rm ([personal profile] rm) wrote2003-12-10 05:32 pm

bus trip part 2 -- or "how are we going to get the Mexicans to Loredo?"

The Mexicans had also boarded in DC, with more luggage than you can possibly imagine. Most notably, one of them had a large mirror with religious art painted on it strapped to his back. The stuff took up a lot of room, even as most of it was checked under the bus, and from DC on they always boarded late, but always because Greyhound was for whatever reason trying to find them a more direct route to Loredo.

At each bus stop they grouped together in a corner, all men, talking amongst themselves. Only one of them would ever sit down, always at one of those chairs with the TV fed by quarters like they used to have in the airports in the 1970s. He wouldn't watch the TV, but would drum on the top of it instead.

At Knoxville Greyhound kept moving them to different corners of the station to huddle, but eventually they were back on our bus. Same in Nashville. And Memphis, where they weren't even put on the bus marked Loredo, even as Greyhound people kept asking the same question.

I never found out why this was such a mess for Greyhound, and I presume they've gotten there by now, but they wound up riding all the way to Austin with me an beyond.

In Memphis, I befriended an older white woman who had also been riding since DC. Turns out this little old lady is a truck driver. 18-wheelers, and she was heading home to San Antonio.

Leaving Memphis, I settled in to sleep, knowing it would be a long night before we got to Dallas just before dawn for my last bus change. That however did not work out as planned.

We made Little Rock no problem (a place that instantly made perfect and dreadful sense with the most severely time warped of any of the bus stations I saw on the entire journey) despite a massive rainstorm, and I fell into a deep sleep only to wake up at about 2am, 40 minutes outside of Sulphur Springs. An 18-wheeler had fallen across the road and was on fire right in front of us. Emergency vehicles were there, but they were just letting it burn up. Our bus driver said we'd be stuck here for at least two hours, meaning I _might_ make my 6:15 connection in Dallas, if I was lucky.

Well I wasn't. It was about 3 hours until the truck finished burning and the emergency workers dragged its dead dinosaur like carcas off to the side of the road and we headed on. In Sulphur Springs, we stopped for an hour, instead of 20 minutes, and I watched a flock of thousands of birds swarm and peel apart and reconvene over and over again in a tight tiny circle over the gas station. It was one of the most beautiful and terrifying things I've ever seen.

Finally, we leave for Dallas, ETA-- 8:20am, and I fall back asleep, when I wake up, it's full daylight, we're not in Dallas, and we're pulled over on the side of the road.

Why?

Because a coach that had been behind us at the fire, and then met up with us at Sulphur Springs was on fire a couple miles back, and we were waiting to see if we were taking passengers or luggage from it.

RK shouted at the bus driver, "are they gonna sit on our lap?"

Then a fire engine drove past us, and we continued on.

tbc...