My grandmother turned 80 last week! My family decided to have a birthday dinner for her this past weekend. I decided to treck on up to Boston and join the family. Normally I take the train there. Usually about 3 1/2 hours and pretty compfy, also pretty pricey! Usually a ticket on Amtrak is around $200. I decided to be a responsible city slicker and save a little cash. I booked a ticket on Greyhound for a total of $53. Uh Huh, that’s right!
There is a reason that Greyhound is such a deal! Let me just say that I probably should have packed my prison shank before my roadtrip. I don’t know what I was thinking, I would have my own row of seats and a great book and I would just relax all the way to memere’s house! I decided to sit in the first seat by the bus driver. Every seat was sold! I did sit next to a very charming lady who happened to live on my street (what are the chances?). Once we got to New Haven I had to change buses to get to Providence. The bus driver announced that the people going to Providence had better hope the other bus was not on time or else we would miss our connecting bus. “Great, just great”, lots of traffic ahead of us and no end in site!
Luckily the connecting bus pulled up about a minute after we did! So I am in the midst of transferring buses (did I mention I was the very last person to get on the bus?) and the guy in front of me says, “no more seats left”. “WHAT?” The bus driver says, “hold on a minute, I counted the exact amount”. I get on the bus and uh yeah, no seats and everyone staring at me. The driver gets back on the bus and proceeds to tell a classy young woman with a one year old baby that her little bundle of joy has to sit in her lap so that I can have the seat next to her. Wonderful, I am tired, hungry and making great friends on the bus! I’ll just say that this “classy” young woman was not happy about this and neither was her sister who happened to be sitting behind us. I do not exaggerate when I say that these two lovely ladies proceeded to talk to each other the entire trip. Let’s see, they covered all of the following topics; food stamps, their husbands, their boyfriends (yes, they have both) lotto tickets, fried chicken, and their cousin “snoopy”. All of this conversation was peppered with some colorful language!
I live in one of the craziest cities in the world and I am not usually scared for my life. One night on a Greyhound and I want my MOMMY!
The weekend overall was good! My grandmother and I went to the Newport Playhouse Saturday night to have dinner, a play and a cabaret show. Sunday night our family celebrated my grandmother’s birthday at an Italian restaurant. Monday, she and I went to the mall for a while, had lunch and headed to the Train station. That’s right, the TRAIN STATION. KimmieD was not taking the bus back to the city! I love the train Choo Choo, All Aboard!