The Greyhound Chronicles

This all orig­i­nal­ly appeared on Face­book, but not every­one’s on Face­book. (Hi, Mom!) So I’m post­ing it here, too, for you to enjoy.

Any anno­ta­tions are in ital­ics, and most­ly they pro­vide con­text or commentary.

1.

Dec. 7^th, 5:20 PM

I love pay­ing a $3.50 “con­ve­nience” fee and then hav­ing to catch a cab to the air­port to get on the bus. A fine use of irony there.

At this point I had­n’t left my sis­ter’s house yet. I had no idea. None.

2.

Dec. 7^th, 6:51 PM

I’m at the depot ridicu­lous­ly ear­ly. Got my tick­et. Found out my bus is delayed by 90 minutes.

If I’d known I was­n’t in a hur­ry, I’d have told my cab­bie to not both­er run­ning those three red lights.

Thanks for the noti­fi­ca­tion, Grey­hound. You suck.

Any Wpg folks, if you’re bored, swing by and say hi.

One did. Thanks, Michelle!

3.

Dec. 7^th, 8:07 PM

I won­der if the dude with the Aus­tralian accent run­ning the met­al detec­tor over every­one who will be board­ing the north­bound bus ever looks out the win­dow at the snow, sighs, and thinks about the choic­es he’s made.

One of my Aus­tralian Face­book friends assured me that he does.

4.

Dec. 7^th, 8:22 PM

I just now saw a sign telling me that I can save 10% on a Har­vey’s burg­er if I take my bus tick­et to the air­port terminal.

I was loath to leave the bus ter­mi­nal, on the chance that my bus would some­how mag­i­cal­ly show up, and I’d miss it. Also, if you’re try­ing to lure me away, you’ll have to do bet­ter than Harvey’s.

5.

Dec. 7^th, 9:05 PM

Dou­glas Adams point­ed out that it’s no coin­ci­dence that no lan­guage has ever coined the phrase “as pret­ty as an air­port”. Dit­to bus terminals.

Self-explana­to­ry, I trust.

6.

Dec. 7^th, 9:23 PM

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Like­wise self-explanatory.

I also post­ed a com­ment: “Grey­hound, you owe every­one in this ter­mi­nal a refund on their ‘ser­vice’ fee.”

7.

Dec. 7^th, 10:00 PM

In line. Grey­hound suuuuuuucks.

They herd you through “secu­ri­ty” before they load the bus. It’s pret­ty fun­ny, since peo­ple get­ting on at stops along the way aren’t sub­ject­ed to a met­al detec­tor. Also, in the Win­nipeg ter­mi­nal, you can leave the “secu­ri­ty” area and return with­out a sec­ond check. Just so long as you don’t move your car­ry-on bags out.

8.

Dec. 7^th, 10:18 PM

They’re still call­ing it the 8:30 bus to Bran­don. It’s 10:18 PM now. #grey­houndIs­Ter­ri­ble

9.

Dec. 7^th, 10:39 PM

The Thomp­son bus arrived after the Bran­don one. Guess which one is board­ing first. Go ahead, guess. #ffs

10.

Dec. 7^th, 10:43 PM

A dude has decid­ed he’s not get­ting on the bus now. Cue the clown show of retriev­ing his checked bag.

He got yelled at for mov­ing his car­ry-on bags from the “secure” area. He decid­ed that the high­way con­di­tions were still too bad to trav­el. (He was part­ly right; as is tra­di­tion, the high­way was ter­ri­ble from Win­nipeg to Portage la Prairie.)

11.

Dec. 7^th, 10:54 PM

I’m on a bus.

It’s almost 11 pm. This is the 8:30 bus.

Nev­er again, Greyhound.

The ear­ly bus was sched­uled to leave Win­nipeg at 8:30 PM and arrive in Bran­don at 11:10 PM. The late bus was to leave at 11:00 and get in at 1:50.

The ear­ly bus left Win­nipeg at 11:00 PM (ish) and arrived in Bran­don around 1:30 AM. I don’t know the fate of the late bus.

12.

Dec. 7^th, 11:00 PM

As we got rolling, I noticed that the front seat held two cool­ers of human blood, help­ful­ly labelled Please Expe­dite With­out Delay.

13.

Dec. 7^th, 11:40 PM

A mid­dle-of-the-night bus ride down a snowy Trans-Cana­da between Win­nipeg and Bran­don? Yeah, The Trag­i­cal­ly Hip seems like the right soundtrack.

Coda.

Dec. 8^th, 1:52 AM

Home.

Epilogue.

Dec. 8^th, 9:29 AM

They just got in touch via Twit­ter and sug­gest­ed I check their bus track­er next time. I tried that. Appar­ent­ly “Win­nipeg” does­n’t exist.

I snarked a bit on Twit­ter, too. The help­ful peo­ple at the Grey­hound Help account obvi­ous­ly did­n’t real­ize I was talk­ing about Grey­hound Canada.

This also felt a bit like the post-cred­its scene, the last joke in a rolling farce.

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On the up side: at least I did­n’t sleep on the floor of the ter­mi­nal, like the one guy loud­ly pro­claimed he had the pre­vi­ous night. Accord­ing to him, the tem­per­a­ture dropped overnight in the ter­mi­nal — almost cer­tain­ly a cost-sav­ing mea­sure — and no one was will­ing to turn up the heat.

At least I had a good book to read. (Sto­ries of Your Life and Oth­ers, re-titled Arrival to cap­i­tal­ize on the movie, a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries by Ted Chiang.)