is almost exactly 6 hours. That’s right, we sat on the bus for an additional 6 hours while it did not move. That might have been the worst part of the trip because we were so close yet so far.
Eventually a backup bus driver arrived and drove us the rest of the way to SLC. If you do, after reading this story, decide to take the Greyhound bus anywhere I would recommend starting at SLC and ending in SLC because the SLC bus station is BY FAR the nicest bus station we stopped at. I made it to my apartment approximately 39 hours after boarding the bus in OKC. Ugh.
Bribunk 