Comments on: On the Bus

By: ice9

ice9 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:03:30 +0000

In college I made a lot of bus trips with a men’s choir. The specialty of our outfit was concerts at the several women’s colleges in the region; we’d do our thing, they’d do their thing, then we’d group up for a little forbidden SATB. The shows would go fairly late, then the reception with all the flirting as everybody tried to take advantage of the target-rich environment, then a late busride home through the very Pennsylvania-like environs of southwestern and central Virginia.
On the way home from a certain elite women’s college in Lynchburg, the group was grumpy from the combination of an alcohol-free parochial punch reception and a far too brief mixer. The chaperones figured out quickly that the young men and women constituted a danger to one anothers’ virtue, especially if the snow kept up and the guests had to be accommodated for the night. The lights were snapped on and the music off, and we were hustled out to our bus and away into the night without a ceremony.
I was new to the group, and young, so I found myself in the front seat, hanging over the driver as he worked very hard to stay on Hwy 460. We got to talking, and he was clearly glad for the company. Pretty soon we had our ‘van moment’, this one a dualie and horse trailer on a downhill right-hander, if I remember correctly. The truck wound up snowbanked but undamaged. We were unaffected and soon after went on our way again.
The baritones and basses had been agitating for a refreshment stop before the clock hit midnight, when beer sales in Virginia stop. The tenors were against it. The upper voices in our outfit were the religious ones; I make no conclusion about that. The director ruled it out, of course, but he made a tactical error by asserting that it was illegal, and the driver would never permit it.
A few minutes after the near-miss, the driver casually mentioned to me that he wouldn’t object if we wanted to stop. The deal was done, and before we made Salem the bus was full of the heady sweet aroma of Miller High Life, and I was a hero, and the practice of hanging out with the driver was vindicated.

ice

By: The Constructivist

The Constructivist — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:58:41 +0000

Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories has a great bus trip at the beginning, too.

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:19:49 +0000

In The New Life, Orhan Pamuk explores this theme at some length. His narrator is looking for something more transcendental by riding around Turkey on long bus trips, occasionally punctuated by accidents.

By: jackd

jackd — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:09:48 +0000

Lovely story, Michael. And at least one of your readers was cool enough to catch the Replacements reference but not too cool to mention it.

How I wish I could emulate your practice as a passenger. My problem is not being a control freak (not in that context, anyway) but having motion sickness. Watching the scenery through the windshield is fine; watching it through the side windows brings on a vile low-grade headache that points directly toward nausea. Reading just brings on the symptoms harder and faster.

By: Michael Bérubé

Michael Bérubé — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:34:03 +0000

Um, maybe it had three lanes in 1974 but then they got rid of one? That kind of thing happens all the time, I hear. Or maybe I’ve misremembered a detail or two. Could be.

And Warbo and jj, I have a followup for you later this week. No, not the post about the “Love Train.” Something else.

By: Brent

Brent — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:39:29 +0000

Nice catch, mds. I’m going to add that that I-90 in upstate NY does not have three lanes until you get further west (Rochester area). At the point Michael’s bus veered into the hill it could only have crossed two lanes—unless it crossed the median into oncoming traffic, which I think would have made an already bad situation much much worse. Or maybe if the bus started in an exit lane…?

Having become a default driver myself, I now find that I cannot sleep on any vehicle, plane train or automobile. A few years back I had no trouble, but now with every bump in the road (turbulence in the air, what-have-you) I’m digging nails into my palms looking for the wheel.

By: jj

jj — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:24:44 +0000

After I got mugged in the middle the night in the middle of a Cleveland slum (the mugger was kind enough to rob me and drive off in the cab less than half a block from a fire station) I abandoned the radio runs entirely and concentrated exclusively on the airport runs, where the airport spotter mugged anyone who hoped to catch a trip beyond the adjacent suburbs. Hopkins Airport used to be located at the extreme southwest corner of the Cleveland metropolitan area, but the suburbs had long since overtaken it and passage through them to downtown Cleveland or the eastern suburbs required an appropriate kickback. The cab line at the port ran along an access road which was usually clogged with forty or fifty cabs and the turnover time between trips was around two or three hours on average, so we had approximately six trips to cover gas and lease expenses, as well as any acquired profit. But the nights we lived for were the blizzards, when the spotters and half the drivers decided to stay home, and even $10 trips to Berea or Lakewood got you back to port that much faster, where the exit ramps were crowded with dozens of passengers who could not believe the pilot would actually attempt to land the damn thing under those conditions.

By: Warbo

Warbo — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:16:52 +0000

As someone who comes from a country (Australia) where tipping is virtually unknown outside restaurants, I find the whole subject of when and how much to tip when in, for example, the US, very scary.

Case in point: couple of months ago, shuttle bus from LAX to hotel just outside Disneyland; late at night; cold; two adults, three kids (including one 5yo). At hotel, driver parked on the street rather than at the hotel’s front door, thereby avoiding having to negotiate what I imagine would have been an ever-so slightly tricky roundabout and obliging us to haul our luggage down a 50-metre driveways and across a couple of side driveways. No big deal, but really not what we felt like in the circumstances. I was so annoyed by this I decided not to tip, but felt bad about it almost immediately because (a) he probably relied on tips to make up for a crap wage and (b) there may have been some regulation preventing him from driving to the front door that I, a novice in US traffic laws, was unaware of and© he probably hated me.

Nice post, by the way (I wish you’d post here more often), and sorry for spoiling it with my whingey anecdote.

By: Stacey

Stacey — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:43:41 +0000

But wasn’t Sandra Bullock like 17 years old in 1981?

As was I!

Ok, Raiders of the Lost Arc, then. Any mind/eye candy would have done the trick under the circumstances.

By: Michael Bérubé

Michael Bérubé — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:09:38 +0000

One can derive pleasure from examining the minutiae of the passing landscape or streetscape, without paying attention to the driver’s performance and without in any sense questioning their competence.

I did indeed learn that at some point between 1970 and the present, but it took a while.

By: mollymooly

mollymooly — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:23:12 +0000

Perhaps I misunderstand the thrust of this post. Surely it is possible for a passenger to pay attention to the road without being “excessively neurotic” about it? One can derive pleasure from examining the minutiae of the passing landscape or streetscape, without paying attention to the driver’s performance and without in any sense questioning their competence.

By: Dave Maier

Dave Maier — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:22:29 +0000

Before I read this post, I will require a plate of cubed pepper jack cheese to enhance my enjoyment of same.

I’m waiting.

By: George

George — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:15:49 +0000

This story would make a lovely note on Facebook.

By: JP Stormcrow

JP Stormcrow — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:14:50 +0000

OK, now that that’s out of the way.

For reasons that remain obscure even to the world’s leading meteorologists, it is always raining, snowing, and dark on that stretch of road

Ah, but if only the Feds weren’t unfairly competing with Joe Bastardi and Accuweather; he’d certainly have it all “cleared up” by now. And what do you expect on a public highway anyway? Only toll-paying customers have bought the right to complain.

The passing van story reminds me of a time that I was the asshole (shockingly … but not in a van!). We were heading up the long grade on I-80 to the Pocono Region of Relatively High Land in a classic returning-home-from-New-York-City-after-Thanksgiving ice storm. Wisdom of the crowds (aka those who had not yet slipped off the road*) speed was about 10 MPH. My impatience driven internal governor said 12 MPH, so I pulled out to pass the guy in front of me. When I came alongside I glanced over and he was giving me a look of such pure bewildered terror mingled with “Seriously, WTF is wrong with you?” that I temporarily came to my senses, backed off and abashedly returned to my rightful place in the 10 MPH slog.

*In truth we were all idiots for even continuing.

By: JP Stormcrow

JP Stormcrow — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:46:33 +0000

This is a terrific post. You said exactly what I was thinking but phrased it much more elegantly and graciously than I ever could. Thank you so much for writing it!