Because my train was canceled, I was again
forced upon Greyhound. The poor folks really
ran the operation as well as any set of human
beings could under the horror of the situation.

Truly, I like to travel in a class above myself.
So, when I travel by rail or by airplane, most of
the folks are several social classes above me.
This helps me not to think about the real truth
of my debased, degrading condition.

Since most of the souls that travel Greyhound
are relegated to that fate by either airplane
phobia, an inability to hold their lives together
enough to do real advance bookings, or by
sudden disasters constantly befalling them
and causing them to need to flee quickly,
cheaply and with no advance planning, we
cannot expect much from Greyhound.

In truth, the buses are not badly maintained
most of the time. And the drivers really do
their very best to control the sickly, insane
and indigent as well as they can. Furthermore,
the fares are so low that almost no one could
be so lost as to afford not to travel to practically
anywhere their buses go. And the station
operators are practically like saints in an
Emergency Room in a default City Hospital
on a Saturday night. How they maintain their
calm and their poise, while at the same time
surviving on whatever little wages they get,
well, I shall never know.

They truly did their best, and yet, I admit
that most of the hours on that bus were agony.
You had the usual contingent of ex-felon fat
moms with no teeth carrying screaming future-
criminal babies. And then you had the ex-con
itinerant drywall and house-painter crowd
mixed in with mental patients actually more
psychotic than me. And still others too fat
to afford to buy two plane seats, (which
the airlines now require), the sort who risk
death by sleep apnea and who snore like
bulls before a death charge. Then you've
got the urban hip-hopper nobodies whose
sole claim is that they listen to stinky music
and have ruined their bodies with old tatoos
already faded out with age, which they somehow
make up for by changing the focus to faces
that are never shaved and beards with food
stuck in them.

Again, I can't actually criticize these people
when, in truth, I am either as bad off as they,
or really far worse off than they, and when I
I have finally been reduced to utter discredited
penury myself. My only gripe against Greyhound
is simply that when I travel with them, I must face
the horror of myself and my reality, and I truly
always want to escape that and surround myself
with the strong and healthy sorts so I can fool
myself just for a moment into believing I'm
semi-valid.

God bless Greyhound. They do more than
could ever be asked, and they do it with no
government subsidy, which is a miracle, given
their low fares. I don't see how they maintain
that massive employee base and huge
infrastructure and still get people going
hundreds or thousands of miles on just like
a few pennies of fare money with no help
from the Feds. God bless em, but it sucks
anyway.