The Green Man Diaries

Twenty-six hours into a twenty-five hour trip I am still in Cleveland, and I am beginning to wonder if this was a mistake.  Incompetent baggage handlers have forced me to stay awake most of the time and handle my own damn baggage; in order to stay awake, I have had to ingest much coffee and tobacco and very little food, which has me feeling wound up like a junky.  Repeated delays and erroneous connections have prolonged my agony by a full nine hours.  And the coup de grace, the blow that almost brought me to tears, came when a Cleveland security officer confiscated my beautiful pocket knife, in accordance with a zero-tolerance policy that Greyhound had utterly failed to make known to me.

It hasn’t all been bad, mind you.  It turns out my two-month pass covers travel not only in Canada and the U.S. but also in Mexico, which I was hoping to visit this summer.  I was so pleased with this discovery that I had to tell a random stranger, who happened to be a cute girl named Bobbie bound for Detroit.  Bobbie sat with me all the way from Atlanta to Cincinnati, and although she was asleep for much of the time I appreciated her company.

At any rate, I did arrive in Toronto with all my belongings, and a few of my wonderful friends braved sleep deprivation to help me carry it all home from the station.  I’m in town for a couple more days and then hitting the road again, most likely bound first for Chicago.

Greyhound, you seem to have a grudge against me, although I’ve always treated you right.  You have gravely tested me and, no doubt, will test me yet.  But though I am bound to you until September, I will not submit quietly to your torment.  Greyhound, I know your secret: you are a creature born of the minds of man, and so man can destroy you by changing his mind.  With every bent or broken rule, with every strange and novel situation, with every moment of genuine human connection among your beleaguered staff, you dissolve a little into the fog from which you came.  The choice, therefore, is yours: either you show me a good time, Greyhound, or I will have a good time anyway at your peril.