Insights of a Greyhound
This article stopped me in my tracks. It sucked me forcibly back to 1984.
Paul and I, 20 years old but looking 15, arrive in New York. It’s so noisy and there’s steam coming up from the manhole covers like in the films. We ask how to get to the Greyhound Bus station. We’re off to the University of Colorado for a year: Greyhound buses are going to get us there and show us America.
We all learn a lot from bus rides.
Reading Joanna’s article, I feel sad that a bit of my life has disappeared. But it also makes me realise what I learnt after all this time.
Over that year we did three interminably long Greyhound legs (plus a bit of Trailways):
- New York to Denver (via Toronto, Niagara, Chicago and Kansas)
- Denver to Denver loop (via California and El Paso – with a long train and bus journey to Mexico City in between)
- Denver to New York (via New Orleans, Florida and Washington)
All with many stops in between.
I realise how inclusive those journeys were. The bus stations and the buses were our zero-cost beds for the night (we had so little money). Some bus stations were scary but there was always some security and a coffee shop - and people. Also, the bus station was in the centre of town so we could walk about during long waits – though as in the article we were pulled up by locals and warned to stay put in a couple of cities.
Our information came from – I really don’t know! I recall a Lonely Plant-type guide we had to the WHOLE of America. But we asked people and got talking. I remember: heading for Tourist Offices and getting THE map of the city/area; the pride of the Tourist office staff: “Did you know Kansas has more registered fountains than any other city apart from Rome?”; their usual warm response to these young lads doing a mad journey.
I see there was a whole lot of serendipity on that journey – it was very human. It was very low tech.
Of course, we had no mobile phone, but we had no expectation of connectivity: a letter home every few weeks. As a parent I have often reflected on how hard this must have been for my own parents, awaiting a letter from me to tell me what I had got up to. Though, if we had been able to message our parents in real-time about some of the things we saw and did, and our scrapes, they would have not only been worried, but also totally helpless (the worst feeling for a parent).
Intelligent transport systems: we didn’t need real-time bus information.. did we? I guess we’d have liked it, but we often spoke to Greyhound staff who were the trusted source of (loads of) information. We were travelling with Greyhound – we were on their service – perhaps the service was hit and miss at times but it didn’t feel….remote. It wasn’t an uber-style company.
Perhaps now we are highly digitally connected to people and organisations which are physically distant, but less connected spatially (Joanna’s experience in the Sonder enabled accommodation – I would not meet another human during my stay – reminds me of Metropolis).
On our travels our connection was with the staff, and the bus station in the city centre, and the hubbub of the bus station, even at night. I guess there was also connection with our fellow passengers – perhaps too much as, although cigars were banned, cigarettes were allowed in the back few rows. Reboarding a bus with everyone at 3am at a desolate service/gas station also creates a kind of nocturnal transporty camaraderie.
We spoke to so many people. We were dependent on their advice and their good humour. They were from all walks of life. Of course, without mobile phones, there nothing that was better than to ask people and hope for the best. Serendipity. No smart digital channel to ..channel us anywhere.
Looking back now, what did I learn from these bus rides? That I was privileged to have been able to contemplate, embark and complete the journeys without serious problems. It was low-cost low tech human travel which was open to many. Also, I have learnt that the America I experienced and fell in a weird kind of love with, its urban form and way of life, was a moment in time. It has now gone. I am so sad about this.
I remember the places and things we got up to. But most of all I remember how I felt. The views from a bus as the sun rises in a vast stimulating country are as emotive as ever (Simon and Garfunkel hit the nail on the head in America and John Prine's Clay Pigeons). As a co-founder of a transport technology company Fuse Mobility, I am pleased that there is no app for this feeling and, thankfully, there never will be.
I just checked. The only “Serendipity” app available is a friends and family and kids tracker – “to make you feel safer”... and take you to a world “Where chance encounters are a thing of the past”.