Last year I accompanied the 5th graders on the Patrol trip to Tallahassee on a coach bus. Talk about comfortable! Leg room galore with a clean, cushy seat that cradled my ass with the kind of care reserved for leggy blondes at the Playboy Mansion. I slept. I knitted. I read. I got to see National Treasure. It was the most enjoyable travel experience of that last decade. On a bus.
So, when I tripped over an article in BudgetTravel.com about a new service from the big dogs at Greyhound called BoltBus I was intrigued. The writer paid three dollars, not Euros, dollars to go one way from New York City to Washington DC. Three dollars!!!! You can't spend three bucks in gas getting out of the city, but that much money to go to DC is a gift from the travel gods. It's a fabulous concept. The guy who reported did have some criticisms. Apparently, the bus stop was not well marked in the city. I'm not sure how he couldn't spot a coach bus even in a sea of city buses, but it was a special challenge for him. He also said that the trip advertised a movie and he did not get a movie. I say, for three bucks, even if you're riding with a lap full of fresh clucking chickens and sitting next to a patchy old man holding a satchel of freshly made gorgonzola cheese, it's still a bargain in this time of economic peril.
BoltBus, oh BoltBus, you're a dream come true! Here's hoping you make your way down to Florida so we can all sit back and leave the driving to you.
4 comments:
It sounds like a good concept, but having taken a bus from here to NYC, I'm not convinced. Bus people scare me. Out with the common folk it's way different than a charter. It's public transportation and the public ain't pretty.
I have to agree with JSG. There are certain things that I don't want to be too cheap; public travel and chicken are two of them.
And yet, what an interesting topic for a post. Enjoyable!
I wouldn't mind riding a bus that went staright from Jacksonville to Atlantic City, or Biloxi, or the Hard Rock in Tampa... or...
I'll be rocking in the sunroom of adult Extended Stay, and the memorable bus rides will be there when my birthplace and number of children are long gone...
Once, as Tom and I drove up the Florida turnpike, he described his departure on a Greyhound into the Viet Nam-era Air Force, Dad standing on the sidewalk waving him away (mom at home, refusing to support this perilous choice.) As I listened and drove over the hilly center of the state, my foot pressed the gas pedal harder and harder, until alas, the State Trooper had me in his lights. I got out, told him through tears the honest to god truth about how I came to be speeding. He glanced at Tom in the car. I told him I now interned at the VA hospital in Gainesville. It turned out his sister worked right next door. We departed---if not friends, neighbors. No ticket. We might have hugged.
Bring on the bus trips! They're sure to be memorable.
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