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Dec. 10th, 2003
While much later than intended, I did in fact manage to get here.
I missed my connection in Dallas thanks to a big fire that burnt up an entire 18-wheel rig right in front of us, and then when I did finally get out of Dallas there was awful traffic. I have a lot of weird stories that are more coherent than my audioblog rambling, and I'll try to post those later as I settle in.
I missed my connection in Dallas thanks to a big fire that burnt up an entire 18-wheel rig right in front of us, and then when I did finally get out of Dallas there was awful traffic. I have a lot of weird stories that are more coherent than my audioblog rambling, and I'll try to post those later as I settle in.
bus trip part 1
Dec. 10th, 2003 05:16 pmThe trip from NYC to DC was entirely uneventful.
At DC we boarded late, but they seperated people going all the way to Dallas from the people on the local stops, and I was put on a bus direct to Knoxville, which skipped many stops on my itinerary, which meant we arrived in Knoxville 4 hours early, and there was no bus to pick up at that time, so I was stranded there for those four hours.
While in Knoxville, I wound up in a long conversation with a kid who had been on the same bus as me from DC, who had started up in Boston. His name was R__ K___ and he is 22-years-old. He's married, has a six-year-old son and has been in and out of jail, most recently after serving six months for smoking a joint in the T-system. He had scars up and down his left arm that I could barely look at, and his only luggage were a pair of spare basketball sneakers in a brown paper bag. He too was headed to Austin, to visit the grave of his brother who hung himself while RK was in prison.
He told me that prison this time was good for him, that he was done messing around with gangs, done not being a father to his kid, done not thinking his life or anyone else's was worth anything. He told me he read about psychology in prison, and that's what he wants to do now, get his act together and become a psychologist, but it was hard for me to tell if he was slow or just had a long long way to go in education, despite the GED.
He told me that he was going to his brother's grave and smoking a joint and drinking a forty and then he never would again. His parents, who had thrown him out at 13 for dealing drugs out of their house said they understood that one, and had given the fare for his bus ticket. At Knoxville they wired him $200, and he had to ask me how to spell his password, Willy, to pick up the money.
At Austin, a friend picked him up in a car, and I wondered if any of it was true. Through the whole journey he started every conversation with me by saying, "Hey, New York!" and I started to feel like an extra member of Buckaroo Banzai's Blue Blaze Irregulars.
Leaving Knoxville (thank god -- what a shithole -- the arrival's board was on a crappy white board, and the snackbar sold postcards and weird giraffe print jackets that I was to see throughout Tennessee), I caught that Gore was expected to endorse Howard Dean on the front page of USA today.
Nashville was better, but no postcards. The cafeteria in the bus station was the first of several that served only greenbeans and okra that had seemingly melted together.
Memphis had the best of the Tennessee bus stations, and it was also where everything shifted -- in terms of being a minority and in terms of the accents becoming unintellgible. This was also the point that I noticed that at every single station since DC the Greyhound people wound up asking and not answering, "How are we going to get the Mexicans to Loredo?"
tbc....
At DC we boarded late, but they seperated people going all the way to Dallas from the people on the local stops, and I was put on a bus direct to Knoxville, which skipped many stops on my itinerary, which meant we arrived in Knoxville 4 hours early, and there was no bus to pick up at that time, so I was stranded there for those four hours.
While in Knoxville, I wound up in a long conversation with a kid who had been on the same bus as me from DC, who had started up in Boston. His name was R__ K___ and he is 22-years-old. He's married, has a six-year-old son and has been in and out of jail, most recently after serving six months for smoking a joint in the T-system. He had scars up and down his left arm that I could barely look at, and his only luggage were a pair of spare basketball sneakers in a brown paper bag. He too was headed to Austin, to visit the grave of his brother who hung himself while RK was in prison.
He told me that prison this time was good for him, that he was done messing around with gangs, done not being a father to his kid, done not thinking his life or anyone else's was worth anything. He told me he read about psychology in prison, and that's what he wants to do now, get his act together and become a psychologist, but it was hard for me to tell if he was slow or just had a long long way to go in education, despite the GED.
He told me that he was going to his brother's grave and smoking a joint and drinking a forty and then he never would again. His parents, who had thrown him out at 13 for dealing drugs out of their house said they understood that one, and had given the fare for his bus ticket. At Knoxville they wired him $200, and he had to ask me how to spell his password, Willy, to pick up the money.
At Austin, a friend picked him up in a car, and I wondered if any of it was true. Through the whole journey he started every conversation with me by saying, "Hey, New York!" and I started to feel like an extra member of Buckaroo Banzai's Blue Blaze Irregulars.
Leaving Knoxville (thank god -- what a shithole -- the arrival's board was on a crappy white board, and the snackbar sold postcards and weird giraffe print jackets that I was to see throughout Tennessee), I caught that Gore was expected to endorse Howard Dean on the front page of USA today.
Nashville was better, but no postcards. The cafeteria in the bus station was the first of several that served only greenbeans and okra that had seemingly melted together.
Memphis had the best of the Tennessee bus stations, and it was also where everything shifted -- in terms of being a minority and in terms of the accents becoming unintellgible. This was also the point that I noticed that at every single station since DC the Greyhound people wound up asking and not answering, "How are we going to get the Mexicans to Loredo?"
tbc....
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...
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...
bus trip part 3
Dec. 10th, 2003 05:52 pmWe arrive in Dallas at about 9am, and find out the next bus to Austin is at 11:15am. There's time to kill and I buy some more postcards.
The trucker lady, whose name I never got, notices people already lining up for the Waco/Austin/San Antonio/point beyond bus, so we get on the line too. At this point, she pulls out a newspaper article about the wreck her rig got into on the 7th. Seems another rig skidded into her path, so she skidded the other way and then a third rig drove into her cargo area. So she's on the bus because she's been sent home by her trucking company until the investigation is completed.
"I don't know what that's about," she tells me, "I mean, there was snow, I didn't get a citation, they didn't even give me a piss test! I want a new rig. Now I'm just gonna have to clean the house because grandpa [meaning her husband] doesn't do anything."
I call Amanda with the last of my cell phone battery to tell her what is up, but she's more than half asleep, and just says "Right," to everything I say, I've no idea if the data is absorbed.
Meanwhile, people on the bus line are getting seriously testy. As there are about 200 and everyone is worrying about getting a seat, even as they are calling up extra buses. One woman who has had more plastic surgery than anyone should gets into a screaming match with the Greyhound worker, until she is put at the front of the line. But eventually we board, with trucker lady telling me how she sneaked in extra checked baggage without paying the fee, and even leave Dallas early.
Which is a damn good thing, as there is severe construction going on on the road out of town, and it takes us two hours to go two miles. If I had the energy to be in tears, I would be, as my plan had been to arrive in Austin early enough to have time with Amanda prior to her having to go to work, that was now foiled and I wasn't even sure I would get there before she had to go to work at all.
But despite the most depressing stop in the world (Waco!) I got in a little after 3, and made it here in one piece.
There are so many weird details of note. The amount of religious stuff is amazing -- religious superstores, bible warehouses, random billboards with messages like "Saturday is the Lord's Day; Sunday Laws are the Mark of the Beast" or "Warning: You'll be Meeting God Soon." It's unsettling, in the extreme.
Overall the landscapes I passed through were not as stark as what I hoped for or needed. We've done a good job of making America look like all one thing, and it's only reinforced my need to spend some time pretty damn far away.
The trucker lady, whose name I never got, notices people already lining up for the Waco/Austin/San Antonio/point beyond bus, so we get on the line too. At this point, she pulls out a newspaper article about the wreck her rig got into on the 7th. Seems another rig skidded into her path, so she skidded the other way and then a third rig drove into her cargo area. So she's on the bus because she's been sent home by her trucking company until the investigation is completed.
"I don't know what that's about," she tells me, "I mean, there was snow, I didn't get a citation, they didn't even give me a piss test! I want a new rig. Now I'm just gonna have to clean the house because grandpa [meaning her husband] doesn't do anything."
I call Amanda with the last of my cell phone battery to tell her what is up, but she's more than half asleep, and just says "Right," to everything I say, I've no idea if the data is absorbed.
Meanwhile, people on the bus line are getting seriously testy. As there are about 200 and everyone is worrying about getting a seat, even as they are calling up extra buses. One woman who has had more plastic surgery than anyone should gets into a screaming match with the Greyhound worker, until she is put at the front of the line. But eventually we board, with trucker lady telling me how she sneaked in extra checked baggage without paying the fee, and even leave Dallas early.
Which is a damn good thing, as there is severe construction going on on the road out of town, and it takes us two hours to go two miles. If I had the energy to be in tears, I would be, as my plan had been to arrive in Austin early enough to have time with Amanda prior to her having to go to work, that was now foiled and I wasn't even sure I would get there before she had to go to work at all.
But despite the most depressing stop in the world (Waco!) I got in a little after 3, and made it here in one piece.
There are so many weird details of note. The amount of religious stuff is amazing -- religious superstores, bible warehouses, random billboards with messages like "Saturday is the Lord's Day; Sunday Laws are the Mark of the Beast" or "Warning: You'll be Meeting God Soon." It's unsettling, in the extreme.
Overall the landscapes I passed through were not as stark as what I hoped for or needed. We've done a good job of making America look like all one thing, and it's only reinforced my need to spend some time pretty damn far away.
Good stuff I forgot or didn't well fit the narrative:
- There were a group of Menonites stranded in Dallas trying to get to Alberquerque. From what I overheard they were hoping to make it there by tomorrow morning.
- A man who rode most of the bus route with me was heading to LA and wearing a Buffy the Vampire t-shirt. I kept wondering what he was going that far on a bus to pursue, and thinking of lines from Screenwriter's Blues.
- A dyke who rode my busses from DC to Nashville was knitting a Hufflepuff scarf.
- And this, from waiting to reboard at Knoxville:
There's a passenger playing his guitar in line now, well, he was, now it's been passed around amongst strangers wanting to show off their blues and country skills. A man who looks like Santa Claus if he was a coal miner is singing about Jesus at the moment. He says he performs at nursing homes. "I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder and I sing my song, I sing my song to thee dear Lord." Now he's talking about having a Johnson guitar stolen from him while in a phramacy with it after his chemo. His wife bought it for him 30 years ago for $279. She's dead now, he says.
- I also made ridiculously long and detailed notes about Chess in my journal, as I was listening to it a lot, and actually got a better handle on the whole "why it doesn't work" thing. Why this is a problem I want to be able to solve at least in my head, I am not entirely sure, but there's pages of it I'll spare you all from for now.
- Finally, I can't believe that in all the weird messages and pages you all left me no one bothered to let me know that the rumours the Luhrmann Alexander film *cough, Raha, cough* had been called off indefinitely were actually BS. Anyway, I was pleased to discover that just now.
Amanda will be home shortly, at which time I believe we are going to a drinking establishment.
- There were a group of Menonites stranded in Dallas trying to get to Alberquerque. From what I overheard they were hoping to make it there by tomorrow morning.
- A man who rode most of the bus route with me was heading to LA and wearing a Buffy the Vampire t-shirt. I kept wondering what he was going that far on a bus to pursue, and thinking of lines from Screenwriter's Blues.
- A dyke who rode my busses from DC to Nashville was knitting a Hufflepuff scarf.
- And this, from waiting to reboard at Knoxville:
There's a passenger playing his guitar in line now, well, he was, now it's been passed around amongst strangers wanting to show off their blues and country skills. A man who looks like Santa Claus if he was a coal miner is singing about Jesus at the moment. He says he performs at nursing homes. "I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder and I sing my song, I sing my song to thee dear Lord." Now he's talking about having a Johnson guitar stolen from him while in a phramacy with it after his chemo. His wife bought it for him 30 years ago for $279. She's dead now, he says.
- I also made ridiculously long and detailed notes about Chess in my journal, as I was listening to it a lot, and actually got a better handle on the whole "why it doesn't work" thing. Why this is a problem I want to be able to solve at least in my head, I am not entirely sure, but there's pages of it I'll spare you all from for now.
- Finally, I can't believe that in all the weird messages and pages you all left me no one bothered to let me know that the rumours the Luhrmann Alexander film *cough, Raha, cough* had been called off indefinitely were actually BS. Anyway, I was pleased to discover that just now.
Amanda will be home shortly, at which time I believe we are going to a drinking establishment.