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In succumbing to pressure from fellow league members, I provided a more accurate picture of my itinerary to my seatmate:

Him: so have you been to the casino in Chicago? 

Me: no, I didn’t know there was one there. 

Oh are you not from there? 

No, I’m just connecting to another bus there. My final destination is Boston, but I get off the bus in Minneapolis. 

Oh, did you start in Cleveland? 

No I actually started in Boston yesterday. 

At this point I figured he’d give me a strange look or ask why or do something. But he just said that the longest bus trip he’s ever taken was 10 hours or so and that was enough for him. 

He then promptly changes the subject and asked me if I know where to find the best chine food in the area. I gave him a bit of a strange look and guessed the Columbus bus station. He told me that it’s found at the casino (I should have known) 

He did tell me that while they aren’t quite as good as the Chinese food, the Columbus bus station restaurant makes excellent burgers, “second only to ones you make yourself at home, and these are basically as good”. He said he would be getting a few himself if he wasn’t planning on getting Chinese as soon as he makes it to the casino. But he continued to talk about the burgers and at some point told me he now thinks he needs to go get one as an appetizer to hold him over. 

Being that I hadn’t really eaten anything in almost 8 hours, I figured I’d have to take him up on his recommendation. But when I entered the bus station and found the restaurant, to my dismay it was closed with a sign saying out to lunch / shift change. 

We just made it to Van Wert, OH, stop #17 and the first time I’ve gotten up since Columbus. We stopped at a gas station that served hot food, but the pickings were fairly slim. I ended up going with their chicken tenders meal (2 tenders, potato wedges, and cole slaw) for 4.39. It was decent, but being that my last hot meal was 11 hours back, I was thrilled with it. 

The only event of interest in the prior stops was another horse and buggy at one of the stops. Otherwise it’s just been lots of empty fields and sunny skies. 

This afternoon was spent cruising through the doldrums. The majority of our drive time was spent on two lane highways surrounded by fields. I’d doze off and wake up and I could have been convinced that we hadn’t actually moved anywhere. I never left the bus throughout Indiana and based on my last experience there, I don’t think I missed much. 

While this experience hasn’t been fun, it certainly could be much worse. On my last bus, one of the passengers boarded in NY and was riding to Oakland. Another was going to Vancouver. There’s even someone who got on my bus back in Syracuse and is also riding to Minneapolis. 

I realize that I’m extremely fortunate to be in a position where I can just “throw away” a weekend to spend it doing something that pretty much everyone around me has to do, for one reason or another. Not only could this be construed in some perverse way as a vacation, but I’m also financially in a position where at any stop that I had sufficient time, I could buy what I wanted. I joked about luxury in an earlier post, but when I finally made it to Chicago, I didn’t think twice about buying a prepacked sandwich and juice for $9 and that freedom truly is a luxury. 

I briefly mentioned perspective in another post and that’s the theme that I keep coming back to. In my day-to-day life, I don’t often interact with someone who sees $1.50 bags of chips in a vending machine and simply cannot afford them. While that in itself isn’t a problem, it makes it very easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. 

My life is literally filled with blessings and opportunities, yet there are plenty of times when I find myself focused on negative events or occurrences. As minor (or even major) they may be, it’s important to always try to keep a sense of perspective and realize that things are pretty damn good. 

So even though I still have almost a full day of travel remaining, I say bring it on. 

In Chicago I said goodbye to Baron’s and boarded another Greyhound. It’s safe to say that each bus I’ve boarded throughout this trip has made me want to go back to the previous one, but I was so close to the end that nothing could get my spirits down at this point. Even though I was the first to board in Chicago, the bus was over half full already. Every row had at least one occupant, save one pair of seats in the middle of the bus. Naturally I made my way to them, while asking myself why everyone was avoiding them. It didn’t take me long to figure out. Picture the emergency exit door over the wing on an airplane, but instead of an airtight seal and extra legroom, I had a visible opening between the door and the rest of the bus with less legroom and no footrests. No worries, I prefer cooler temperatures and the outside air should do a good job of balancing the excessive heat of prior buses, or so I thought. I spread out my stuff and passed out.

Cut to some time later and I’ve awoken FREEZING. It takes a lot for me to get cold and that’s especially true while I’m asleep. I dug my sweatshirt out of may bag and put that on followed by my coat and began contemplating stuffing my scant remaining extra clothes into the gap in the wall in an attempt to arrest the flow of -5° air rushing into the bus. I ended up deciding against it and managed to doze until our next stop. I tossed and turned for a bit before deciding I wasn’t going to get back to sleep again.

A few minutes before our scheduled arrival, the bus parked in Minneapolis. I had left Boston almost 35 hours before, ridden on 4 different buses, driven by 6 different drivers. Leaving the bus, my thoughts of “I finally made it” were quickly chased away by the fact that in terms of mileage for the trip, I was just at the halfway point. I still had almost 12 hours of flights and time to spend in airports ahead of me.