tell me about your greyhound trips.

[Ariana Celeste]

What's it like to travel out of state by bus? What are the stations like? Please tell me about your experiences. :D

I may be going Greyhound to get from here (Indianapolis area) to Virginia Beach in a couple of weeks. I've never traveled by bus before! A little nervous, and don't know what to expect. :)

[unsavedtrash]

1. take an ipod and don't make eye contact!

I have made many greyhound trips and all have been special.
Try to sit toward the front. The last time I rode in the back we were pulled over by the cops and searched for drugs. The guy sitting beside me asked me to hold something for him. It was several baggies of coke. I threw them back and then he screamed and tried to run past the cops. Dumb ass.
Once the driver got very lost. We ended up in the middle of corn fields pulling over to ask farmers how to find the main road. There was nearly a mutiny. Several fights/domestic squabbles.
I got pulled off the bus once because the police were convinced that I was an illegal alien.
One guy wanted me to have sex with him and one girl wanted the same thing.
Layovers suck. Sometimes up to eight hours(take a pillow). If you smoke be prepared to share or hide them.
The stations are ok but go ahead and pack some snacks because a lot of them don't have restaurants or machines.
On the other hand, my sister loves riding the bus. She likes meeting interesting people and there are plenty there. She has made several friends from all over the country that she met on various bus trips.

[Ariana Celeste]

7. I think I might have a better time then when I'm on planes

Having something to look at other then clouds you know?

Thanks for the advice :D

I won't have a pillow but I will have my hoodie which has served as a makeshift pillow on many occasions ;)

[SeattleGirl]

2. Didn't like 'em much, myself.

If I had to travel by ground, I'd prefer Amtrak over Greyhound. Love the sound of the train, and I do find it somewhat romantic (in a generic sense).

I do hope you have a good trip! :hug:

[Ariana Celeste]

8. i looked into amtrack,

but it's out of my price range right now :(

thanks! i think i will, i really need a freaking vacation before i start probation :hug:

[SeattleGirl]

12. Well, however you can manage it, is good.

Amtrak is pricier than Greyhound, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Wishing you a fabulous vacation, AC! :hug:

[Ariana Celeste]

14. precisely :D

thank you so much! i do need a break from life :)

[Heidi]

3. It wasn't out of state, but it was Gainesville (Fla.) to Key West,

and it was one of the most culturally intriguing experiences of my life. Traveling by bus made me keenly aware of how I had insulated myself for years by traveling mainly by car, never really rubbing elbows with people different from myself. If I recall correctly, Gville to Key West was an 18-hour trip with stops. I was traveling alone, but I didn't feel threatened even once during the trip; I met a bunch of interesting people and spent most of the trip just listening to them tell their stories. :)

[Ariana Celeste]

9. i used to have a lot of fun on the city bus

talking with different people. i like to listen :D

[Omphaloskepsis]

4. Don't sit in the back. It stinks.

Don't tongue kiss the cute punk rock girl sitting next to you. Mono is a bitch.


It isn't bad. I went from LA to NYC on the bus when I was 12 by myself. Really, keep to yourself, don't leave the station. You will be fine. Bring snacks and a long book.

[Ariana Celeste]

10. i hear ya about the mono LOL

I don't plan to leave any stations, I'm no adventurer :D

[Richard Steele]

5. I love travelling by bus. The stations vary GREATLY.

Some are large, clean, and well appointed; some are real
run-down shitholes in the worst part of the town they serve.
Seriously, sometimes it's not safe to leave the station.
Ask your driver.

I recommend a small carryon bag with reading materials,
spare food, and an iPod (for ignoring annoying people
who want to talk your ear off). And of course, a camera.

Sit near the front when possible- the stories about those
back seats aren't always just STORIES. People get nasty
back there. Seriously unattractive people.

Now, serial yakkers and ugly exibitionists aside, one of the
best things can be meeting your fellow passengers. If you like
people, the bus is a pretty unique environment for meeting them.

Everyone is there for a different reason- sometimes interesting ones.

[Ariana Celeste]

11. the stations are what worry me most

as far as, are they easy to get around? how hard will it be to find the next bus?

i'm only bringing my messenger bag, w/ a couple pairs of pants & shorts, a couple books, some tea, cds, and food. i love to listen to people though so i may not even really need my cd player.

[Richard Steele]

24. I've never had any trouble finding the next bus.

The large clean modern stations usually have large clean modern SIGNS
the make it easy to find things.

The "seedier" stations I've seen have generally been so small that it
was impossible for a bus to arrive/depart without seeing it.

I hope you have a great time on your trip, BTW!

[fishwax]

6. I love traveling by bus

I've done it a number of times, and it was almost always fascinating. If you're adventurous, or just like meeting people from a wide range of backgrounds with a wide range of stories to tell, you can have a great time on the bus.

The stations are pretty diverse as well. They may be in dangerous neighborhoods, but they aren't always. As another poster said, ask your bus driver (or someone working at the station). Some of them have few amenities on the inside, while others have gift stores, video games, restaurants, seats where you can pay a couple of quarters to watch some TV, or other amusements.

Slightly askew from what others have said, I haven't had unusual problems sitting near the back of the bus, nor is the front immune to weird people or experiences.

One thing I would suggest is to build time flexibility into your schedule, particularly if you are switching buses, etc. Scheduling is a bit freaky--sometimes you'll wind up with a layover of several hours, other times there may be only five or ten minutes between when one bus is scheduled to arrive and the next is scheduled to leave. Unlike traveling by plane, where they know passengers may be coming in on connecting flights and so may hold their own flight briefly, the buses don't have that information at hand, and so if one route your on is running a little bit late then your overall trip might be delayed by several hours.

I know plenty of people who hate bus travel, but I have a certain fondness for it, even though it's been several years since I traveled that way. :)

[Ariana Celeste]

13. as i said above, im mainly worried about the stations

im pretty excited though, because this is something new for me- ive always traveled out of state by plane.

when i traveled on city buses i always sat near the back, that's where the talkers were. :D i'm gonna have to transfer 2 or 3 times depending on the schedule i choose. pittsburgh, d.c., and richmond.

i wouldnt mind having only 10-15 minutes to find my next bus, as long as i know it aint too hard to find 'em. but ive never been in a greyhound station so i have no idea, lol. being delayed by alittle while wouldnt be *too* big of a deal, im not trying to make an appt or anything lol. would just be annoying if anything. thanks :D

[fishwax]

22. oh, the buses aren't hard to find at all

provided you arrive on time to catch them, which doesn't always happen. I don't know anything about the stations in the cities you mentioned (I've only traveled by bus in the western states), but generally the stations are easy to navigate. It's not like trying to find your way around O'Hare Airport or anything :) Your driver will probably be able to tell you right where to go, and all the departure docks (at least in all the stations I've been in) are off of one main room. They're usually numbered, all in a row, and at the big stations there will likely be some sort of large chart of departures as well.

If you do wind up going through Pittsburgh, you must plan to listen to Simon and Garfunkel's America at some point in preparation for or during your trip, since it specifically mentions boarding a Greyhound in Pittsburgh ("Kathy I said as I boarded a greyhound in Pittsburgh/Michigan seems like a dream to me now"). :D

Anyway, here's hoping you have an outstanding trip, all the way around :hi:

[JVS]

15. you'll have a true experience

[Ariana Celeste]

16. just hope it aint half bad

:)

[radfringe]

17. we have two greyhounds

they are both black, and like to lay in between doorways. We have had frequetly tripped over them

[Ariana Celeste]

18. hehehe

:rofl:

[HEyHEY]

19. A day after 911

I took the bus from New Brunswick to Quebec City. It was full of Americans bussing home because the planes were all diverted to Canada. There were US flags all over the Quebec countryside. On the bus we all talked about the state of the world, and people shared whatever food and drink they had. It was really something.

[Ariana Celeste]

20. that sounds really nice.

:toast:

would love to experience something like that

[terrya]

21. I've never had any problems.

I've taken Greyhound a few times from Chicago to Toronto. I take a big book with me...it's about a 12 hour trip. I've had no problems.

[kay1864]

23. Do you have any friends who work for an airline?

A buddy pass is a lot faster (and cheaper) than a bus ride.

If not, check the bus schedules online before you go. Some departures make a lot more stops / layovers than others.

[TrogL]

25. Greyhound is on strike in Canada

try Red Arrow

[Rambis]

26. Never again!

Hookers, pimps, drug dealers and crazy people the entire way. Just don't do it-

[catmandu57]

27. Actually you'de be much better off hopping a plane

It sounds like a day and a half ride for the bus, the food is expensive, sleeping is impossible, the layovers suck. You may find yourself dumped out at a substation to catch a connector bus in the middle of the night with nowhere to go, since the station is closed.
If you go by hound, then sit in the front near the driver, or be adventerous and dive into lala land in the back.
The worst time I've ever had was when I had to take the bus in the dead of winter, it was about twenty below and the station at my destination was closed tight, I almost froze waiting for my ride.
Anyway bring some tunes, something to read, and something to munch on and report back in we'll be worried about you.

[Parche]

28. BUS

Trailways was much better!!!

[ceile]

29. Neither good nor bad

Once went from NJ to TX (48 hour ride). ON the bus was this girl from Australia who was in the country as a camp counselor. She had one week before heading back and decided to go cross country on Greyhound-from NY to CA and back again! She thought she could do it one week-"It doesn't look that far on the map." oy!

[Saphire]

30. Ignatius J. Riley. Can't think of Greyhound without thinking of the

horrors he had to endure on his one and only bus trip to Baton Rouge. Read all about it in A Confederacy of Dunces.

[bridgit]

31. oh boy = The last life was a shitty one, so I got up on ‘the dog’ and left town...

Sent on one thing in advance, FedEx, cause I knew where I was going. I would just pick it up when I got my new feet on the ground, and a couple irons in the fire. But that was pretty basically it: my backpack stuffed with stuff till the seams nearly popped, and $40 cash…my dear friends bought me the ticket cause The Goddess Blesses Though Not Limited To: happy clowns, kittens, Mad Dogs & Englishmen, and “the child that has its own” from what I hear. I didn’t have my own. So in spite of it all, as mentioned; I left…

The next life wasn’t so shitty; as it was different. And that all started when I came into town. A Greyhound full of cramp’y people gathering up all twisting their necks around from trying to sleep somehow then impatiently glaring at the driver as he dallies with a studied sloth before opening the cargo bay, crabby kids wriggling in their seats & mother’s arms or a dad; maybe a dad who knows: slapping the back of a head, twisting a little arm into shock & silence after miles & miles of darkness past milk stops with only a light here or there, bouncing headlights so far off they look like little diamonds. A gas station/liquor store with a busted out: window. Rain smudged signs: 10 for $1, 3 for $5; Closed: Out Of Business, Under New Management, Rock Garden/Lapidary/Agates, No Services Next 135 miles;

But sunshine too shining down bathed on amber waves of teeming grain, tall-ass corn that made me think about that nasty kid that sent people there for no good reason the little shit…sunflowers, some produce so low “not much taller than my ankles” is what I thought at the time, but so small and far away I couldn’t really tell what they were and all past purple-mountain’s, and their majesty. Tractors that seemed to be growing little more than dust clouds, out where the buffalo used to roam I guess. And giant, walking rain birds spritzing huge volumes of water in great & low arcs & droplets soaking the ground, moistening the air as birds swoop in & out of the rainbows they cause, some pecking for prize on the: ground. But then,

Just another bus station full of stale Kit Kat’s & warm-flat-Pepsi, rock hard Juicy Fruit gum, and people heading off to somewhere else, in some other direction, some in the direction I just came from, their grim & staring faces beside restrooms that provided little rest while harboring stank, ill stench instead if still somehow lined with long since outdated, cracked & broken tiles. Ah, riding the dog…

Still…thank The Goddess it was done. I was there, I am here. Some say here is where you are supposed to be, here, though I do have certain & specific thoughts about that as well.

But when ‘the dog’ rolled into the depot I flat-out longed for a proper fascist like Roberto Mussolini anyways making his trains, and I presume his buses too, run on time; cause ours was some 2 hours, 40 minutes early jeebus! Too early to expect my dearest friends here to forgo their regimen just to come and pick me up I resolved to wait.

In either event can you believe that even ‘the dog’ actually gave an excuse for being too early at times like this? You can? Then can you believe that the excuse the driver read into the coach, to us: his bleary eyed cast of wee, early, early morning travelers with cricks in our necks wondering now just why we were rumbling otherwise motionless beside yet another corn field in the dead of night, where unlit dark nothingness resides on the other like a black hole, a creepy sentient thing; from the bent corners of a piece of crumpled paper, miles & miles before this moment in time; was itself time & date stamped by the DHLS? With a strange little bar-code thingy issued by the DOD? Cause he actually showed some of us? Cause some of us were a little skeptical? Yeah?

Then this little story is for you.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=216x3994

[Gormy Cuss]

32. If you like talking to people from many walks of life it can be a hoot.

You are right that it's a different perspective than you'd get from a plane and it's sometimes more interesting that Amtrak because of where the roads are in relation to smaller towns.

Sit in the first half of the coach. It can get truly weird and claustrophobic in the back, and I say that as someone who likes sitting in the back on local transit. You do not want to be seated too close to the head. That part of the bus is a magnet for the people planning to get high or have sex as if it's private or something. Not that either happens that frequently, but you really don't want to be trapped back there if it does. My most interesting Greyhound experience was when we pulled off on a shoulder in the middle of nowhere so that the state troopers could remove a really intoxicated guy with a loaded weapon. Other than that, most trips are just interesting slices of life.

I haven't done a long Greyhound trip in years but I will still take a short trip sometimes because it can be very relaxing. Pack snacks and plenty of reading materials and other diversions.

[WCGreen]

33. From Cleveland to Portland back in 1978...

Horrible trip but I had fun meeting people and such...

The stations were hit or miss, but again, this was almost thirty years ago...

[SPKrazy]

34. I've only traveled from one city to another by bus

and it was long ago in the middle of a snowstorm that stranded me in Tulsa as I was 16 and going to see my girlfriend who had just moved back to Bartlesville.

The bus ride was fine. The bus station was a madhouse.

For some reason I took a cab to the airport? (my memory is a little hazy as that was nearly 30 years ago)

I found a couple and gave them some money and they rented a car and drove me to Bartlesville.

Then I was somewhat stuck there at my girlfriend's house (parents house) they didn't quite know what to make of this d00d who had managed to get to their house in the biggest snowstorm of the season.

:rofl: