Sunday, September 03, 2006

On the Road

Traveled to Washington, D.C. for the weekend. Took the Vamoose bus and it was packed. The last few times I’ve done this, I have always had chatty males as seatmates. Very chatty. Five hours of chatness. But I was heartened to see a female sit next to me, ipod headphones firmly in place.

“So,” I thought, “she’ll listen to music and I can watch the boring movie and no problems.”

After the requisite megaphone-quality greeting by the bus driver telling us what conduct he expects on his bus, how we shouldn’t throw crap on the floor, and how –in effect– he is the boss of us, we are on the road.

About an hour later, non-chatty seatmate receives a phone call and after hello she says that she had had a nightmare last night and that she had awakened with “red swollen eyes and sobbing hysterically.” However, she continued, she “couldn’t remember the rest of the dream.

End of phone conversation. Phone rings again; she says hello and then she is relating the nightmare story again. In exactly the same manner, with the same wording as before. This happens FIVE more times in one hour.

I am now quietly going mad with the boredom of hearing this story. In fact, if she needed a bathroom break, I could easily have taken over for her.

Fantasy Sequence

Phone rings. Alice answers.

Unknown Person: Hey!

Alice: Hey, yourself! Guess what?

UP: Who the hell are you?

Alice: Doesn’t matter. I can tell you all you need to know. She woke up this morning after a terrible nightmare.

UP: So?

Alice: It was awful. She woke up with red swollen eyes. Sobbing. Hysterically.

UP: Who the f**k is this?

Alice: Anyway, the poor thing can’t remember what happened next but…

UP: Did you steal this phone?

Alice: Well, she’s back now so here she is. Let her tell you the story with more detail. Oh, right. There ISN’T more detail!

End of Fantasy Sequence

When we arrived in Delaware the driver announced that he was stopping for fifteen minutes for us to go to the rest stop and do whatever we needed to do.

“PEOPLE,” he bellowed. “ONLY FIFTEEN MINUTES. ALRIGHT?”

He told us that on his earlier morning run, he had stopped to let the riders out for fifteen minutes and apparently a young man had decided to have a sit-down breakfast at Bob’s Big Boy. He was left behind.

So all of us ran out of the bus, and we were parked so far away that it would take five minutes to even reach the buildings. We all had the same idea because after a trip to the bathroom, not one person went to buy anything. No coffee, no snacks, no stopping at Bob’s Big Boy.

Though I was curious to know whether the guy was still seated at his table. Eyes red and swollen. Crying hysterically.

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