It is 2am. I’ve been on the Greyhound bus for 7 hours. The sound of the road peeling away under the wheels and the gentle rocking of a cabin should be lulling my senses into a blissful stupor but they bring no respite. I watch through my window into the clinging blackness and try to ignore the poster child schizophrenic that chose to sit next to me. He keeps yelling and yelping, one of three personalities at any time bursting forth onto the bus. Sometimes it’s the retarded boy, others the racist Southerner and when ever a sign came into resolve enough to be read: the educated Harvard scholar. If I am lucky I can catch them arguing between each other as their vessel jerked and roiled about in his seat. Their arguing continues through the night and punctuates the darkness. Around 5am he quietens a little, yet keeps snorting and fizzing and fidgeting. His odour has driven a few of my fellow passengers to move up into shared seats, foregoing their comfortable reclining positions for relief from the smell. I breathe through my teeth and count the hours, the minutes, the seconds until the next stop.
With the break of dawn comes an oasis of a gas station where we stop for food and drinks. My seat partner rises from his perch and lumbers down the isle, carrying with him his most valuable worldly possessions, 15 recycling containers. I stretch and am greeted by numerous faces that smile at me reassuringly and words of praise and amazement at my resolve. Only 13 more hours of travel face me but they lay stretched along the i5 through the new day. The terrain changes in hue and composition as we roll ceaselessly onwards into the morning. California opens before the bus welcoming me into it’s warm bosom. Mesas rise along the highway and farmland covered in dry grass surround the coach as we travel south in the morning sun.
While my strange friend has moved on he leaves a sinister stink he in his stead, standing sentry in the cabin like a ghost. I push my chin deeper into my chest and watch the white lines weave and duck back and forth along the asphalt. We’ll be coming up to San Francisco soon according to the woodsman that sits in the seat in front of me. I look out of my window and drink up the scenery. I gulp it up in an attempt to satisfy my excitement. A new city awaits just on the other side of the bay. A new city, with new sights, new people and hopefully new adventures.
